Blimp Road

I am very ready for new horizons even though these old familiar ones do not decrease in beauty even as the time passes. Blimp Road for an easy morning walk with Rusty yields spectacular beauty.

As you drive past the Kickin' Back convenience store on Cudjoe Key a road off to the north drives two miles as straight as the proverbial arrow through the mangroves to a boat ramp. To turn off Highway One to come here at sunrise or sunset especially in summer with all the clouds and humidity is to see stuff like this:

Every side road in the Keys dead ends, often into water. The story is told of a young tourist who drive off the end of Blimp Road a couple of years ago and spent the night in her car filled with water as she was scared to step out into the darkness lest she drown. The car was sitting on the bottom in knee deep water. They have added red reflectors at the end of the road to point out the reality of the longstanding signage:

The boat ramp, like all roadside public ramps in the Keys is free for anyone to use (at their own risk doofus!) but if you prefer to have services and help to hand use a marina which will charge a fee and hopefully help prevent you from launching your truck. 

The large airborne object is operated by the US Air Force to monitor boat and  air traffic in the Straits of Florida. Smuggling has always been a business in the Keys since before prohibition. Nowadays they pay big money to get their relatives out of Cuba and fast boats are less than three hours from a  Cuban Beach. 

The driver of the blimp sits on the ground and monitors windspeed and direction. Standing at the end of Blimp Road you can hear the directional motor running on the blimp. It sounds like a distant monotone blender.

A still summer morning will take your mind off the vagaries of the Blimp. There was a second one for a while sending TV signals to Cuba but the Cuban government blocked the propaganda easily and TV Marti was dropped. 

The blimp points into the wind if you need to know whence blows the breeze and they bring it down in the event of windy weather forecasts. If the Blimp is down either they are maintaining it or  the weather is predicted to get blustrous. Otherwise it flies day and night.

There have been occasions of the blimp getting off the tether and flying away. Once the blimp landed in the water next to a rather startled fishermen who called it from his boat.

It's well lit at night with red blinking lights and I am told it is clearly marked on aviation charts, yet it has happened that a small private plane flew into it. That happened one night years ago and I look up and wonder how it was possible. Perhaps in the flatlands the pilot didn't think to check for obstacles. No one survived.

That's the trouble with living here along time, in a place where not everyone does. I find myself remembering stuff at work no one else remembers or cares about. I feel like a fossil surrounded by late arrivals and newcomers and all with a  forward view down the road. I can't imagine how it feels to be a Conch with generations at your back. I fled Europe to escape that uncomfortable pressure.

They also talked years ago about handing Fat Albert (the blimp) over to the weather service and their budget but that didn't seem to happen. You can't get close to the blimp because there's a fence and guard house and trespassers are decidedly not welcome. Partiers on Duval don't seem to remember this is actually a frontier town with real responsibilities. No matter how short your stay.

Summerland Sunset

I realized with a  jolt that winter is closing in on us. I don't doubt that Up North this fact is being brought home with a  vengeance and traces of frost. Around here it remains strangely humid despite a fresh east wind blowing all day and all night as Hurricane Delta marched across the Gulf Of Mexico. It feels like it should be wintery and dry under crisp clear skies but it isn't.

One indisputable fact is that days are getting shorter and I noticed that fact Thursday night when my wife worked late (from home) and Rusty's evening stroll was my responsibility.  By the time we drove to the trailhead it was ten minutes before seven and night was decidedly falling. Fat Albert, the Air Force Blimp on Cudjoe Key was silhouetted in the sunset.

A lobster fisherman's work is never done. They sit out in the shade and the heat repairing traps. It is in a way the agricultural work of the Keys, labor intensive and physical similar to my memories of work in the fields when I was growing up far inland. It was not my cup of tea so I ran away from the farm.

Commercial boat names are not always comprehensible to me but I thought there was potential for beauty in the lines of this hull high and dry. The rest of the stuff was just colorful.

If you have the misfortune to find yourself lost at sea a red colored life ring could and should make you more visible. Failing that it makes for an effective if gaudy decoration on land.

This, below is what I think of as a winter sunset, a season when humidity is banished till summer and with the humidity go the clouds so the sky is clear. Which also cuts down the color and drama prevalent in summer sunsets. 

The rain keeps coming at random to remind me it's not actually the dry season yet. In two weeks we turn the clocks back and instead of dusk at seven we start to enjoy dusk at six, about the moment I leave the office. 

One thing I do miss in northern latitudes which I enjoyed in Michigan this past summer are the very long periods of twilight. The closer you get to the equator the less difference there is between summer and winter time and furthermore light and dark alternate very rapidly. Around here one minute it's daylight and the next it's night. Twilight is a very short part of the evening.

I am of the thought that year round daylight saving daytime would be good but I fear there are many unintended consequences that would accompany such a change. The European Union is trying to implement such a change so perhaps we can wait and see how the experiment goes. I have no children but daylight  saving time would give us extremely dark mornings all through winter  and I wonder how parents would deal with that for instance.

Winter cometh. Glad there is no frost to look forward to around here. 

Cudjoe Blimp

I find myself taking too much advantage of Blimp Road on Cudjoe Key.It's only two miles long in a dead straight line dead due north from Highway One. That intersection is pretty much the point at dead center of Hurricane Irma, the Category Four hurricane that landed here in October 2017 and for the most part the vegetation, though trimmed is coming back green. I say I take advantage of Blimp Road because it is a straight line and cameras love the perspective afforded by such geometric precision. Plus you get the wavy asphalt effect though when you drive it, the roadway feels more like a billiard table than it appears to be here. 

How do they do that? I walked around looking at the burn out marks and someone laid down a a very thick layer of rubber to achieve that effect. It looked quite spectacular to me.  You can imagine the boredom factor kicking in for youngsters in the Lower Keys. On the one hand boating and fishing are easily available but the modern youth's normally outlet in malls and fast cars are severely limited and being young they tend to notice what they lack, not the advantages they have. Hence the rubber:

Rusty went on patrol. He and I haven't been here together since the accident but Layne has brought him here several times. He has to check up what's been going on. 

There is a dog out there somewhere if you look carefully. I walked the walker thirty feet into the scrub on a pitiful excuse for a trail but it was far enough to get Rusty going and off he went. He always wants me to go at least some of the distance with him:

He had fun. When we got home later he took the time to lick my face copiously, his way of thanking me for a good time. He does it from time to time and I find it touching. He is a remarkable dog.

Of  course I came across some flowers whose identity is a total mystery to me. Which didn't stop me from photographing them.

While I walked Rusty down Blimp Road, which is an exaggeration as he ran ahead and I basically stood with my walker and watched, I took the time to check out the blimp that gives the road it's name. Someone asked if the blimp was still flying so instead of guessing I checked it out. There it is:

On the ground thanks to predictions of strong winds, it was looking like a gloomy day.

We got in the car and went home.

Getting Around

It was a rainy  day in Key West, a sudden thunderstorm dropped rain and all units returned to base to park their patrol motorcycles under their roof at the Key West Police Department. I the intrepid Vespa rider pulled up to take cover while I pulled on my waterproofs, my Frogg Toggs for my ride home. The Vespa had to stay in the rain as the Road Kings were all neatly in their spots, their riders in cars to get through the tough weather break. I rode home 23 miles. In the rain. 

 

I have noticed that Rusty accepts me departing the house if not willingly at least with forbearance when I do it on two wheels. I suppose he sees no place for himself so he sits at the top of the stairs and watches me pull on my helmet and get astride my bike and leave. When I leave in the car without him he sits on the top of the stairs but with his back turned after he sees me climb in the car without him. "He looks angry" my wife said one day. I guess he doesn't like being left behind.

I go to exercise most mornings at eleven and return close to two o'clock. On the way home I might go downtown to take some pictures,

...or sometimes I take a  side road and look for pictures for myself or perhaps for a scooter tag forum. This one at the end of Blimp Road was tot snag a tag posted in Idaho showing  a"hill billy ventilated road sign." I knew where we had one of those and it made an excuse to ride three miles up Blimp Road to admire the whitecaps and snap a picture.

I then took a picture of the Vespa 150 on Spain Boulevard and tagged it "Your scooter on a dirt gravel or sand road" which didn't last long as someone in Virginia  got his Suzuki scooter in the dirt right away. By then I was home.

It's been windy in the Keys for a while now which is a nice way of keeping summer at bay. The temperatures are cooler and mosquitoes are somewhat suppressed and it was blowing so hard they even pulled Fat Albert (in the background)  to earth.

These bright windy days are lovely to look at. I am riding my Vespas much more than my motorcycle these days because they do 60 miles an hour, enough to keep up with traffic but not so fast as to tempt me to pass or speed and thus earn more tickets. And any long distance trip I might be tempted to do with the motorcycle these days I'd rather do by car to enjoy Rusty's company. 

So on the Vespa I race downwind gaining a handful of precious miles per hour -what fun!- and upwind home I ride a machine that struggles to hold 55 mph into the wind and I take advantage of every hedge and building and cringe as I cross the windswept bridges that slow me down...Util I get home to himself:

There he sits in the driveway sunning himself, grazing on grass, un-fenced free to come and go inside the house and out as he pleases. Rusty he wonder dog.

Things I See In The Woods

With a title like that who knows what I see in the woods, but I never see anything unusual. Odd but true, everything is as it should be.

I did see a Key Deer recently skulking around the end of Blimp Road. Federal wildlife officials say the screw worm outbreak that killed off dozens of deer is retreating but has been found now in Homestead. They think the flies were blown over from Cuba and may get blown onto the mainland as they can fly 90 miles in one hop. If they get to the cow herds of Central Florida there will be hell to pay. Mneahwile the herd of about 900 surviving deer are spreading across several islands in the Lower Keys.

Fat Albert was on the ground anticpating strong winds. The Air Force announced a while back they were relinquishing their last facility in the Keys but the weather people, NOAA said they would take up the slack for the $16 million balloon. Since then nothing much seems to have changed.

It's winter time now so spandex and bicycle helmets are everywhere.  It always amazes me how cavalier these winter visitors are with Florida traffic. I have been riding two (motorized) wheels down here for a very long time and I take nothing for granted. This lot...

...they just don't give a shit. As though it's not their flesh that will get grated if anything goes wrong. Drivers around here regularly fail to stay on these straight clearly marked roads. Why anyone would voluntarily put themselves in harm's way beats me.

 If there is a bike path they prefer not to use it, and if they want to occupy a travel lane at 15 mph they do. I don't even mind people who ride bikes as they take one car off the streets but because I ride motorcycles I know that riding as though you own the road will end badly for you. And then they surprise you in the bushes...Mind you, these two got a surprise of their own when Rusty popped out to see who was daring to talk to me during my quiet time.

 Have telephoto, will take pictures and there were birds preening and posing.

The book says they are Greater Egrets with that odd curve in their necks.

 A blue heron (I think).

 An osprey taking off:

 You can see the odd curve in the egrets' necks here:

 The heron made a half-move as though ready for flight...

 Rusty isn't interested in birds:

 Oh and winter is also time for the black shadows called Turkey buzzards or vultures:

Circling overhead looking for death.