Chain Gang

Its been three weeks since I brought the Triumph Bonneville home and with 1500 miles on the clock its time to get serious about chain maintenance. I swore up and down I'd never get another motorcycle with a chain final drive, but here I am! I like belts best of all and there is an aftermarket kit built by a former Triumph dealer in Pennsylvania (Quiet Power Drive.com) which I have my eye on, but at a thousand dollars it'll have to wait till this chain is worn out. Modern chains on motorcycles are said to be good for 20,000 miles and with a fussy level of care some people claim 40,000 miles out of a set of chain and sprockets, and so it is I have set myself up to take as good care of mine as I can. That's another reason I bought a $220 "optional" center stand...

Like every other Internet discussed motorcycle operation, the care and feeding of the modern motorcycle chain is a subject of plenty of controversy. Some people clean their chains with a spray of WD40 and a wipe with a rag, others use brake cleaner ( as suggested by my dealer). Triumph recommends good old fashioned "paraffin" which, on this side of the Atlantic translates into kerosene, and that is only available at Ace Hardware stores. I bought a gallon at the excellent Ace store on Summerland Key, and my wife gave me a plastic lidded box to dip my Grunge Brush in.

First I pulled off the sprocket cover on the engine- five simple bolts.

Then I took the long brush on the end of the Grunge Buster and slopped kerosene into the sprocket area to clean all the grunge and dirt stuck in there.

Modern final drive chains have little hidden o-rings that keep lubrication inside the chain links, and I fear using modern solvents because they may break down the rubber o-rings and allow the inner lubricant to dry out. Hence the old fashioned, no aerosol kerosene and scrub brush technique. The grunge brush gets three sides of the chain.

Then I dry the chain and sprockets with a piece of oily rag, and let the chain dry. Later, when I go for a ride I will squeeze the little Loobman bottle I have installed ($36 delivered from England), which drips engine oil onto the rear sprocket and lubricates those precious o-rings. It's a typically English low tech gadget that works great, the chain is much cooler and smoother running with a gentle squeeze every tankful of premium.

And then all that's left to do is get out and ride, after cleaning one's hands to keep all that oily stuff off the grips.

So, is it better to buy a new belt every 6,000 miles for the Vespa? Or clean the chain every 1500? Beats me, I'd rather have a lifetime belt drive like the Harleys do, but that is in my future and maybe I'll miss fussing over my old fashioned chain. At my high mileage that's unlikely!

Many Happy Returns

To say its annoying to be born on Halloween is an understatement. I am made to feel somehow ungrateful that people across the planet are choosing to celebrate my birthday but its just that I spent 35 years figuring out who I am, and I'm not ready to disguise myself as someone else, thanks.

Would you entrust your property to this person, Wilma?

You would if it were Halloween at the Key West Police department; she's the assistant property clerk...My colleague Diggy was bummed because he thought we still had to wear our uniforms in Dispatch. We probably did, but still...

That aside I'm 50 and that's supposed to be a cause for crisis. Disappointment on that front too, for anyone expecting me to be worried, fearful or morose. I'm entirely happy to be 50, I have no regrets and I am currently enjoying robust good health. I'm happily married, I enjoy my job and I have an excellent commute ( except when Sheriff's deputies share the road with me as one slow poke did this morning. I had to sit back and just politely enjoy the half-moon view). My colleagues are always available to offer a laugh and change the mood, and at the end of a work day I feel like I've contributed some good to my town.

Beyond immediate gratification (Motorcycle! Motorcycle!) I can look back at a full life and as I start the final third I know I have to capacity to squeeze every drop out of every experience, and take advantage of the mindfulness I have developed over the decades. I am content.

Quite content that Tropical Storm Noel appears set to wipe out a few third world islands (Hispaniola, Cuba, the Bahamas) and spare us all but a week's worth of strong winds and occasional short downpours. Tha fat lady has yet to sing this hurricane season.

Yesterday the wife had a surgical consultation for a wrist operation she is having in December to straighten up a tendon that is going awry so we got to drive around Fort Lauderdale all day. Traffic sucked, there was a jam on I95, another jam on the Turnpike, the streets around the hospital were backed up thanks to construction and on the way home Krome Avenue fro Highway 27 to Homestead was a tailgaters dream, heavy rain, a railroad crossing (closed! Never before at that spot!) and only when I got on Highway One was I able to cruise at 65/70 all the way home.

We stopped at Ikea, their first Florida store, and were thoroughly disappointed. Its supposed to be a cheap and cheerful high quality home furnishing store, and I immediately felt i was in some sort of student housing barracks, square lines, everything in stark primary colors, white black and red primarily, no warmth, no style as I know it. Oh yes, there was pressed board in evidence all over the store.

The food court was different and we came home with some arctic bread (?), cheese, chocolate and crackers all wrapped in Swedish.

My wife got me a Triumph T shirt when we stopped by Pure Triumph to pick up my license plate for the Bonneville, so the day wasn't entirely wasted.

First Cold Front

This time of year if its raining here, its throwing a blizzard of snow around up there. And that spells trouble,even in paradise,because I see a damp newspaper in the drive.

Its rained a lot this summer, but today's drizzle is the mark of a new season. The winds are out of the north today and I can hear the sounds of trucks on the Highway, three quarters of a mile north of my house. When the prevailing winds blow out of the southeast, all I hear is the soughing of the trees around the house. Actually what I listen to when I'm inside the house is the rasping of the central air beating off the outdoor 90 degree heat and 100% humidity of the long summer months.

Right now the a/c is OFF, sliding doors are open, to the 74-degree air outside, and I can hear the dripping of rain off the eaves. Its a great day to be off work, with a book (Kite Runner) and a pot of tea listening to that lovely rain filling the cistern. As long as the cistern is full I don't have to run the gruesome chlorinated aqueduct water into my house and that's always a good thing around here- the tea tastes tons better when made with rainwater.

I will miss the long bright days of summer especially when we switch the clocks back next week I will only get home after dark, too late to take the boat out and go for a swim. Its getting to be time to put the boat on the trailer, change the oil in the outboard and put it away for the winter.

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The end of October also means Fantasy Fest, a celebration initiated 30 years ago to bring some life to the dormant city in the doldrums of October. All this week the highway has been littered with laden motorcycles and out of state cars as they pour into Key West where the downtown is filling with inappropriately costumed Midwesterners anxious to prove they are only respectable at home. Here they are determined to be perfect satyrs, portly, inebriated and acting stupid in public. The business community thanks them, as does the local paper, with the weekly Arts supplement dedicated to their adoration of the heterosexual tastelessness on display. I like the Gay Pride parade earlier in the year, not only because its fun, and funny but because its participants actually know how to pull off their public exhibitionism with panache. The straight folk, among whose ranks I count myself, just look dorky when exhibiting themselves. I keep mine firmly under wraps, thanks.

I will be off work Saturday evening before the chaos begins, so I'll park the Bonneville by the Police Mobile Command Center to keep it safe and I will drag myself to a friend's balcony overlooking Duval Street where my wife and I will enjoy ourselves critiquing the parade and taking pictures.

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Then serenity will descend for a few more blessed weeks until the permanent winter snows up north push the hung over Lotharios back south for a winter of feeling frisky in the keys.

This is the season to wake up in Dispatch where we have been comatose ( apparently) since summer vacations ended and the visitor count fell of a cliff. The drunks will soon be loose and fighting and vomiting and waking up the neighbors.

" Key West 9-1-1, where is your emergency?" all day, all night, all winter long.

Fire,Hurricanes and Siegelman

I find it hard to imagine how a state of 30 million people can evacuate half a million and find somewhere for them to live. Yet this is the second time in two years Americans are evacuating en masse. The extent of the fires burning up Southern California is hard to imagine. 1500 homes destroyed equates to the City of Key West reduced to embers. And here we are, sunny tranquil and hurricane free- for now! All those spring predictions of a summer to dread failed to materialize in the Keys this year. Unlike fire season, hurricane season threatens every summer, and we just get a cool winter to refresh us before the next round of threats. Summer fires in California destroy the brush that holds together the manufactured slopes that slip slide away in the heavy winter rains. There will be lots of possibilities this winter across Southern California.

Southern California is a desert and sucks the water out of the Colorado River, the Sierra Nevada (Snowy Mountain) range and anywhere they can get water. And when the winds blow, as they do down the desert canyons, they send the flames tumbling before them. And its hot and dry this year, doubtless attributable to Global Warming, the cliche du jour, the same warming that is going to raise seawater and drown South Florida.

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Living the middle class life these days feels a bit like going to war- the economy is wrecked (Merrill Lynch posted $8 billion in losses today), and where you live determines how you die, drowned burned or run over. In fact I got cut off yesterday evening on my way out of town by a car that decided to turn sharp right when he realised he'd missed the 1st Street turn, off North Roosevelt. Layne was riding alongside on her ET4 and seeing I was okay on the ground took off after the Mitsubishi and forced him to stop up 1st Street. He apologized and in the same breath claimed I was riding inside him (in my own lane!) and it was my fault. He was Vietnamese and put his hands together and kept bowing and saying sorry and on and on and blaming me as an aside. Layne was angry but I shooed him away when I found no damage. I toppled gently and kept the machine off the ground with my elbow and knee and leather shoe.

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My wife remembers Don Siegelman, the former Alabama governor from their time at college together. He announced back then he wanted to be governor of his state and she remembers thinking "Not him! He's not smart enough!" And she was wrong. Now he's been sentenced to 88 months in prison on a bribery conviction. And a Republican attorney is charging Karl Rove with using the US Justice Department to bring down a prominent democrat who might have been a solid presidential candidate! We met Siegelman's wife last year in Birmingham, during a road trip to New Orleans (Katrinaland) and she protested they were trumped up charges, sounding for all the world like a loyal wife. I wish we had been convinced at that time. Not now when its obvious to one and all.

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A ruined reputation is worse than all the fires, hurricanes and motorcycle tumbles in the world.

The Other Burdines

"Burdines? Theres a Burdines in Marathon?" I've heard that query more than once when I told someone I was going to the second-largest city in the Keys. The name gives the impression that a magnificent clothing emporium has mushroomed in the midst of the economic blandness that characterizes Mile Marker 50 and environs.

No such luck, because this Burdines is a place to buy food, watch the water and contemplate the pleasures of life in the Keys. The last time I was there a table full of elderly tourists next to me was blathering on to the waitress about how they were from "far up North," and even though the conversation was tedious and predictable I did get a fresh appreciation for the 87 degree, breezy, sunny October day.

Burdines is a combination of businesses, operating a fuel dock downstairs on the channel that leads to Boot Key Harbor from the west. Upstairs is the Chiki Tiki Bar, funky, thatched and open to the breeze. They also rent boat slips and a lucky few live on their boats within feet of the burgers and sandwiches served with old fashioned informality (a painted mousetrap to hold your check) and old fashioned real lemonade for thirsty motorcyclists anxious not to get DUI'ed...Usually I like the $9 Green Chile Cheeseburger but the Chicken Florentine looked an interesting burger alternative and I decided to risk it. Its easier to change longstanding habits when lunching in the company of a friend who, unlike my wife, doesn't know I always order the green Chili Burger . The chicken burger looks pale and flaccid, as it consists of ground chicken mashed together with feta cheese and shredded spinach, but it has a surprisingly exotic combination of flavors. It didn't need the ketchup I spread on the white meat in order to add unnecessary flavor- the feta and spinach gave it plenty of zip. Diggy had a fish sandwich, and even though he says he isn't keen on dolphin he woofed it down happily. We shared the big basket of salty spiced fries, made with real potatoes, revealed by their uneven shapes, and the potato skin incorporated into their texture. They go nicely with the patty melt too, a greasy burger if ever I saw one. I may be sticking to the exotic chicken on my next visit.

Aside from the view from Burdines up Boot Key Harbor which lies in the middle of the city of Marathon and is home to hundreds of anchored boats, one gets a view out to the west, towards the Seven Mile bridge and the open waters of the Straits of Florida.

That all should be dessert enough, if beauty were a substitute. However when visiting Burdines with Diggy I felt an obligation to introduce him to another delight that my wife generally forbids me when we stop by.

Burdines calls it a deep fried Key Lime Pie, where they roll a slice of pie in a tortilla and fry the hell out of it. Diggy swooned as he spooned and described it as a key lime pie flavored funnel cake. He still talks about it.

We waddled back to our motorcycles, and puttered up 15th street back to the Overseas Highway. "Been looking for this place ever since you first mentioned it, " Diggy burped contentedly as we waited for a break in traffic. "Hard to find, but now I know."

Paradise found for them as know.

Homeward Bound

Sitting on the sidewalk in front of Pure Triumph I got a bird's eye view of the hectic morning traffic of the metropolis, the three lanes of stop-and-go cars heading into downtown on Highway One. Its a whole different world here, even as the clock closes in on ten o'clock, and its a healthy reminder why people think I'm crazy when I express pleasure in my modest 25-mile commute. My chunk of Highway One is almost never stop-and-go, and the views are quite different.

Pure Triumph is an enthusiast's store, a place staffed by grizzled men with funny accents, tattoos and an obvious history for the past glories of the Triumph marque. I feel a bit of a fraud because I have no history with the past glories of Triumph, and I want nothing to do with opening up the exhaust or squeezing a few more horsepower out of my 865cc parallel twin. I rejoice in the relaxed state of tune that gets me to 90mph before I know it.
I have come to the store for the "first service" an oil and spark plug change and a general check of my machine. I've also ordered the Triumph fabric saddlebags ($250), to give me somewhere to carry my crap while I'm out and about. Over time I've found a lockable top case and fabric panniers give me a good combination of storage without overwhelming my motorcycle with bulk. Large hard panniers are wonderful things but they tend to make the motorcycle cumbersome. I need storage for my waterproofs, my tire pressure gauge, my sunscreen, a couple of extra bungees and a rag or two. I'm going to work, not Patagonia. The other bag gives me room to add stuff along the way, like groceries, and while I'm at the movies i can lock my helmet in the top case.

While the Trumpet is in the lift in the well appointed service area, I sprawl on a leather couch, turn off the TV and peruse the motorcycle magazines piled by the coffee machine. Michael, the parts guy is chatty, and we talk about motorcycles- he actually owns and rides a Triumph Daytona, a whizz-bang crotch rocket with a smaller engine than my "classic" but with almost twice the horsepower (and its a few pounds lighter to boot). On the subject of boots I decide to buy a pair of reinforced motorcycle boots with ankle protection. That's another $145 on my bill, but I know my wife, who doesn't nag, likes me to be responsible, and take care of myself. if she's got peace of mind while I'm riding I'm happy.The motorcycles on display are always worth checking out too. A used T100 ( a heavily chromed edition of my Bonneville), lovely in red and black is still on the floor, on consignment from an owner who is asking $6500- not worth it to me when I got my own for $1200 more. Apparently not worth it to someone else either who bought a new T100 and added slim leather saddlebags and a Triumph windshield as extras. There are several cruisers on the floor too, Rocket Threes, 2300cc's of conspicuous excess, as well as the feet forward Bonneville Americas and Speedmasters, clever variants on the Bonneville twin cylinder engines. The Scrambler is gone, sold presumably despite it's gruesome pea green paint job.

Then its time to go, almost before I'm ready, full of water and motorcycle articles, an imprint of my bottom firmly planted on the leather couch. My Bonneville is becoming my own vision of this classic thoroughbred- bags in place, exhausts firmly muffled and a can of weatherproofing spray in the newly attached saddlebag.They come with a plastic "water resistant" cover in its own pouch, but I'd rather make the fabric as weatherproof as I can because I'm reluctant to add to my woes when it starts raining, by fumbling around with a motorcycle pannier condom. The weather looks threatening as I pull out of the Pure Triumph lot and faced with a 170 mile trip home I'm determined to make the most of it, come what may. I'm on the mainland and I want to ride.
The freeway out of of Fort Lauderdale is a long sweeper of a modern highway, rolling artificial hills surrounded by the developer's dream of endless tract homes, large malls (mauls) inadequate water supplies and the sole attraction of "convenience." It takes twenty miles of 6 lane highway to break free of the mess, and by that time the waterlogged Everglades are lining the roadway. Naples ahead, Miami to the south and Highway 27 crossing the freeway shambles, marked on the horizon only by a long line of power poles. The junction off Interstate 75 shows South Bay to the North and Homestead to the south, a minor paradox explained by the location of South Bay, which is a depressed farming community is on the south shore of Lake Okeechobee.

Highway 27 lives in my memory as a wide sweeping highway with more vertical dips than horizontal curves passing cane fields, orange orchards and small towns loosing their economies but gaining snowbirds all the time. Coastal Florida has priced itself out of many people's range but inland Florida has acres available for development, and affordable too. Highway 27 offers a four lane drive-by for all of it. This far south its path clips the Everglades and I find myself far from the crowded downtown streets of coastal Florida. The clouds are clearing and the sun shines down on grasslands, miles and miles of watery grass.

Krome Avenue breaks off to the right in a sweeping curve and takes off in two lanes towards Homestead. This is farm country, lots of actual Mexican field workers, nurseries, trucks, tractors, pick ups, mud and vegetables. Long straightaways interrupted by traffic lights and cross streets, but the Bonneville is a point and shoot kind of motorcycle, almost all in fifth gear, picking off bored motorists one at a time, sneaking past 18-wheelers at the front of long lines of 30mph traffic. Krome is deadly in a car, its a challenge and very rewarding on a motorcycle.

And then Homestead, tidy, quiet and agricultural, it reminds of nowhere so much as Mexican California, perhaps Watsonville in rural Santa Cruz County. And then there's lunch, a late lunch but worth the wait, the best Mexican in south Florida. And so home, tired, to bed.