Underneath The Arches

The pigeons looked like they were having an important meeting thus ruining my plan to take a walk on an Old Flagler Bridge alongside the main highway. I hustled Rusty under the bridge.

I do this from time to time when I feel his walk has been inadequate or I want to see if I can find a new perspective. If there is a bicycle parked nearby I don't bother as I don't feel like shuffling through some homeless guy's living room.

The big white pipe alongside the 1982 bridge is the water pipe from Homestead bringing reliable water supplies to the Keys. In an effort to reduce salt water intrusion they mix 4% seawater with the fresh water pumped out of the Florida Aquifer. You can't taste it but the idea is to reduce consumption or fresh water which would make way for the ocean to penetrate Florida's fragile fresh water table. With so few people in the Keys it hardly seems worth worrying about compared o the millions on the mainland but we must all do our bit, I suppose.

Crawling out along the pipe is discouraged as you can see in the picture above.

Next door the cement bridges built for the 1912 opening of the railroad from Miami are still standing. They are restoring many of them to create a bike path and fishing bridges the length of the Keys.

A houseboat tucked away in the sort of perfect solitude some people hope for in the Keys:

An isolated house on the western side of Crane Boulevard on Sugarloaf Key:

Stout rails designed to stop cars plummeting off the straight level well marked highway. They do that you know, from time to time people drive into the mangroves, too many hours at work, alcohol or marveling at the scenery off they go for a drive in the bushes...

Gratuitous Rusty picture, actually my hand, but there he was looking for land crabs and happily not finding any. They hurt when they pinch your nose..

Hurricane Effects

I was standing on Whitehead Street taking a picture through some trees when it occurred to me the window awnings on La Concha, the venerable old hotel on Duval Street, are all blown out.

 I saw the plywood over the upstairs door, a reminder of those frenzied preparations...

I took a walk with Rusty after I started getting over my severe head cold and we ended up near the old wooden mystery bridge at the end of Niles Road. It has been turned to matchsticks by Irma, who knew...

 Look at what's left of what used to be a powerful wooden structure apparently strong enough to support a tank. The weird part was that it led nowhere.

 There was no reason for it's existence. It attached a rough old footpath to another footpath and I never found any foundations or signs of construction at its distant northern end.

 Why it was put here I guess we'll never know. I even hoisted 100 pound Cheyenne onto it once for a walk to the island at the other end.

Someone who used the bridge built a convenient ladder too. Prior to this one had to use the metal spikes as footholds on the post to the right hand side of the picture. It was a scramble. Now it's all gone.

I wrote up a pretty complete photo essay of the bridge and the other end of the bridge here:

A Wooden Bridge. 

Keys Seascapes

These are not recent pictures of the waters alongside the Keys. I have been working what seems endlessly lately, eight or nine nights in a  row then one night off and then back at it, as we hope our two trainees get up to speed and ease the overtime burden. I have been looking at pictures as a way to take a small mental trip. These random seascapes remind me of good times past, more free time, because the past always looks easier than the present!

 There was a discussion in the paper recently about the cost to make the old Flagler railroad bridges safe for pedestrians. I miss walking this one across half of Niles Channel, alongside the modern 40 foot road bridge opened in 1982. Nowadays it's fenced off and closed. 

Cheyenne loves walking bridges and checking the really nasty crap anglers leave behind bless their hearts.

Oops, a cloudscape got in by ...accident.

The old bridge on the left, the new bridge with the water pipe on the right. Water was first piped to Key West from the mainland in 1942 to supply the expanded needs of the wartime military. 

Some days it really does look like this. And now the days start to get longer. About time.

Another Sunny Bridge Walk

When Fat Albert is on the ground it's a sign of either impending bad weather or recently passed bad weather (or perhaps maintenance issues?).


The sun was out and things were looking lovely to my way of thinking.


Boats were on the water again, no longer dodging the dreaded thunderstorms.


Roger's Earthball was successfully facing the open waters of the Florida Straits.


And the KOA marina was open for business on a warm sunny morning.


Fat Albert got in the air later in the day ready once again to guard the southern approaches against smugglers and infiltrators.


I love the sunlight reflected off the water.


Cheyenne was enjoying sniffing everything in sight.


There were no other cyclists, pedestrians or anglers on the bridge.


We had the open road on the old Flagler Bridge all to ourselves.


It was great morning to be out.


It's corny but I think sunshine makes things look better.


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Tidal Zone

When we passed the new moon the tides started doing their spring thing, which is running hard and fast. Sailors divide ties into Spring and Neap. Spring tides coincide with the full and new moons and Neap tides which are the weakest and show least height changes are at the phases in between when the crescent is growing (waxing) and shrinking (waning). Spring tides produce strange effects in the Keys especially in the gaps between the islands where Gulf of Mexico tides meet Atlantic Ocean tides.Gulf of Mexico tides are completely weird, unpredictable and irrational. Some days there will be one tide and others there will four tides in a twenty four hour cycle. On the other hand the tides in the Atlantic on the south side of the islands is regular and predictable and on a four tide cycle every 24 hours. So there are times when the Gulf and the Atlantic collide or flow together and create great rushing streams of water. Endlessly amusing for a passer by with nothing more urgent to do......than stand and watch the great flow of the river of salt water.

Bow Channel

It's a bridge like any other along the Overseas Highway but I got a hankering to stop and see what I might see at the particular span that joins Sugarloaf Key to Cudjoe Key. They have been turning the old Flagler Bridges into fishing and non motor vehicle bridges alongside the main highway, but of course as these nice improvements are completed some anal retentive sign poster comes along and makes it seem like using the bridge is the adult equivalent of learning to play well with others. With a trash can every fifteen feet you'd think the great unwashed could either figure out what to do with their trash or NOT. But sign makers need jobs too so it's all explained in glorious technicolor at the entrance to the footbridge.Pelican season is in full swing in the Lower Keys. On the water and on the parapet of the bridge.Paul from Aiken, South Carolina was on vacation with his family. He abandoned them to their fate for a brief hour as he fished for permit from the bridge, with no luck apparently. He had heard tales of fish practically jumping onto baited hooks out on the water. He said Aiken is inland, near Augusta Georgia, which made me feel bad as I live in the Keys and I can't stand to pit my wits against the fish. In the same way Mark Twain reputedly said golf is a good walk spoiled, I feel fishing is a nice boat ride wrecked. Besides I am too embarrassed to risk discovering fish are smarter than I am. And look at all the gear you need:And fishing also uses almost indestructible monofilament line that gets caught up everywhere including the overhead power lines:The Flagler Bridge is also a bicycle path.
The views were glorious. I love the flat water of a calm day in the Keys.

Cheyenne finds lots of interesting smells along these bridges, much to my surprise. To human eyes the dog level walk looks sterile and boring but she must find fish smells of all sorts because she walked the bridge in a delirium of smelling.More views, this time to the south across the Straits of Florida.I also spotted this contraption anchored out in the channel. A neighbor in the Santa Cruz, California Small Craft Harbor coined the term "hovel craft" for dilapidated homes afloat. Rick's term still pops into my mind when I see stuff like this on the water.

This picture shows the rungs built into the cement power poles which stand in the waters alongside the bridges. They are supposed to be resistant to hurricanes up to 155 miles an hour, and though it remains fashionable to complain about power outages, since Keys Energy upgraded the power system I find power outages to be quite rare.One problem has been the anchoring of sailboats in the Channels between the islands. Owners tend to abandon them there and when strong winds blow they break loose and their masts hit the power lines knocking out electricity across the Lower Keys. Peering over the side of the bridge I could see clear waters beneath me. Cheyenne was amusing herself alongside me.It got so bad between Big Pine and Little Torch Keys that sailboats are no longer allowed to anchor in the upper reaches of Newfound Harbor. Sugarloaf Key is home to a campground 16 miles outside Key West.They also keep a marked swimming area with erections in the water:Sniffing our way slowly to Sugarloaf Key.

As Cheyenne pottered around I watched the boaters get ready for a December day on the water.

We were going out later in the day so I wasn't envying them. Happily I have done my share of living at anchor so I don't ride the bridges wishing it was me out there. Our modern economy is a new adventure every day it seems like, so I wouldn't be surprised if my wife and I ended up back living on the water but I'd rather it were in something larger than this 22 footer...

The week leading up to Christmas saw a ton of road traffic on Highway One so one can legitimately hope people were in town spending money.And someone was forgetting to read the rules while on vacation. I took two paces to my right and dropped this offender in the proper trash receptacle. It wasn't that hard, and you'd think the owner would have garnered sufficient energy to do the job himself.

Just my kind of restful vacation, living with the neighbors youngsters squealing with delight next door.

Luckily the human race is not relying for it's survival by expecting me to propagate.

While I am not overly fond of children I positively loath this stuff, it's up there with iguanas and lionfish in the invasive species nuisance categories. Brazilian peppers were imported as ornamentals with their holly like red berries and crisp green leaves and their ability to propagate by spreading their roots but they take over wherever they grow edging out slower native species. If they have to grow anywhere on wasteland by the highway is as good as anywhere, them and their nasty spiny branches.

It's not curvy riding down here but it's not all bad on a sunny winter morning.We ambled back across the deserted bridge wondering where the anglers were.Out on the water perhaps?

Until cheerful Peter from Cudjoe Key showed up striding along with his and his neighbor's retrievers in tow. They fussed over Cheyenne momentarily while we discussed the nauseating state of winter cold weather this year and last.

We agreed it has been too cold for too long. Peter's state of practical dog walking dress reflected my own comfort level, which is as it should be for people who live around here. People often ask if there is a dress code in the Keys, and my answer is as shambolic as you can muster is good for any occasion, name brands and ironed shorts are for country clubs Up North. Of course I get shot down because a lot of people do like to dress up, but my theory makes my sartorial life easy - for me, as I enjoy a certain level of decrepitude in my clothing. He was walking a couple of very happy dogs. He didn't look that unhappy himself so perhaps they got it from him. Speaking of iguanas this venerable beast was sunning himself alongside the highway.

I accidentally on purpose drove his way but he was long gone by the time my tires rolled past here. Iguanas will be around long after the last human being has been nuked or killed in a car wreck. It seems a shame to leave these splendid bridges and views to these gross, vegetable garden eating predators.