They say one should leave a sleeping dog alone but as cute as she was enjoying the morning on the porch I roused Cheyenne and we set off looking for a suitable walk. I had my eye on Mile Marker 15 yesterday morning to answer that question and though Bay Point is twelve miles from my house I knew Cheyenne likes the walk so off we went, and drove for 15 minutes because I wanted to stop by Baby's Coffee.
I like Bay Point, a triangular strip of land that points due south from the Overseas Highway, with a grassy triangle of parkland dotted with picnic tables, ball courts and a kid's playground. Bay Point is far enough from Boca Chica there isn't much jet noise but it's close enough to Key West to put you twenty minutes from the city door to door, roughly.
The Keys shuttle service goes by obviously so you are on a bus line out here and aside from Baby's there is one fancy restaurant Kaya Island Eats and...
...a little store. It's a handy spot one way and another and the bicycle path attracts the spandex crowd too.
The weather has been perfect lately, a fresh southeast breeze blowing away the humidity but allowing he heat to permeate the air. I find it invigorating. I was concentrating on the camera so the picture came out as what I call the grumpy Rasputin look.
The heat was a lot for the hairy Yellow Labrador who prefers her walks early in the morning or very late at night but she was a good sport and we ambled and stopped and ambled a little more. It was very companionable, as usual.
Which was just as well as my wife took the weekend out of town to see a friend in Central Florida and I was home for three days which I had been rather looking forward to spending alone. Except with Cheyenne around one is never really alone. She's a funny girl, she wants to be with me but always a few feet away, always ready to get up and trot after me, but never too close. Sometimes I get down and scratch her and she enjoys it for a while but then she shakes me off and moves away to lay down by herself. A weekend with my best bud.
They've been around for decades and started in Key West downtown taking over a business space that was labeled Baby's Place. I guess for want of a better name that became the name of the coffee roasting company. It didn't last downtown for ever and roasting was first moved as I recall to Homestead. Then the retail store moved to Mile Marker 15. I thought that was an odd choice and I wondered how they would do, but of course I have no instinct for business, though luckily for me I know it, so of course they flourished out in the boondocks!
Nowadays the coffee is roasted in Louisiana it seems and the store in the Keys is for sale. I spoke with an employee who said it could sell anytime as it is on the market and available. I'd like to think someone is out there who wants to roast and sell coffee under the eternal summer sun. I can't imagine what kind of a crazy life it would be operating an iconic business like this and I'm certain there's someone out there who will thrive on it.
I have discovered that they offer some fairly decent tea at Baby's so sometimes I'll choose that over the coffee. China green unadorned hit the spot. Along with some disgustingly delicious crumb cake. When the wife's away the food choices go straight to hell.
They sell sandwiches and pastries and mugs and candies and t-shirts and all that stuff alongside the actual business of selling hot liquid in styrofoam cups.
From there it was back to the car and my dog and we shared a few crumbs of blueberry cake and we went home and got on with the weekend.
She makes an excellent companion on an open ended weekend. We'll split tonight when I go back to work before my wife gets home but until then we will be inseparable.
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We wandered off around the grassy open space and I saw this woman straining to talk to me, so we obliged and ambled over to engage her in conversation. Actually it was her 5 month old puppy who wanted to harass Cheyenne and so they got together while the woman and I exchanged pleasantries. Not what riepe means by pleasantries, because she was a nice visitor from Michigan and I limited myself to giving her some useful tips about where she might walk her rambunctious dog to let off steam properly.
Apparently having lived in Fort Myers for a summer she decided Florida was too hot a place to live and she fled back up north to the Rust Belt. I started out explaining how Ft Myers, where I tried living for a while until the Fundamentalists chased my sorry atheist ass out with pitchforks, is hot and sticky whereas the keys aren't nearly so tough. Then I thought better of it- no point in encouraging people to come is there? Not even babes with cute dogs.
However yesterday was not a day to be churlish and everyone should have been in the Keys enjoying a glorious day. As it was there were thousands out on Highway One cluttering up the roadway. They were racing the Ragnar Relay, some sort of benefit for multiple sclerosis according to their website. 
There were 325 teams of 12 runners and three volunteers, which if my mathematical calculations are correct amounts to about 5,000 people sweating and being supported in their sweating on the public roadway.
It seems they left Crandon Park, Key Biscayne (in Miami) between 7am and 5pm in series of staggered starts and the idea was to run all day and all night to Key West's Southernmost Hotel on Duval Street.
Cheyenne and I were happily ambling around smelling this and that.
Others were rather more intense in their movements.
And they are going to be busy next week too for the seafood festival in Bayview Park in Key West January 15th. I went last year and got bored standing around in line to eat seafood, widely available anyway, standing up. It wasn't my idea of fun but lots of people love it.
Galloping around the Keys in running shoes is apparently lots of people's idea of fun. I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I would rather eat crushed glass than be seen motoring around looking like this:
Teams called Soul Mates, Dim Wits, Breastees and Testees and so forth were all listed as running the race. Silliness in a good cause.
This is more my idea of travel through the Keys, though I would look really stupid with ape hanger handlebars. I've never considered airing my armpits to be one of life's little pleasures. 
This cluster at Sugarloaf Middle School was one of the checkpoints, and they did stop cars from time to time with flaggers but they were astonishingly unobtrusive and kept the traffic flowing.
