Lazy Way Lane

A brisk cold front finally has broken the back of summer though of course that doesn't mean snowdrifts and permanent cold temperatures until Spring. Cold is a relative term though I was wearing a  wind breaker to take this picture near the waterfront in the strong north wind. Mine is the large shadow to the left, the other one was a woman reading her phone who turned up her nose, literally, when I sat next to her. I wanted to ask her how she did that but she didn't look friendly.

Lazy Way Lane is  an odd street in the city that starts behind Schooner Wharf Bar and for vehicles is a one way meander to Elizabeth Street opposite Kermit's Key Lime Store.

In the afternoon sun of my lunch break yesterday the shadows were long and crisp as my neighbors went about their very important business.

 I was dodging motorized vehicles and meandering with a camera around my neck enjoying the heat out of the wind. The National Weather Service says Key West has been above 80 degrees every day since March, often far above that, so a temperature in the mid 70s with a wind chill is a change. Bye bye humidity for a few days.

The bare arms and Capri pants belong to hardier types. If you want to look like a local in these near blizzard conditions you need to cover up and take precautions. 

 These two have the right idea:

This guy reminded me of an old Key West joke, the city where dressing up never happens unless it's a tutu or an outrageous costume. "What do you call the guy in the suit?" Answer: "Defendant." Ba da bing. The two guys talking in the background are dressed in Key West "suits." Notice their covered up arms...and they probably don't own long pants or else they would have been pulled out of some musty locker and pressed into service.

 I switched to color photography to illustrate tropical death in this picture. Frozen vegetation:

And this avid photographer was using a real camera checking the status of a chicken hunkering in the gravel out of the wind. The translucent dress tells the focused observer she is probably a visitor. Also I am the only local who photographs wild chickens from time to time.

A crowd of people hunkering here buying heat to stimulate their extremities back to life with powerful Cuban coffee. 

And as the sun got closer to the horizon (it gets properly dark around here near six pm) I retreated to my job and my 911 calls and the benefits of an air conditioned office.

Well, air conditioning is very beneficial in the height of summer  which amounts to 8 or more months of the year.

Still Cold

This  cold snap needs to go away.  The shrimp boats as of yesterday were still parked on the horizon under the protection of the island of Key West, whipped by winds but facing small waves. When the shrimpers gather its always a sign of a strong north wind on the way.

I know 58 degrees (14 Canadian) seems paltry compared to what Minnesotans and Mainers face but they are prepared. We have three blankets, one fleece each two wool caps and extra socks. And we are used to 80 degrees. People from Up North bitch all the time when they venture here in the summer in temperatures I find tolerable and they expect me to empathize...

 Check out the clothing on the mob scrambling for hot coffee at Sandy's on White Street:

Wind proofing is the  trick. In the sun outside of the breeze it's quite comfortable but my house is on stilts and that doesn't help. I remember commentators in New Orleans after Katrina bridled at the suggestion the 9th Ward rebuild on stilts to avoid future floods. They said stilt houses looked like cocktail olives on toothpicks. Maybe so but they would have been dry...nonetheless my olive on a  stick gets wind shipped from all sides and underneath. It's an elevated ice box.

I saw the cruise ship in town yesterday, a huge hulk looming over the little chain stores at the end of Duval Street. More to the point check out the heavy winter clothing on the passersby.  Arctic blasts not anticipated by vacationing cruise ship travelers, I'm sure. Welcome to the tropics where we spend winter bundled up and summers getting battered by hurricanes. 

 Frankly I don't know how people cope without electricity Up North when ice storms strike. It's miserable sweating in the summer without electricity but being without electricity in a winter storms seems positively dangerous to me. I guess it's all in how you want Mother Nature to beat you up.

Supposedly we are supposed to be back in the eighties this week. Can't come soon enough for me.

Cold Front

In light of the rather extensive and unusually cold early snap that has sent snow falling all over Europe and the Southern United States I have been rather  reluctant to mention the effects of all this refrigeration on these sceptered isles set  at  a  modest 24 degrees north Latitude. It is cold by local standards, quite brisk with a  persistent north wind but compared to snowmen in Louisiana not much to talk about really. I have adapted one Vespa to ride in 55 degree nighttime low temperatures. I love the handlebar muffs, $30 of vinyl guaranteed to keep your hands warm and mostly dry in rain in any but arctic conditions.  Installation takes seconds and is entirely simple, plus no electricity is required...They look ungainly but they are lovely to wear when you are cold and busy riding.

 I get tired of explaining to hardier folk that 60 degrees in the Keys feels cold and damp and even though some few people understand that indeed the human body does adapt and grow used to temperature ranges no one really thinks 60 American degrees (15 Canadian) is cold. I think you have to live it to discover how cold the salt laden air is especially when the wind is blowing. And some few visitors to Key West are getting the local frozen treatment. Rusty I discovered in North Carolina last month actually enjoys cold weather even though he is superbly adapted to South Florida heat:

We haven't seen low temperatures like this in a  few years so this chill is a pleasant change but it is also a reminder of how hard it is to get used to cold feet and the chill of showering in a temperate climate. This is not the time to be taking outdoor showers despite the abundant sunshine. On the other hand a low of 55 and a high of 66 isn't outside the historical bounds when I took a  quick look at this rather extensive and thus confusing table from the NOAA Key West page: Historical Data LINK. 

 I like seeing other people out riding in this cold but I don't see many single headlights at night on Highway One when I come to town or leave in the night after work. And if you think 65 is an inconsequentially low temperature check out the gear these various visitors are wearing to ride.

In a way it does make it more seasonal for Christmas but I will be glad to return to warmer normals this next weekend. Humidity will be banished for a while but highs near 80 by day and lows near 70 by night will be perfect and most acceptable. I am not a weather hero. 

Cold Front

This is a touchy subject when you've got people Up North under unprecedented lumps of snow and services  shutting down. And there again people laugh when residents of the Keys complain about sixty degree weather. I find myself constantly trying to explain that it isn't snobbery or stupidity or vanity that makes sixty degrees (15 Canadian degrees) seem so freezing to people who live here.

Consider this: the average normal regular temperature fluctuates between 75 and 95  degrees. Summers are not as hot as a lot of places and winters are never as cold as anywhere else. Key West never gets frost as the lowest recorded temperature was forty one (5 Canadian degrees). This means most people don't have proper winter clothing. You may also be surprised to learn a lot of homes don't have heat. And furthermore all those leaky houses with loose window frames become ice chests when the north winds start to blow. 

This next point is a tough one to get your head around but 60 degrees in Key West is a lot colder than many other places. It's a function of the same watery effect that makes summers cooler than much of the central plains. 110 degrees is not uncommon in Kansas say in August and I've felt it and it's disgusting. Dry heat it may be but it's hot, just as it gets burning hot in Arizona or New Mexico or any of those deserts. In the Keys the cooling summer breezes off the ocean keep temperatures below 100 (usually) and make it surprisingly pleasant even if very humid. Not everyone likes summers here and I do always mention that liberal use of air conditioning in the home and car is a requisite. My wife and I spent a couple of years sailing through the tropics breathing only God's super heated humid air and I have learned to appreciate the joys of modern technology. Some people think living without air conditioning improves their Keys street cred and they may well be right but I do things my way.  

So in winter sixty degrees can be damp and chill, and when the sun comes out the wind blasts across the islands from the north east bringing all that salt laden humid air with it. Combine that with lack of proper clothing, lack of heating and low physical resistance and you can see why it feels a bugger sight colder here than you might imagine sitting in your snow drift Up North.

And let's not forget that we live her because we like the heat, we want sunshine, we prefer never to see snow again. Conchs are in a special category here and I never speak for them, as they are a law unto themselves and I always defer. But for anyone who chooses to live in the Keys and then complains about the heat, all I can say is stupid is as stupid does. It's like choosing to live in the desert then bitching about the lack of moisture. So when it gets cold here as it does from time to time, pardon us if we feel it and moan about it. 

The people I do feel sorry for are the visitors who have come to the Keys hoping for a sunny break under the palms in the middle of their winter fiasco Up North and they get gray skies, strong winds and chilly temperatures. They look pale and wan and say with a brave smile that sixty degrees would be a heatwave at home and they make do. Brave souls.

Cold Front

From the National Weather Service:

In the wake of a strong cold front, the coldest temperatures of the season will impact locations from New York and southern New England down to parts of the eastern Gulf Coast. In fact, the freezing line Monday morning is forecast to surge south of Atlanta all the way to the central coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Temperatures will warm a few degrees for Tuesday, but still remain 5 to 10 degrees below average.

It's a sad fact of life but I am used to hardened Inuit making fun of me when I talk about cold weather in Key West. The good news is that I do from time to time enjoy seeing people from Up North brought to their knees by temperatures they pour scorn on from a distance. 60  degrees in Key West is for some reason, possibly the humidity or the uninterrupted wind, a frigid temperature when one is obliged to live through it. 60 degrees American (15 Canadian) is actually quite cold, and though it's not supposed to get that cold tonight, we face the first solid cold front of a winter that meteorologists promise us will be colder than normal, whatever that is. We have lots to look forward to apparently before next summer.

I do not enjoy cold weather and for me anything below 70 degrees (21 Canadian) is cool enough so tonight's possible 68  degrees is starting to look uncomfortable to me.

BEHIND THE FRONT...NORTHERLY BREEZES WILL FRESHEN WHILE DEWPOINTS
SLOWLY FALL. WATER TEMPERATURES ARE WELL ABOVE NORMAL...SO WE DO NOT
THINK OVERNIGHT LOWS WILL REACH THE UPPER 60S. TEMPERATURES HAVE NOT
BEEN BELOW 70 DEGREES IN KEY WEST SINCE APRIL 1ST. WE WILL HAVE TO
WAIT UNTIL TUESDAY MORNING WHEN TEMPS WILL FALL INTO THE UPPER 60S.

This is after all a city where outdoor living is not meant to be boxed in, where opening up windows and doors is part of the pleasure of winter, where skies are blue and the sun shines is an all year phenomenon.

The fact is that the Lower Keys are not in the tropics, the tropic of cancer runs through the Straits of Florida 60 miles south of here and in winter even properly tropical Havana gets cold gray weather from time to time just as we do.

Monday

Mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high near 76. Breezy, with a northeast wind around 20 mph.

Monday Night

Mostly clear, with a low around 68. Breezy, with a northeast wind around 20 mph.

Tuesday

Isolated showers. Mostly sunny, with a high near 76. Breezy, with a northeast wind around 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 10%.

Tuesday Night

A slight chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 70. Breezy, with a northeast wind around 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 10%.

 So much as one might prefer to spend all winter in t-short and shorts, there are occasions from time to time when we must adapt. Socks are de rigeur when Jack Frost strikes.

One hears stories of homeless Americans freezing to death Up North, and how they cope in the snow filled states and Canada I can't imagine. Key West has  beds for the homeless but when it gets cold or wet they tend to fill and some street people just prefer to be left to cope on the streets. In a town where frost has never been seen a cold snap is not exactly life threatening. I don't think pets or humans should be outside but they haven't yet  voted to make me dictator so cruelty remains a viable option.

There are people who dislike heat and humidity and mosquitoes, inexplicably, and they revel in snow and ice and the misery of short days and long nights and the rick of death by exposure. A while back someone sent me a picture of a car with a Key West sticker, and I wonder if they were wishing for warmer weather?

My young colleague JW saw  snow in 1997 once in North Carolina when he was nine and he says he loved it. Not sweating and sledding made his young heart sing. When I told him my wife was going to be in freezing temperatures this week in Northern California his eyes lit up with envy. Man, he said, I have to go and stand in the freezer rooms at the grocery store to feel that cold. I miss cold weather.

My buddy Nick also grew in Key West and last saw snow in New York last winter. He is another pervert who likes snow. He wears the badge proudly saying snow gives him a thrill. He likes to be cold. What is wrong with these people?

I don't know how cold it will really get tonight and over the course of the next few days. The run up to the cold weather was magnificent heavy rain and roiling black cloud and strong west winds that lasted for days, a surprisingly powerful precursor to the cold front. Typically it gets hot and humid and winds blow out of the south and swing round rapidly to the northwest which brings clear skies and cold temperatures.  

Perhaps it really will be cold enough to get us looking like these file pictures I took in winters past, socks, jackets, hats, hoods and maybe even gloves. A lot of people don't have heat in their homes and when it gets crisp around here people start to lose their resistance and everyone starts to sniffle and hack with winter ailments. Pathetic I know, but true.

Personally I'm fine with it being 80 degrees (26 Canadian degrees) and sunny all winter long. If I wanted it cold I'd live in St Augustine. I don't need it thanks, not that the gods are listening to me. My ideal, of which I never get bored:

This nonsense makes Richard in Fairbanks' heart sing:

Not Buffalo Or Michigan But Cold

Last night the cold front that has been generating apocalyptic headlines across the Mid West and North East finally arrived in Key West. I saw 63 degrees but no rain in the forecast, so nothing daunted I hopped on the Bonneville and went to work. I did add my windproof vest as a concession to the cold, but my handlebar muffs and balaclava are secure in the loft in a box...somewhere.

Actually it wasn't too cold at all, I found it bracing and rather fun. I met Shannon at the front door to the office and she looked at me as though I were an idiot for not commuting by car and when I said it was fun she looked worried as though my idea of fun was akin Ebola and quite possibly catching. It's a half hour ride and my fingers wrapped in light summer gloves weren't even close to chilled.

In an effort to  find evidence of cold weather I took Cheyenne to Higgs Beach yesterday and granted the wind honking out of the north was a bit cool I felt no need to wear anything heavier than a short sleeved shirt. The winter homeless/camping population were huddled under the trees as though seeking shade from the cloud covered skies leaving me alone in the parking lot to ponder why one would paint the word "Love" on the side of one's ratty old van. If one plans to camp illegally you'd think a low profile might be indicated, not an incandescent color scheme.

 Over at the bocce court I was struck by the apparent correlation between smoking and bowling. Some people call it bocce ball which is like a fingernail on a  blackboard to me. In Italian that would be like saying "football ball" but I know I will never make any headway on that subject. It's like this new fangled American term for an Italian sandwich all hip and modern called "panini" which in Italian is the plural of  "panino" which means common-or-garden sandwich. So asking for a sandwiches grates on my nerves. But who cares. 

What is truly peculiar is the way people feel the need to sunbathe on the beach even under total cloud cover. I know damaging rays penetrate the clouds and stuff which is why the tourists like to wear broad brimmed hats under gray skies, and I am refraining from commenting how odd that looks, but sitting on a beach on a day like this seems very odd to me. Maybe I should try it.

This next picture might have come out better had I a telephoto lense on my phone camera but it has a symmetry all its own anyway. I was trying to show the small dots on the horizon that are shrimp boats anchored off the south shore of Key West to get out of the heavy weather at sea romised by the cold front. 

Indeed on my ride into work I did get sprayed, albeit lightly, by salt water pushed over the seawall by the strong winds battering North Roosevelt Boulevard. However when one takes a quick check of the Internet and comes across Michigan Live one starts to develop a sense of proportion about cold fronts.

On the whole subject of cold and winter and seasons and all that boring stuff we should obey the proverb and let the sleeping proverbial lie. 

Just like that.

Frigid December

I haven't stopped commuting to work by Bonneville just because the temperature has dropped and stayed down below 60 degrees.I wear my mesh jacket liner and a sweatshirt and my heavy winter elk skin roper gloves and a balaclava under my helmet, all because the sun, though bright, carries no heat. And the morning ride home in the cold damp air feels like an outdoor meat locker at six in the morning.The colors are washed out at dusk when you look away from the golden sunsets. This was Highway One behind me when I stopped on my way to work Sunday night.Dispatching has been relatively quiet as the cold weather tends to keep people indoors. Alcohol fueled stupidity continues of course, and as one officer put it, the numbers of domestic disturbances go up as the frozen southernmost residents huddle indoors sharing their socks and wishing for heating in this Dickensian spell of discomfort. What else is there to do but drink and allow your relationship's resentments to ride to the surface? This was the view from my desk at work as the latest infernal cold front rolled over Key West. The Bonneville is the speck at the bottom of the picture. Yes I did ride to work despite the promise of 40 mile per hour winds, rain and lows around 47 degrees: It was a promise maintained first thing Tuesday morning when I got in the car to take Cheyenne to the mangroves for her early morning walk.

I can read metric on my Fusion's display. This is for Jack riepe, man of the world:

We got a call at work from a freaked out woman on a boat. She could hear screaming and noises outside on the docks. She felt the need to whisper for she was terrified someone outside was ready to do her harm. At first Noel thought she was alone on her boat but she said her boyfriend was peering out a porthole to see what was going on. She was, it turns out, a visitor from North Dakota of all places (home of the country's only state owned bank, and the only state in the Lower Forty Eight that has a balanced state budget-statism works!). However she had no idea which marina she was in, what slip she was at or the name of her boat. Noel took the call and with the patience of a saint elicited which marina but not which dock: only that they parked their red Ford Mustang (rental car!) at the end of the dock. The man was still screaming for help, she said. I sent four officers to find out what was happening because as luck would have it we were going through a quiet moment, as the bars had closed. They paired up and started walking the docks at four o'clock in the morning. The woman was too scared to hang up the phone and too scared to talk in a voice Noel could hear. Keith and I sat like statues while Noel tried to decipher what she was saying. God knows what she thought would happen if she spoke in a normal voice, buried as she was in the bowels of her boat. But in the end all was well. Sergeant Blasberg advised me laconically over the radio a man was plucked from the water and returned to his boat safely. That was all I knew but as a former long time live aboard let me suggest that coming home drunk is probably not a great idea as people have drowned falling off the docks which are too high out of the water for a fully dressed intoxicated unfit man to climb back onto. It may be ridiculously not cold around here for some people but if the freaked out tourist from North Dakota hadn't called he would have died most probably. Even the herons don't much seem to like the weather. Perhaps I'm anthropomorphizing but he didn't look happy:I am glad Cheyenne is the excuse that I have to drive the car in the cold during the day:Keys Energy has been working on the bases of the cement power poles that live in the waters adjacent to the highway. I guess they are off work for a bit, perhaps for the holidays, perhaps for the cold.My imagination may be working overtime but I thought this rocky foreshore at low tide looked like a frozen snowfield. I have tried to stay out of the frigid north wind and when I find shelter from the breeze the sun is pleasantly warm. But the wind chill is the killer factor these days.

Cheyenne has been quite frisky in the cool temperatures but I have a hard time keeping up. My wife got her a new soft blanket and now she doesn't want to get off it, so I have to drape it on her bed to keep her happy. I'd like to think she's fed up with the cold too.

I was walking in the piled up seaweed along the beach and I realized how pleasant and warm it is now that the cold crisp air has dried it all out. Usually it's a stinking soggy mess, mouldering away on the beach, washed up by the currents and wind storms.In this weather the soft warm seaweed felt great. I am too lazy for cold weather. I forgot to dig out my second pair of jeans and I took to the road in shorts. "I'll be fine," I told my impatient dog, who wanted to get out of the house. I wasn't. The temperatures by the weekend are supposed to be back up to 70 (20C) by day and 65 (17C) by night and that will much better. Some people seem to take the cold in stride and even with a strong north wind blowing there were some eccentrics taking to the water in a not terribly seaworthy craft:I was sitting on the ground with my back to the car in the sun reading Motorcyclist magazine and Cheyenne was sitting next me having completed her check of the area when a car parked across the way drove up alongside me. I thought they wanted directions- left to Key West, right to marathon seemed easy enough. No they were begging. No money no gas and no prospects, down from Alabama for some reason. I don't typically carry money when I go walking Cheyenne so I wished them luck and wondered what they thought they were doing. If you don't have a job Up North, coming down here to look for work is crazy. There is none, even though we have openings always for dispatchers, it takes six months to get hired, a further year to train and even then you have to able to sit still for 12 hours at a stretch all while getting yelled at by drunk tourists down the phone. It's not a job for everybody. The easier trades in the bars are all full up from what I've heard.I don't think the economy is recovering. I am surprised there are as many visitors as there are in the Keys.

I hope they keep coming and bringing money with them. And they can take the cold Arctic air back wherever it came from, thank you.