In And Out

It happened not so long ago that a member of the Key West City Commission asked a lobbyist to bring him home a t-shirt from Las Vegas. When questioned about the propriety of the gift the City Commissioner, a man who owns strip joints and hard-drinking bars on Duval Street, defended himself plaintively: "But I like In And Out burgers!"

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Much though I regret it, I have something in common with the city commission's bon vivant in our little town. I like the burgers as well. Very much in fact.We spotted the sign from a distance, shining like the Star over Bethlehem so long ago, this time "In-N-Out" led us across the median strip of a very long, very straight drive across the San Joaquin Valley of central California.

The menu is short at these drive throughs, no chicken tenders or salads or other low cholesterol concoctions:

The staff wear little jockey caps or old fashioned masons-type paper hats and white shirts and they pump freshly peeled potatoes through a slicer and fry them in front of your car. Its all an old time Burger Joint should be, and they are all over the American West, those delicious little meals

I woofed mine down and thoroughly enjoyed fortifying myself for the vegetarian celebrations to come, high in the mountains, distant on the horizon. Our resort destination fried a mean parsnip, its true, but the milk shakes are to die for at an In-N-Out.

For my part, all I brought back from this quick stop in Merced, California, was the memory. I prefer the burgers to the t shirts, and there are generally no questions asked about a simple but satisfying road meal.

Young Lumberjacks Convention

I stood at my window and looked out across the open space that could have been a parade ground, and watched the refugees tramping through the muddy gravel. They were people hell bent on getting away, and taking their possessions with them, no matter how much effort it took to haul the little cart along, filled to overflowing with bags and boxes and packages. They leaned and strained and eyes glued on their feet they tugged like oxen bending to the yoke. They reminded me of pictures I have seen of Polish peasants fleeing the Nazi invaders, caught in black and white prints, fuzzy and faded by time; those pictures marked an epoch. And so did these overloaded guests staying at the Evergreen Lodge, a luxury resort high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

I turned back to the gas heater hissing at my elbow, next to the Sirius satellite radio which sat next to my cup of tea. I was reading In A Sunburned Country, and laughing and waiting for the curtain to go up on the new epoch in my wife's family. Her youngest nephew, the last of the small brood, was getting hitched. And I was a guest. An honored guest, for I am the groom's favorite uncle. It is a family joke as I am his only true uncle, and I find my presence at these events is de rigeur. Even at 6,000 feet in late September.

The bride and the groom are of the new generation, both raised to be aware and to live life greenly. He is a park ranger and she studies to be a nurse; meat passeth not their lips, and every burned hydro carbon is an offence against creation. I hope for once that the new generation will be able to pull off the magic trick of converting high ideals into practical reality; something my generation signally failed to do. I wonder how many generations of almost-but-not-quite-accomplished high ideals our over-engineered world can cope with.

The marriage was a robust affair, as it had to be, thanks in large part to a storm that produced light snowfalls, black thunderclouds and cold heavy rain. We cheered the young couple on, and they are so perfectly paired it seems certain to me that they will have little difficulty holding their vows up to the test of time. I witnessed both sets of parents escort their offspring down the aisle, both sets of parents still married, still setting a singular example to the parents-to-come. That's not a sight one sees too often in a world rendered complex by multiple families and tangled relationships. These two are families that appear to mate for life. It is clear from this picture that two happy people are getting married. A celebrant holds the book, the groom's older brother looks on, as the witness-in-chief. It is a scene that is reflected around the world in all human cultures and a marriage is a public event that, like a funeral, has a purpose that is immediately discernible to any human observer. We all get married, in more or less the same way no matter what our language, history or even religion. I enjoy that multinational subtext at weddings. I have seen Europeans marry, Berbers marry, Hindus marry, Africans marry and Americans marry, and its all pretty much the same. I even understood my Jewish wife's traditions at our own marriage...

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The ample fireplace was also the theme of the weekend, in a place where daytime highs grazed 60 degrees and nighttime lows hovered near freezing; temperatures decidedly not suitable for my Florida-thinned blood. The young people who attended the celebration were not one whit deterred. They reveled in their loud plaids, their hairy shirts and even hairier woolen Andean caps, with long flaps over their ears and puffy down jackets insulating them from Nature's fury. Some few of them slept in tents for want of $175/night to sleep with gas heat and satellite radio. We took pity on the Preacher and his own soon-to-be-wife and encouraged them to sleep in our spare bedroom. Our cabin was as large as our modest Florida home. Everything is ample in California, not just the fireplaces.

I looked on and shivered and not just because of the cold. I became more acutely aware of the passing of time as I watched the robust youth busy themselves with all the social activities that these occasions demand. They strode and organized and huddled and planned and laughed and I was glad I was in the second tier, at the back of the marriage party.

Uncle Chuck was not at this wedding, a first since I married into the family. He was killed by a heart attack a good few years ago. In the old days he stood and smiled and sang when called upon at Jewish gatherings, prayed in Hebrew when needed and toasted all who needed a reminder of why families are families. I missed Uncle Chuck this past weekend, I mourned the absence of a generation older than mine and I cannot but help feeling that I was an inadequate substitute, no matter how old the passing of the generational torch made me feel.

Seeking Perspective

In a few hours I will be herded into a plane and launched westwards at 500 mph to arrive in Oakland 2 hours after I leave Fort Lauderdale... and I am then going to be cheerful and polite to what will seem like the audience for the Sermon on the Mount, but will in fact just be a large bunch of relatives gathered to witness the marriage of two young hopefuls. Time to say goodbye for a few days to all this:I am very happy they have decided to make the commitment, and all that, and I don 't even mind hanging out with assorted relatives. After all I did marry into the family 14 years ago and they have all been nothing but wonderful to me ever since (the prevailing sentiment at the time was that at least my wife hadn't married "Ed" even though I was an unknown quantity compared to her last boyfriend). I do wish they weren't tying the knot at 8,000 feet in a place where temperatures drop to 40 degrees. I haven't seen my breath in years.

Its just that I'm feeling grumpy at the moment and I've got things I want to do to move on and make a fresh start. This weekend is my scheduled weekend off but the days surrounding it are swapped out so I will be repaying my colleagues in the weeks ahead for covering for me, which means my time off will be shredded for several weeks to come. That adds to my sense of a lack of closure.

So, in order to seek a balance I went to the movies yesterday afternoon. I had a hair appointment earlier in the day but in a moment of keys disease the hair dresser had apparently forgotten so she came late and dealt with my mop in short order. Which was very good of her as I needed it, but she wasn't dressed to cut hair and I could only think that she had something more interesting on her plate before her daughter got out of school in a few hours.

The movie was a documentary titled No End in Sight which laid out in stark detail the chain of events that led to the destruction of Iraq after the US invasion. And the destruction of lives:It was detailed blow by blow account of the lack of planning, the lack of attention paid to details, the lack of discussion, about what to do with an entire country once you own it. "The Pottery Barn rule" as Secretary of State Powell put it at the time. It is clear in the film that the US was hell bent on breaking Iraq with no idea how to take responsibility for dealing with the breakage after the invasion. $1.5 trillion down the drain.

Worse than that was the stark human cost, brought home once again by the implications of the lack of planning. The film pointed out that in World War Two the allies planned for two years how to rebuild Europe. The US planned for 50 days how they were going to govern Iraq, and then threw the plans out the window and went with political whims.

George Slocombe, to his credit, agreed to be interviewed and he came out of it very badly. The senior advisor to the Civilian Provisional Authority, he was a political hack who never visited Iraq and made decisions that the film argues were disastrous, and their consequences affect us today. He looks entirely normal and all I could think of as he spoke was that old phrase "the banality of evil." Perhaps in his case it should be re-phrased as the banality of stupidity but his motivation for wrecking post-invasion Iraq will never be known.

In the grand scheme of things I have it pretty good. On today's daily images on the BBC News page we see men trolling for trash in a canal in Indonesia and street children idling in India.This is where I live and what I have to come home to; I can't let myself forget how lucky I am: A Broken Vespa really doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Time to take stock and get over myself.

For Sale- Vespa GTS-Runs Well

My Vespa is fixed, according to Joe at Vespa Ft Lauderdale but he's keeping it for a few days until I get back from California just to make sure the scooter really is working properly. Then I will be able to sell it and wash my hands of this whole unhappy period of my life.

The problem with the Vespa was apparently a loose fuel injection unit which the computer would have revealed immediately had Vespa Miami done as they promised and taken the scooter all the way to the Ft Lauderdale main store 45 minutes away and tested the scooter. Instead they buggered about and made me return three times to get the job done. Each time I was polite and more frustrated and though they discovered the broken check valve in the evaporative system they failed completely to discover the original cause of the stuttering.

Joe is a piece of work and he it is that forced me to decide to sell the scooter. he told me that the Vespa shouldn't go beyond 70 miles per hour or it would die a premature death, which if true makes a nonsense of the water cooling and the rev limiter and so on- all the precautions Piaggio has built in to the scooter to assure long and useful life. Then he said riding the Vespa flat out sucked "too much fuel" into the engine so that when you roll off the gas the engine is starved for fuel and hesitates. Then he suggested that I was shortening the life of the scooter by daring to ride the scooter at wide open throttle. I know its all rubbish and I also know the Vespa will now run smoothly and reliably but I don't want to go near South Florida's only Vespa dealer again.

Joe may know how to read a computer print out but he epitomizes to me a man who services machines but understands neither riders nor scooters. He also confirms me in my belief that the Modern Vespa is not a machine to be ridden. It is to be admired ( and it is beautiful) and purchased by inexperienced riders who want something cool in their lives. Joe reminded me more than once that I have ridden my 250 further than anyone else he has come across, and at 11,000 miles I don't really feel that that is very far at all.

If my style of riding is too much by Vespa Fort Lauderdale/Miami standards then I need to accept the fact that if anything happens to the scooter after the warranty expires in November I will be on my own, and it will be a world of hurt with these bozos smirking and saying "I told you so."

I went to Pure Triumph down the street with my buddy Diggy who had been turned on by his first sight of the "gangsta" MP3 ( Diggy is 24 and his vernacular is quite an education for this old man) where he fell in love with the Ducati Monster and I confirmed my lustful feelings for the Triumph Bonneville. My wife sounded relieved when I called her and said I was moving on from the Vespa. Diggy looked me as though I was mad when I asked if he wanted to look at Piaggio's three wheeler. We had just finished being verbally abused by Joe and Diggy said: "No Dude. I will be worrying all the time about over revving the thing and then I'll end up starving it for fuel." And we laughed together all the way to the motorcycle shop. I don't think Diggy had ever seen me so angry as I was during my confrontation with Joe, and that revelation brought home to me how upset I have been over this broken Vespa mess.

$5600 obo.

Thinning Blood

This is the tedious time of year when newspapers run comic strips promoting the notion that Fall is Good, whereas I live firmly rooted in a community where any season that isn't warm, is bad.

There are some people who live on a planet where cold weather is a good thing and cool crisp days and longer nights are harbingers of better things to come. Not so. Not for me at any rate. I don't miss snow and rain and brown leaves and winter storms that quick freeze your toes and ears and nose. Winter blasts that freeze your breath in your beard are a distant memory and long may they stay that way.

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Living and working in Key West occasionally produces the unexpected benefit of hanging around true blue Conchs. Conchs (pronounced "konks") are people born and raised in Key West and though the definition is not open to interpretation, I would add anyone who graduates Key West High School qualifies for the term. To be a Conch can be as much a bad thing as good, and sometimes those of us who came later to the Conch Republic will say dismissively "he's just a Conch..." as though to say "he knows no better..."

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Conchs actually are a little odd in a world populated by travelers, highways and jets all humming to the tune of constant change. Conchs don't like change much, and they label themselves as locals by their untiring efforts to hold on to the past. Listen to them talk amongst themselves and they spend hours recalling what businesses operated in this or that location, who lived where, and who is related to whom. It is the typical small town sense of place that requires endless grasping at fleeting straws. Particularly fleeting in a tourist trap like Key West where change is rapid and mandatory. Particularly odd as the conchs were the ones who enabled the Great Land Grab in Key West, by selling off their island to the highest bidders, as fast as they could.

One of my colleagues was looking out the window at a dark summer rain cloud and announced: "I want to take a vacation in snow. I've never seen snow." This is not as odd as it sounds. I know several people who have never risked their fragile Conch skins in a blizzard. I know one man who married a woman who had never in her life been off the island chain, but that's another story.

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Anyway, my snow-obsessed friend was pondering what to do about this short coming in his placid life. My other colleague in the room suggested Colorado as a destination suitable for fulfilling the dream.She lured him with exciting pictures of mountains and canyons and thrills. All I could think of as a suggestion, was a quick trip to Hawaii, get to the top of the mountain, fall in a snowdrift and make a snow angel and bugger off pronto to tropical sea level as fast as possible thereafter. My suggestion fell flat but I think its merits will become apparent after he meets Snow for the first time. Especially if he gets stuck in some frigid alpine cabin in a Colorado wasteland.

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Blood thins. It just does, and I guess people have adapted over the centuries to all the different climate ranges there are on the planet. For lots of unfortunates cold weather is a fact of life half the year. We just make our own cold weather by feeling sorry for ourselves, on our small island, when winter nips here at a chilly 65 degrees for a whole week at a time. I got to the keys late in life which is fine by me, but the prospect of never seeing snow again fills me with joy. Hell if I never have to live through another cold damp California winter I will be deliriously happy. Lacking a functioning scooter I need to go for a swim before the water drops below 80...

Poker Run or V Twin Lemmings

It's lemming weekend in Key West:

I find, thanks to the abundance of information on the Internet, that in real life lemmings do not actually throw themselves into the ocean, en masse, off cliffs. However in popular imagination the label "lemming" carries a negative connotation, and like 'em or not, the lemmings have been massing in Key West this weekend. For merchants, who are the backbone of our tired tourist economy, Poker Run is an economic boost at a time of year when visitors are flagging and hurricanes are strengthening. So the residents of the city suffer hundreds, perhaps thousands of motorcycles to come roaring onto the island and make noise, clog streets and allow their riders to strut their lack of imagination.

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In labeling these poseurs as lemmings I know I am denigrating them and I find myself doing that not because they are unworthy tourists, or feeble spenders, but because they aren't motorcyclists worthy of the name. And that's a minefield I have laid out for myself, sure, but "lemming" is a label that just won't get out of my head as I watch them rumble around town in our blinding white sunshine.

They ride large bright expensive machines, almost all of them Harleys, many many of them too impractical to ride to Key West, and the big v-twins come to the Keys on trailers so their owners can rumble down the Overseas Highway at 40 mph free from the cares of road grime, road dirt or road aches. And to my purist "motorcyclist" way of thinking that is pretty feeble.

As the rider of a modest Vespa (pictured here: my wife's even more modest 150), I am not exactly in a position to put myself at the head of a pack of "motorcyclists" but I ride a lot. I fear I ride many more miles than most of the lemmings. I know this because mileage is not something one covers wobbling around on a showroom clean motorcycle, daily riders need to know how to ride, turn, deal with traffic, slow down, stop and start without wobbling stalling and generally riding like a putz, to use a term my Jewish wife would understand. Key West downtown looks like a carnival ride, not a gathering of road-hardened motorcyclists.

Many people who don't ride Harleys despise the machines themselves but don't count me among their number. The Harley Davidsons that come out of the factory are fine machines and I've tried my hand at riding them, and propose to rent them again in the future as they are quite enjoyable and surprisingly fast. However to see them kept and polished as toys instead of a means of getting around, or even as a way of life, is a shame to me. Harleys don't light my inner fire as other machines do ( Vespas, Moto Guzzis, Triumphs for example) but they do the mundane job of transporting people very well and with flair too.

I wish Poker Run (a worthy fund raiser by the way) attracted a real variety of riders, people with motorcycles that are truly interesting, unusual machines ( I saw one classic Triumph all weekend), machines worthy of inspection that would turn Duval Street into an outdoor bike show, not a backdrop for some gruesome Urban Cowboy leatherette backdrop.

I guess watching these weekend warriors dress up in fancy dress and ponce about on the Highway abusing these thoroughbreds and treating them like lap dogs, plain pisses me off. Hell, I need to find something more worthwhile for my ire!