A Small Nowhere Space

In 2009 I rode my Triumph past this barely noticeable gap on the shoulder of US 1 and I stopped to take pictures. Sunday was a rainy day and I was hunting around for a dry foot walk for Rusty...why not Park Key, an update?

There is a sign to Keep Out which seems unnecessary but I dare say the idea is when you slip and fall and hurt yourself the county is covered against the inevitable lawsuit seeking damages. If you can put one foot safely in front of the other and don't jump off seawalls you will be fine.

There's not much here except some nice views and surround sound traffic noises from the highway.

Someone has parked what looks like a small cat boat in the protected shallows off Sugarloaf Key.

The picture above is Park Key and below there is the remains of a boat ramp and a small pier which was built on indestructible PVC pipes:

Rusty approved for a five minute exploration.

Parking is available on the shoulder at Mile Marker 19...

Rusty ahd to wait while I played with black and white for a few minutes...

In the end we had to go. He was pretty clear.

Driving The Lower Keys

I have no particular beef with cyclists, I ride a bicycle myself from time to time, though not compressed into spandex clothes. Not being smart does bother me and cyclists get run over all the time in Florida, more so in Key West than elsewhere. Considering how distracted drivers will be in their cages I think it is either very foolish or desperately optimistic to think that riding the white line on the shoulder is the best possible place to be on a Florida Highway, especially when the Sunshine State has placed a perfectly serviceable path at your service for your exclusive use. This guy gets a Darwin Award:

Enough of that, time to pause to enjoy the view while not running down a cyclist:

And there is the sewer work, continuing on, now between  Summerland and Big Pine Keys, not disrupting traffic  though the bike path is torn up.

I cannot help but think that twenty years ago the much wealthier Federal Government tried to persuade the Keys to do the sewering with less local cost and nothing came of it. The bonds to cover the cost now will amount to 200 million dollars and about seven thousand dollars a household for the hook up amortized over the years. It needed to be done then for maximum reef benefit. Better late than never.

DayLight Savings Commute

Next Sunday the United States, as usual following the beat of its own distinctive drummer, makes it's delayed switch to winter, known as standard time. My commute will change, and even though I don't like the switch back one hour each Fall, I am trying to see some good in it. I like dark mornings with more sunshine in the evenings. I see no need to bring the curtain crashing down on daylight at six pm just to  create more daylight in the morning.

My commute  might be measured as rather boring when you consider not only the absence of alternative routes, but also indeed the absence of any varied terrain. What I do get is year round riding that is rarely cold, by some people's arctic standards never properly cold and is frequently quite hot especially in summer. That makes it easy to put 15,000 miles a year on my 2007 Bonneville. Frankly I cannot see any reason not to ride a motorcycle at these latitudes, for driving a car is a true boredom exercise.

You can see the boredom in the attitudes and abilities of the people I call caged zombies. They sit in line and play with their phones, they get startled when I pass them, suddenly rearing up their bloated cars on their hind wheels frantically trying to keep up, not that they can't keep up as I only ride five or ten over the limit, but they usually get bored, or I lose them the next time I pass. Very few drivers have trained themselves to observe and evaluate traffic flow, to study and measure closing distances, or to take on a passing maneuver with verve and determination. I know where the passing zones are, I know the sight lines and  I ride the sections in between evaluating the determination of the car in front to maintain what I deem an acceptable speed. The more accomplished "cock blockers" like to slow down where passing is impossible and speed up where passing is possible. I don't play the game, I pass and they usually drop back frightened by their own vision of driving themselves to a ticket at 15mph over. Often when I pass a car they ostentatiously drop back as though to say "I wasn't interested in traveling the speed limit anyway."  Thats how I amuse myself on my unvarying commute. That and taking on the weather, riding in the rain, or the wind or under dark skies, each ride a different variation on the monotone Overseas Highway.

The thing about riding a motorcycle is that you are on an inherently unstable machine, one that gains beauty and poise and even grace when in motion but one one that also does not make any effort to hide the rider from the weather or the consequences of failure to pay attention. Car drivers who never ride motorcycles cannot understand the sensation of flying that comes on a motorbike but they cannot either understand the requirement that a well ridden motorcycle imposes, the discipline of paying attention. I oppose the notion of passive safety when riding as passive tools like bright clothes or automatically flashing headlights induce a sense of entitlement, the expectation that one will be seen and noticed by other road users, and anyone who has driven home in a car and arrives not recalling the journey at all, knows what I mean. It is impossible to ride and not notice the journey on a motorcycle. I am always looking at other drivers, their posture, their use of mirrors, their placement on the roadway, the way their wheels are turning or if I can even make eye contact. 

My colleagues have given up questioning me about why I ride in the rain. I enjoy that as much as anything. and when I say rain I mean downpours on my modest half hour commute in a sub tropical climate where hypothermia could only be contemplated on a much longer ride. My waterproofs by Frogg Toggs do a decent job of keeping me dry enough tom work a shift but I don't keep much in the way of winter riding gear, just a padded jacket by Tourmaster and some heavy pants. Mostly I use a free flowing armored mesh jacket and electric warming gear is unnecessary.  I have some handlebar muffs that cover my hands and help keep them dry and out of the wind when I ride, but this place  is really short sleeve weather year round. I prefer wearing my armored jacket to stop clothes flappng and it's predecessor saved my skin on a fall a few years ago in a badly marked construction area. But I am not one to nag riders about what they wear. I wear a helmet but expect each rider to think for themselves. 

This has not been a great year for riding, and even though I enjoyed our family car trip to New England it did come at the expense of a riding trip this summer. Understaffing at work means lots of overtime, with the same result: less riding. All of which makes me more fanatical about getting on two wheels when I go to work. I love my Labrador but she too tends to limit my rides as she can't come with me and so if it's at all possible I end up making her happy by loading her in the car. I get to listen to the radio more that way as I don't like electronics on my ride. The idea of making phone calls or listening to the radio through my helmet fills me with horror. We live in a world, where listening to the inner voice or enjoying silence is a prospect that seems to terrorize most people. I love the solitude of riding and escaping communication by being on my motorcycle. Sometimes I arrive at work to find texts on my phone from colleagues hoping to communicate before I arrive. I am a rare bird at the police department where among some three dozen civilians (who don't take police vehicles home)  I am one of two riders and the other guy rides half a mile on a scooter to ease his parking woes, not because he is an enthusiast. I cannot conceive why more people aren't unclogging the roads in warm south Florida by riding. I guess they might be were riding not an art rather than viewed as simply a means of locomotion as is a car.

The week of Fantasy Fest I tried to commute by car to avoid drunk drivers but after three consecutive shifts I got fed up. I listened to a lot of Click and Clack on the satellite radio but I missed the buzz of the ride.  In the car I pulled out onto the Overseas Highway from Spanish Main Boulevard and sat in my appointed place behind whichever car I came across. I could pull off a few passes but it is much easier to pass when riding with swifter acceleration and less mass to insert into a line of trundling SUVs. Plus there is something about the car that induces a sheep-like trance on US One. There you are and there you sit. I found myself envying the riders outside, even the Harley Rolling Roadblocks trying to look cool in bandannas at five miles under the speed limit. If I had to drive I would shrivel up and die of boredom.

The time change will also mess up my horizons next week. Five in the afternoon when I ride west to work will be much closer to darkness. Indeed I know from experience that by mid December I will be arriving in Key West at dusk or close to, and my day shift colleagues will spend all daylight hours in the office, emerging like moles to a darkened  world. In the morning though I should start seeing some spectacular sunrises if I'm lucky. Right now its black as pitch until after I get home and get mobbed by my dog who is always ready for a walk at six thirty in the morning. Temperatures are down, humidity is down and she is raring to go in the dark.

The immutable cycle of seasons, as paltry as they may be compared to places where snow falls and winter brings on the possibility of death and frostbite; the changes are felt here too. I like the change but soon enough I am pining for summer's heat and long hours of sunshine, warm waters and easy swimming...permanent summer seems far away when a cold front brings cold feet and icy riding fingers and a desperate search for warm clothes.

And through it all I ride, and keep on riding every chance I get.

A Bridge Too Far

This essay originally appeared almost two years ago in November 2008. I thought it was worth running again, not least to remind myself that my Canon camera which replaced my Nikon Coolpix of that time, takes much nicer pictures. Also this essay seems an appropriate motorcycle entry while I am away trying to ride into the cold polar regions Up North to complete another Iron Butt ride.The tour guide opened it up for questions at the end of her presentation, and one member of the group asked immediately:

"How many bridges are there to the mainland of Florida from Key West?"

"I heard forty two at the last count," replied the experienced guide. People ask the oddest questions when they visit the Keys.

"Can you recommend which would be the best one to take to get to Miami?"

Flagler had the original railway bridges (the cement arches in the background) built in the early part of the 20th century, and he finally got to take the first uninterrupted train ride from Miami to Key West in January 1912. He died a short while later and its said that the co-founder of Standard Oil remarked that he would have died a rich man had it not been for Florida.

The Florida East Coast Extension Railroad never made a profit, and the last leg of the journey to Key West took about 12 hours as trains were limited to 25 miles per hour on the exposed bridge portions of the 120 mile over-the-ocean trek. Passengers then had the option of bedding down at Flagler's luxury Casa Marina hotel (recently refurbished by the way and quite lovely) or riding the rails by ferry to Havana where carriages were loaded with tropical fruit for consumption in New York a few days later.In 1935 a huge hurricane wiped out the financially ailing railroad in the Matecumbe Keys, killed hundreds of people and the connection to Key West died with that storm, in the midst of the national depression. The State of Florida bought the right-of-way and used it as the basis of an Overseas Highway which opened in 1938, allowing motorists to drive direct to Key West for the first time, without the use of any ferries along the way. When I first rode to Key West in 1981 the trip from Homestead took about five hours on a narrow winding highway. In 1982 the the Highway was upgraded and the journey to the mainland was reduced to about three hours along a modern broad roadway which in some places is even four lanes wide. The speed limit varies between 45mph and 55mph, and a lot less than that behind gaping tourists...They love to look out at the water and who can blame them? The views are quite extraordinary if you aren't looking for mountains or valleys or rivers or forests or...all the other natural features one expects to see when taking the scenic route. However this is the only route through the Keys. Most islands are a few miles wide, the inhabited ones, but the smaller islands are generally lumps of rock or mangrove and they can be literally the size of a tennis court.The waters are for the most part less than six feet deep, often less than three feet deep and on calm days one can look over the edge of the bridge and see the seagrasses growing on the bottom. Because the islands are basically limestone and coral there is not much sand and beaches are a rare commodity. The west coast of Florida has excellent beaches with very flat calm waters and the east coast is one long beach with Atlantic Ocean waves breaking spectacularly on them when the wind is onshore. The Keys are instead an intricate puzzle of land that is not quite dry and waters that are not always deep enough to wet one's ankles.The tallest bridge on my commute is the highest bridge between Big Pine Key and Key West, and thanks to the deadening effect of photography the fact that it arches fully forty feet above Niles Channel is completely lost in this photograph:From the top of Niles Channel Bridge one can see miles and miles of...mangroves, a forest of green about five feet tall, I took this picture near the sea level:Descending into Summerland Key the Highway stretches straight as an arrow through the wide spot that offers gas stations a supermarket, a Post Office, a video rental and a hardware store, boat repair, dock repair, pizza and even a landing strip for people who like to fly their small private planes directly to their houses. The highway takes a curve or two and a bridge or two and there isn't too much variation as Cudjoe Key comes and goes and Sugarloaf Key comes and goes:And all along the highway, unseen to the motorists, runs the aqueduct pipe, installed by the Navy to supply water to its Key West bases. the modern pipe along the modern highway keeps us supplied with water from the south Florida aquifer, and because south Florida is running out of water they mix in four percent saltwater and keep on pumping stuff that doesn't taste that great to me. I collect and filter my own rainwater at my house and store it in a cistern.
The pipe is hooked up under the bridge and it can get to be a big problem if they both get cut by weather or an accident. Also alongside the roadway are rather ugly power poles, huge concrete structures that march to the horizon and mark the line of traffic from afar. They are rated to withstand 155 mile per hour winds, and to its credit Keys Energy does a great job of keeping the power flowing along them, but boy, they are ugly.The bridges come and the bridges go, connecting causeway after causeway, across Sugarloaf, past the school and the lodge, all at 45 sedate miles per hour (Florida allows motorists to go 5mph over the limit without getting a citation but most visitors don't know that) and every now and again there is an opportunity for a swift pass:Then the Saddlebunch Keys come into view, a wide scattering of little mangrove islets on either side of the Highway. These specks are uninhabited, too small and scattered to support human life, and the limit rises to 55mph.The views can be spectacular especially as the sun drops to the western horizon. What a lot of people don't know is that the Keys are strung out east to west and are only nominally north to south, so the setting sun will hit a Key West bound motorcyclist in the eyes in the evening:And then finally at Mile Marker 10 the ambling Bonneville reaches Big Coppitt Key, served by the Key West Post Office so people who live here think they are in Key West but there's a ways to go yet!And then, after Big Coppitt comes Rockland Key where the road opens up to its final four lanes all the way to the Police station in the middle of Key West itself. The last five miles are industrial strength freeway curving across the mangroves and at night part of the highway is illuminated by street lights, just like on they do on the mainland in the big cities.The water tower marks the Navy base where they train fighter jets which circle endlessly overhead, practicing all those things fliers need to practice, much of it over easily accessible open waters, some of it circling overhead.

That of course is cause for much debate as some residents on the ground complain of the noise forgetting the Navy Base was there long before they were. Others talk of the jet noise as the "sound of freedom" and carry bumper stickers announcing how much they love the jets and their noise. Controversy always, everywhere! The entrance to the base is marked by a hump in the road with a proper freeway-style interchange,

and then its round a bend or two more, a few more wide water views and its time to ease off and roll into the urban agglomeration of Stock Island, and then Key West itself starts at Mile Marker 4, and a couple of miles down North Roosevelt Boulevard lies the pink Public Safety building and my ride is over.When I commuted in California with a choice of routes to and from the Santa Clara Valley I was always actively seeking out a new and different road to travel across the Santa Cruz Mountains. Now that I have but one choice the difference is in my head. Some days I'll leave a little early and meander a bit, take a dead end side road to explore, other days I'll make it my business to pass cars and stay ahead of the pack. Other days I pull over and let anyone who catches up to me pass. I make it my own rule not to leave late and not to be in a hurry. Its a road that demands a certain amount of patience because it is an easy commute, no snow no ice, few cross streets and long sight lines so its easy to get complacent and many no doubt would get bored. I do miss winding curvy roads but you can't have it all.My Bonneville is ideal for this commute as it pulls strongly from 45mph in top gear, and if I drop a gear or two it will accelerate past anything drifting along in front of me. It is such a pleasure to ride I never view slow moving cars as obstacles, just as interesting challenges, variations on my monorail commute.

And the temperatures? 80 degrees and breezy, dry with low humidity in February. No mountains but no electric gloves either.

Florida Mountains

I wanted to do this last summer but windy conditions and a general lack of humidity made it harder to find towering thunderheads, and I lost interest. Not this year.
It was the perfect afternoon. I left home early with an appointment to meet my wife in Searstown for coffee, con leche actually, to set me up for a long night work.As I got dressed to leave I could hear thunder rolling off to the north, in big cracking waves of sound. From Highway One it seemed likely I could get to Key West ahead of the rain which appeared to be mostly paralleling the highway. This, I figured was my opportunity to get some pictures.As they are in most places, thunderstorms are localized in the Keys, the difference here is that with the small elevation offered by the highway, an observer can see for a long way across the open waters. It's possible to look ahead, unencumbered by hills or forests and get a good idea of whether or not one needs to put on waterproofs. Checking the National Weather Service radar (that would beBig Gummint functioning perfectly, contrary to stereotype) also helps. I can see with my own eyes there's no rain down the road here, just castles in the sky. Or as Florida photographer Clyde Butcher calls them, "Florida Mountains."

If I remember correctly this was out in the Saddlebunch Keys west of Sugarloaf, and the rain was hammering down a long way north. As I stood astride the Bonneville I glanced down at the thermometer and it was reading dead on one hundred degrees (38C). It looked a lot cooler in the rain.The sun was dodging in and out between the clouds as they rolled over and over themselves. Summer in the Keys is the season for rain and thunder and lightning and spectacular displays of what Radio Nacional in Havana calls tormentas electricas, "electrical torments." So that is what I like to think of the roiling black clouds, writhing "torments", in the picturesque language of the communist weather forecasts.It doesn't take much time for the snowy white mountains to somehow pick up moisture and transform themselves from benign and white to a dark foreboding gray:

Still looking rain-free on my way to Key West, by now about ten miles to the west.
Looking to my rear the rain clouds were roiling over Sugarloaf Key after my passage:
To the south there was no sign of rain thunder or electrical torments, just those lovely white puffy piles of cotton wool:

Approaching Shark Key the rain seemed to closing in and shutting out the sun:But from there I kept going, ignoring temptations to take pictures. I was supposed to be at Conch Scoops in Searstown a little after five for the café con leche, and time was running out. As it was I got there thirty seconds before my wife and had tie to take a picture to the south- no rain showing behind Outback Steakhouse, but rain aplenty was coming from the north still:

Somehow I managed to make it to work without either a) getting wet or b) bothering to drag on my waterproofs.

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My favorite picture of the afternoon's ride to work was this one:I stopped on the shoulder near Baby's Coffee and parked for a quick picture that I think expresses the fun of taking the motorcycle when your wife thinks you should be sensible and take the other car. Motorcycle versus the Storm. How elemental, my dear Watson.