I was feeling pretty sorry for myself as I walked Rusty in the green and pleasant land that is Palm Beach County. I contrasted what I saw and compared it to where I live 200 miles away in a burnt out desert. He saw bright green iguanas lounging in perfect safety on a bunch of ficus roots across the canal. He had taken a decent walk so now was his time to hunker and observe. So he did:
Then I met Bob Vecchione from Long Island. He came by and asked me how I was doing. For some reason I blurted my tale of car buying under storm duress and he had his own way of cheering me up. He had survived Hurricane Sandy on Long Island. Now retired in Florida he was hit with two waves of seawater from both sides during that massive hurricane and his car barely survived yet he still drives it today, with a pinch of nostalgia I suspect.
His perspective on the random irrationality of powerful storms was interesting to me as he confirmed my own suspicions about hurricane preparation. I think we do it more to please ourselves and reassure ourselves that we have done what's possible. Certainly some actions will help but all too often people who take no precautions at all often end up with less damage than those of us who obsess over every detail of our storm response plan.
He told me about his neighbors who did nothing and came through unscathed and he talked about the slow and aggravating period of recovery. He empathized, it actually felt good talking to a stranger.
Rusty enjoyed running through the grass but while we talked he sat and stared at his nemesis across the water. Bob told me the ficus tree had been huge and shady and was cut down just a month before. He muttered it had seemed a shame at the time but now with all those reports of trees knocked over by high winds...
Rusty and I wandered back to breakfast at the hotel cutting across dew covered fields and avoiding spandex cyclists who ran hither and yon in upscale Boca Raton.
At the breakfast table we overheard a guest engage in a conversation, a monologue perhaps, with an employee. At one point the hail-fellow-well-met traveling businessman sympathized with the hotel employee saying how much damage he had seen and how much easier Tampa had it from Irma. My wife and I burst into spontaneous laughter. Indeed I'm sure the city of Boca Raton was in a huge uproar over the tipping of some ornamental plants in their pots...
Leafless winter in the Keys...and my electric blue Fusion to replace my bland tan Fusion that drowned. It's not a worthy thought I know but still I had to wonder how many cars drowned in Boca Raton?
This is a place that always fills me with dread. The owner went to charm school I tghink but they refunded his fee because clearly it didn't take. It's one of those places where they say "monopoly" by making you stand around and feel like a dork but in the interests of getting the job done it's tghis or driving miles up Highway One with no certainty of better treatment.
If you can stand being made to feel like a worm they do, or at leats have done, good work. The hitch they put on my Maxima worked fine and never gave me a problem. And in the end that's what counts. We went for a walk after I dropped the car off. The charming owner took one look at Cheyenne and spread his arms across the office door-"You can't come in here!" he screeched as though we were bearers of some vile bacilli. "No need," I said tossing him the Keys from a safe distance. After we got back I read the paper for a while in the shade then I spotted the fan. Cheyenne took to it like a duck to water. She became more immobile than usual. 
She was an excellent reason not to share air conditioned office space for the remainder of the wait with Grumpy and his yappy rat dog. We waited in the shed and Cheyenne panted while i took pictures. And listened, weirdly enough to the Bizarre Bazar on US One radio. 
The take calls from people with stuff to sell or give away and they give out phone numbers for listeners to call. Naturally there was nothing I wanted but we listened anyway. A machine shop is a thing of beauty when you are standing around trying to avoid 100 degree heat outside.
The job dragged on, the guy struggling with the wiring, me standing over my dog with a well read paper and a camera.
Grumpy came by to give some advice on routing the wiring.
I saw a papaya tree that looked scrumptious. I could smell bacon cooking at the Cuban Coffee shop down the street.
We hit eleven o'clock and the Biz Baz show on the radio ended. Cheyenne stretched out content in the flow of air. I saw shrivelled coconuts on top of an old trailer. I would make a terrible junk yard owner as I have this awful compulsion to tidy up. 
Truck sans engine. 
He's a California transplant anxiously plotting a return to Los Angeles. Can't stand the heat, the bugs or the humidity he said plaintively. That's okay, I said to myself, the Keys aren't for everyone.
I made a point of inquiring why she sounded so defensive about buying a Ford. She shrugged, "I guess it's a generational thing. We always buy Japanese." Not anymore, we share a Chrysler Sebring and the Fusion aforementioned. The convertible is a rather crude car by comparison, it creaks as the bodywork struggles to keep the four seater following one line down the road, the gearbox is clunky and the automatic transmission lurches like an uncoordinated horse at the gallop. The seats are adequate and the interior even with the electric roof up is noisy. But the car is divine with the roof down and the sun or the moon up and the wind in my wife's hair. She loves puttering around the Keys in it. That it has heated seats makes converting her car easy even in cold winters and she remains astonished by the number of people who pay extra to buy or rent convertibles and then leave the roofs permanently closed. That the Fusion has a sunroof delighted her, a reminder of her Mazda she owned when we got married and which was replaced soon enough by a convertible even when we lived in chilly California.
The Ford Fusion has been around apparently, in it's current incarnation since 2006 and no reviewer that I read has anything bad to say about the car. My mechanic Donnie on Big Pine says his mother drives one and he was encouraging about the car. Ours, with 33,000 miles on the clock is solid, creak free, and very comfortable. The cloth seats are like half-bucket seats which wrap around you and give proper support all the way up your spine. They are very different from the Maxima but they work exceedingly well and after three hours driving I could have turned around and gone back to Miami without a twinge. This little note on the fuel cap gives me an ironic twinge every time I fill the tank. At least they are now claiming they have started to sort out the Gulf of Mexico oil gusher...
The instruments look a bit funny to my eyes with the silver accents but at night they are well illuminated and easy to read. The info computer works easily and trip/time/mileage displays are easy to access. The instruments sit exactly where they are easily seen by the driver.
Because the Fusion is a little smaller in all physical dimensions than the Maxima Cheyenne gets a little less room in the back but this remains a four person car, if not five as sometimes claimed by the manufacturer. 
Our plan is to pack the car with camping gear this summer and take a couple of road trips, one shorter trip to take Cheyenne to meet my sister-in-law's family in the mountains of North Carolina, and the second longer trip to show Cheyenne the beauty of the California Coast in a cross country trip. There's lots to organize to get that done but at least now we have the car suitable for the journey. Complete with extra cup holders, standard, in the doors. 
Cheyenne could have stayed here all day but in the end we were in and out in just under three hours.
We had tried to buy new or used in Key West but our attempts generated no interest at all so when we arrived at Carmax and Alivet ushered us in and gave us free rein to wander around we started to remember why we bought my wife's Sebring at this same place. We came prepared to buy...
She joined us in the test ride, sitting patiently in the passenger well behind the driver's seat but we had everything necessary for her ride home in the new-to-us car. Alivet was astonished by her easy going nature. I kept impressing on him the importance of getting a dog from the pound and walking it frequently and far. I even showed him how to use a plastic bag to be a responsible dog owner. He nodded and looked like he understood. Then it was back to counting cash. Adrian gave it a shot.
Stephany followed suit while we signed papers and gave away the Maxima and put the tag on the Fusion. In Florida tags belong to people and when you sell a vehicle you can move the license plate to your new car. Ours was important to us because it says "Monroe" on the plate which means we can park in residential spots in Key West.
I like the look of the car certainly, but it has been well reviewed and it drives very nicely, even for an aggressive driver (by US standards) trained in Italy like me. More about that later. We have a new car with 33,000 miles on it and all the stress of the past few weeks has rolled away. Yes, I know it's hugely ironic that as oil continues to gush in the Gulf I am enjoying a new set of wheels. Chalk it up to the human condition and the nagging need for mobility.