My inability to move quickly is annoying from time to time, like on those occasions when a perfectly composed dog rolls rapidly by on a specially built trailer towed behind a bicycle. There he goes..!
And the bicycle was heading toward the Staples Avenue foot bridge which was where Rusty and I were heading from where I parked the car a few blocks away. The housing in New Town is very different from the cute wooden housing blocks in Old Town.
This is where Conchs came to build modern homes when they dumped their downtown homes on hopeful businessmen from the mainland. Who ultimately got the best deal is open to interpretation of course. I have added here a screen shot of Google maps from the neighborhood which shows the footbridge as the narrow neck joining two streets across the Salt Run canal which runs north and south at that point. The canal enters Key West from open water near Winn Dixie at Overseas market as shown. The footbridge connects 8th Avenue to 10th Avenue allowing bicycles and pedestrians to avoid the traffic of four lane Flagler Avenue. The Salt Run Canal isn't clearly shown but it goes all the way and makes a right angled turn into the Salt Ponds.
The Staples Bridge has been around a long time probably more than a decade though I have lost track exactly. It was a much desired addition to New Town to allow safer travel across town.
It was an early introduction to the irritation that the anonymous Citizen's Voice can cause. There was an eager cyclist who kept nagging the city commission to get the promised bridge built. Finally it happened and the outraged author faded away. As I recall her never did post a vote of thanks or anything gracious like that.
Do not ride your rental scooter over the bridge! It's not okay. The NIMBY neighbors got all bent out of shape by the construction of the bridge as the idea of encouraging bicycles to parade through here was going to ruin life as they knew it in this cul de sac.
In the end of course the sky failed to fall in and this bridge has become a helpful highway to cyclists crossing town. They come they go silently and without visibly ruining the approaches...
The canal is deep enough for boats, at least for boats low enough to pass under the road bridges which are only a few feet off the water. I saw a dinghy and a small center console while walking here though photography is inhibited by the thick mangrove bushes either side.
Not picturesque but very practical.
I always hope it snows somewhere else. So far I have not been disappointed.
I'm okay with the concept of "Joy" but the "Let It Snow" thing is strictly for the birds. I am quite fond of the Cuban celebration of the snow free Christmas. Everything gets celebrated on the good night before Christmas- Noche Buena- when the family gathers and usually eats pork rice and beans exchanges gifts, traditionally modest but nowadays inflated of course in size and expense, and everything returns to normal Christmas Day. The Nordic notion of cold dark and snow is beyond comprehension. I work with several Cubans who have never seen snow. 
When I went to turn on my reading lights at my work station in the corner John grumbled about me obliterating the Christmas lights strung around our work stations. Noel on the left (Phones and Fire/Rescue), Keith on the right (Phones and Channel Two/ Warrant Checks) and me in the middle (avoiding phones by being on the main police channel). This is where I will be Christmas night. 
When I asked the orthopedist who decorated his skeleton he looked at it in amazement and said "Oh, really? I never noticed" to howls of abuse from his office staff who took the time to make his offices look nice. Ted Collins is actually quite a decent guy and gave my wife a couple of prescriptions and an admonishment to take it easy for three weeks. No chance.
My wife's health insurance through the school district kept the charge down to an entirely bearable $20 and we exchanged a few thoughts about motorcycling with his very keen office person (and rider). We left the office with our hearts still beating though in one sense we did check out properly.
And so to the proper seasonal pictures for this time of year. Staples Avenue off 12th Street came well equipped with fantastic arrays of light and color and whimsy. 
Wayne and Chuck had talked about being up between two am and three am to watch the full lunar eclipse, the first such on the winter solstice since the seventeenth century. Something like that. Anyway I was, to my shame, pretty much not that interested in the whole two ante-meridien project, a time when I like to be sound asleep when I'm not working. Then the Fates took a hand and wouldn't you know it I woke up needing to pee at 2:17 am. Not one to fight destiny I wandered out into the freezing cold night and there it was, a gradually fading moon. My gorillapod to balance the camera was not to hand but of course I had to give it my best shot, by hand, as though to prove I was there if nothing else. And so I was.
My wife watched for a while but it was cold out there on the deck, less than 60 degrees (15 C) which for us is cold. I left the red moon to do it's thing as the white crescent grew slowly back. Three o'clock in the morning is a very antisocial hour for an eclipse in my opinion. 