4,000 Mile Bonneville

I got a call a couple of days ago from someone who lifted my heart. he is interested in buying the Vespa, and I don't know if I shall see him again after he takes a trip to do the relatives-at-Christmas thing, but I enjoyed talking to someone who finally undertsood a Vespa; the call came after about 4 dozen inquiries from people looking for a cheap scooter. The thing is I've started to slip into the Bonneville habit. I'm molding to my motorcycle. The handlebar grips slip into my gloved palms, my feet find the footpegs without hunting, and the clutch slides in and out with no effort or conscious thought at all. I am at one with my Bonneville. The Vespa, sitting low on that extraordinarily comfortable seat, seems alien. I like the image of the Bonneville, raw and mechanical where the Vespa, still beautiful, flows around its bodywork.The other benefit of enjoying the ride as an exension of habit is that I can take whatever the road has to offer, whether its the all too rare open stretch or the more common clustered clumps of slow moving cars. These days, with an ice storm ravaging the Great White North, the number and variation of out-of-state tags is spreading all around us. This means Highway One is slowing down and its not getting to be worthwhile to even bother passing when the line of cars and trucks extends half a mile in front of me.

Plus I'm not feeling myself these days. I picked up a head cold while we were in Miami and I've been sneezing and snuffling and head-achy and feeling morose. Yesterday the ride to Marathon, 30 miles each way, wore me out. I came home, unloaded the groceries from my saddlebags ("How did you pack so much stuff?"my astonished wife asked from her handicapped throne on the leather couch), and I passed out on the bed, tossing turning and waking up coughing. Thinking about the sun on the flat waters, twinkling with the promise of a warm ice free winter, feeling the 79 dgeree breeze blowing across my face, it feels good to be living here in the flats of Florida. A California friend came visiting and as she reminisced about the crumbling path from her Aptos house to the rumbling Pacific Ocean, I could picture the cold and the damp and the fog and I know where I want to call home.

And the sooner I stop feeling bluesy and morose and snuffly the better all this will become.

Marathon Memorial

Today was the day the Monroe County Sheriff's Office remembered Deputy Robyn Tanner, a deputy assigned to the City of Marathon substation. She died last week when her patrol car crashed on her way to a medical assist. The spot where she died at 90th Street is marked by a broken stairway, a pile of flowers and teddy bears and votive candles wavering in the winter breeze. This was the day after we got back from Miami and I left my wife propped up in bed, her arm in a cast, surrounded by hot coffee newspaper and reading glasses. I took the Bonneville out for my first ride since last weekend and I have to confess I missed it.

It was a glorious day to be alive, bright sunshine, gentle north breezes blowing across the Gulf of Mexico bringing humidity down to desert-like proportions and temperatures close to 70 degrees. The liner in my armored jacket kept me warm enough and my heart was warmed in extra measure by the sunshine on the flat waters either side of the Highway.

The memorial was held at the sheriff's Aviation Hangar, where they keep the medical helicopter. The field alongside was packed with law enforcement vehicles, state agencies, police departments all over Florida and our own blue and white KWPD cars scattered amongst the strangers. Outside the hangar the honor guard lined up alongside the motorcycle cops ready for the ceremony. I took my place inside the hangar next to a Highway Patrol Corporal I've talked to from time on the phone, behind a row of anonymous State Marine Patrol Officers.

Deputy Tanner's family sat in the front row, a youthful mother of the 53 year-old deputy, her father coiled tight in pain, her brothers, police officers themselves with tears streaming down their faces. The tribute went on, a mixture of oddly inappropriate humor, bathos and platitudes. But in between the remarks made by a huge group of mixed acquaintances, there shone the character of the dead deputy. Her smile , her cheerfulness, her joy at the job. Her cats, her sidearm handed over reverently to one brother, her badge to the other, pictures of Deputy tanner on the job and my worst moment the Final Radio Call, Central calling 4-1-1-7 who was never able to respond, and so was reported out of service for the last time. And so it went, the sun shone, the breeze kept the flags flapping gently and the helicopters flew by in formation.

Thus, home we variously went to our own unhappinesses and joys, certain that today was a great day to be alive and saddened by the reason that pulled us all together. The greatest tribute of all was also the most modest, made a day earlier away from the all the uniforms and dignitaries. It came from a local homeless man who donated his five dollars to Toys for Tots in Deputy Tanner's name. Because, he told her Lieutenant, she always showed me kindness and respect. No greater tribute can a deputy have than this, from the least among us.

Slaughterhouse 7

Me and Sousaphone, 1973

When I was seven years of age my step father sent me to boarding school. It seemed normal enough, though painful, and I took the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as they came; that's what children do. I look back on my decade in English boarding schools and wonder: what were they thinking? The schools grew up in response to the need for colonial administrators in public service around the world, polishing the sun as it refused to set on the British Empire. Their children were herded in institutions of greater or lesser nastiness while their parents suppressed natives and sent home the products of all that far flung administration. Heart of Darkness wasn't in it.

Aerial View, Downside School, Stratton-on-the-Fosse

What these schools are doing in the 21st century I can hardly imagine, in a world where science has convinced me, childless though I am, that a solid close knit family upbringing is the best way to encourage level headed future citizens. Instead these places continue to adapt and create the background for Harry Potter and the benefits of magic. That they serve the scions of the wealthiest just makes their existence even weirder- they're not meant to be prisons they are supposed to release the inner fully rounded man (and woman in these enlightened days). Downside School in southeast England specializes in producing young Christian gentlemen, which it would, as the 600 pupils are attached to the Benedictine Abbey which operates the school.In the summer of 1973 my mother finally succumbed to the cancer that had been eating her brain and I returned to school to find consolation as best I could. My trombone classes were my escape and I would retire to the men's toilet at the school Theater and blat away at the Marine Corps anthem and "Silent Night" in B flat. The music school lacked rehearsal space and we used any and every available room to practice our dismal trade.

L-R Chuff, Simon McCall, Me

And then Kevin Byrne crashed the Music School like a Greenpeace protester at a whaler's convention. He rounded up the first few musicians he encountered and luckily for me he need to pee that morning and found me practicing assiduously in my hidey hole. So I became the second trombonist in a new experiment that was intended to make musicians of us and give us the appreciation of jazz we had so far never been exposed to.

We'd never been exposed to anyone like Chuff either- so called for his love of steam engines. He drank Real Ale, ran toy trains, ran everywhere with a limp ( I may be wrong but I think it was a motorcycle accident that gave him a scar on his shin). He could listen to a piece of music, throw it down on a few pages of handwritten scrawl, transpose it for harmonium and perform it on any musical instrument you'd care to name. He loved music and he loved teaching and he made life worth living for this accidental tuba player. I became a tuba player becuase this boy graduated and left the school, else I probably would never have had the opportunities I did:

As second trombonist I was a fairly obscure sound, in a room full of eager players but when the sainted Bernie left school I was promoted to fill his shoes. Bernie broke his arm (as seen above) and spent his musical season playing the sousaphone left handed, expertly, and I had to fill impossible shoes with my minuscule musical talents. My struggles to learn to support the band playing jazz and religious hymns, not to mention theater work and military music, kept me hard at it, and in a school where nothing much seemed to make sense, music gave me my my place in school and I earned modest renown as the man with the silver coil round his neck.

My role in all that stuff was very modest and just how modest was amply illustrated for me recently when the USPS dropped a package off at my house containing a printed summary of 34 years of musical tradition at Downside School.

It turns out the school is edging Chuff aside after decades of making music and thousands of miles traveled. "Internationally Renowned" is no exaggeration. When I played with the Slaughterhouse 7 we traveled no further afield than Wiltshire, but in the decades since, Chuff's energy has taken the musicians to Malta, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, South Africa, Chicago in 1987:Then there was Fiji and a performance at Sydney's Opera House. And raised millions for charity.

It was always a vague plan to go back to Downside and pay a visit to the Band Room, the place where I can fairly say I got a leg up on the rest of my life, but now it's all gone. Progress has swept away the traditional jazz refuge that Chuff gave us, the breath of clean fresh air is drowned by a stuffy need for test scores and scholarships up the educational ladder, and so Downside goes back to the stultifying world Chuff saved me from so many years ago, in the boys loo at the School Theater. The sounds of the iPod have drowned the squawks of the students' horns and learning ain't what it used to be. And I never did take the time to wander down memory lane. Too late! No matter how hard I try I still manage to miss the bus from time to time in Life's unravelling of Time.Lo! A thought! Now at last, my wife knows exactly how it is that I occasionally manage to surprise her by knowing the words to traditional jazz standards and why New Orleans, pre-Katrina, always appealed so much to me.

Chuff left his mark, and I doubt he has any idea how profound it is.

Miami Surgery

Sitting on a motel bed with 40 television channels at my beck and call I find myself amazed, like a Martian first encountering life on earth as filtered through the lense of the T.V. Worse than a Martian I feel like a peasant, a quasi-local, trying to understand my fellow humans. I don't understand why anyone would want this intrusion in their homes; worse yet why did I ever have it in mine? Why did I wonder if I would miss it? Then I gawp at frenzied advertising and fail to imagine how it can even be so effective. It looks crazy to me, smiling people sucking down drugs (legal ones) and driving cars that are clearly powered beyond their abilities, and acting crazy cheerful in ways that in real life would frighten shoppers away. Buy buy buy.Then the delightful "news" programs which were like advertising only worse. Most "news" is thinly disguised advertising and the highbrow stories come and go rapidly and without explanation or rational discussion. Historical perspective? What's that? Why does one even need that? Middle East leaders, looking ponderous and serious were filmed walking seven times around a rock, an effort to bring Peace, they say. Which behavior must explain why Peace is so unattainable. Perhaps if leaders talked to each other instead of engaging in empty gestures, something might change. Case in point: Paris. We were treated to the US Secretary of State kissing the leader of half of Palestine, Abu Mazen, on not one but both cheeks. Wow! So European! Talking? No, kissing! I think its past time we killed our televisions and instead the people in charge want us to spend even more money buying new improved high definition televisions. And people will, amazingly enough people will line up to buy HD TV.I went to buy a couple of bagels for lunch after the post-op doctor's visit and the clerk (team member? associate?) in Einstein's sighed when I couldn't figure out how I wanted the turkey and cheese bagel. There are hundreds of possible variants it seems. I knew I wanted the whatever flavored bagel toasted but that never happened. And the other barrista got flustered when it turns out my Visa card (I was out of cash what can I say?) doesn't have a chip and still needs to be swiped. I personally can't wait for the day I have a chip under my skin and we can dispense with all this plastic nonsense. Don't laugh its coming. Out on the streets of Miami people reflect their leaders and are crazy. Drivers push and shove even in places where shoving accomplishes nothing. On stretches of open road they slow down. Changing lanes is a life altering, or ending experience. One black man with gold teeth got out at a traffic light and threatened me for changing lanes. He got back in when I smiled and licked my lips at him. Never take on a loony who actually appears to enjoy physical violence. Had he called my bluff I might be the second member of my family with a broken wrist. My aching wife got vaguely annoyed at my confrontational behavior but those drugs are keeping her quite comatose, luckily for me.

The longer I live in the Keys the less capable I am of functioning in mainstream America. I dislike not making eye contact, I dislike walking among people who are hunched and afraid ( with reason as my little confrontation proves), I dislike the thoughtless nastiness of modern urban life. Its a pretty short sliver of land I live on, the rest of the continent (with all its marvelous medical facilities!) weighs heavily on my island and on my mind.

Normal cheerful programming will be resumed when I get over all this ridiculous surgery stress. She seems less stressed than I am. I need my Bonneville.

Construction Zone South

When people talk about "South Beach" in South Florida they usually mean a glamorous Art Deco neighborhood in Miami, but at the end of the road, south beach is the bottom end of Duval Street, more or less. Perhaps its the top end of Duval, because in upside-down-land, Upper Duval is the part of Duval furthest from the action. Lower Duval is where the action is, where the cruise ship passengers land, where people get drunk and look at naked women in city Commissioner Rossi's Red Garter strip club. At the Atlantic end of Duval then, lies south beach. The Duval Beach Club and the Southernmost Everything crowd the ends of Duval and Simonton Streets. Nowadays there are lots of holes. And the construction is promising a better future, bigger hotels, nicer facilities means more expensive and so it goes. But the old Key West, not the ancient run down Key West, the middling Old Key West, the one that came as part of the first wave of gay oriented re-development, is getting knocked down. At the southern end of the city that piece of history is long gone. Atlantic Shores was a place that offered rooms in motel-like rows heavily vegetated and really quite pretty. There was a diner for post-orgy breakfasts and Thursdays was al fresco movie nights where we took over the parking lot and lounged with free popcorn and cans of Heineken and my Labrador snored in my lap while I sank into the magic of the silver screen under the silver star-studded night sky. All gone. Even the pool where clothes were optional and men and women sun bathed, if they so chose. I doubt the new Southernmost extension will offer any of that. And who will miss Atlantic Shores?

The back end of the old Atlantic Shores was a place my wife and I still talk about. City Commissioner Rossi owned The Sands beach club, a place that offered decent food and outdoor casual seating on an actual sand beach. It really was a cool spot, and we enjoyed it. Our peripatetic yellow Lab Emma used to be able to sit alongside us in the sand and that was a bonus. The Sands is gone and a white construction fence is there instead. Across the street the old Reach Resort has been rebuilt and looks just as massive and solid as it did before Wilma trashed it in October 2005. The Santa Maria resort, a cute 1950's art deco motel has been transformed into minuscule condos selling for over a million bucks for each 400 square feet. I don't suppose the new occupants of the rabbit hutches will miss the ability to fling off their clothes around a public pool. They get tiny balconies to watch traffic whizzing by on South Street though.

I can't really say what I think about all this. Lots of people spend a great deal of time bitching about change and threaten to leave the Keys for a better, more expansive life Up North. What they don't investigate is that Up North is convulsing with change also, and for the price of a small residential condo in a converted Key West Victorian they can buy a tract house, twice as large with garage and a clean, bum-less street outside. But what makes the keys worth living in and struggling in isn't on offer in suburbia, at any price. Change is inevitable and it isn't usually a real improvement, but at least in Key West it is still a subject of debate and we all try to hang on and remember what's gone on ahead.

The 1990's was a decade of great wealth everywhere, in the Conch Republic as much as Up North and development was set in motion, but there was lots of good stuff that cheered people up in that decade. Much of it is gone or going as money dries up and people spend less. PT's a second rate restaurant where people liked to hang out is an actual parking lot. Dennis Pharmacy a cheesy but cheerful diner whose success was predicated on nostalgia is now a bland bank and so forth.

I wonder if one day we will wax nostalgic about the good old Santa Maria. Personally I never stayed at the old one and I sure as hell won't at the new one. As for my role in the poolside shenanigans at the Atlantic Shores? Why on earth would I miss them...?

Vignettes IV

The Bat Tower.

There is more to the Keys than many might surmise from a quick run down the island chain. I've covered many miles it turns out, to find them. It happened that the wife and I were out at a benefit event on Sugarloaf Key and after we had paid our benefits and eaten our (hot) dogs we wondered if it was time to end the happy afternoon. But no! I was among those present and with my inexhaustible desire for adventure and obscure knowledge I stunned Scott by the simple expedient of asking him if he had ever seen the Bat Tower.
"Why no!" he replied, agog.
The bat tower was built nearly a century ago by a land developer who hoped to make a fortune turning the wilds of Sugarloaf Key into tract homes. The Mosquito Control Board hadn't yet been invented so he turned to Nature to give him a hand. however the bats, famously voracious mosquito snackers, did not much fancy the home he built for them, from plans sent from Up North. The bats left, the humans never came. This is their monument. (Hint: Near the Sugarload Airstrip). I promised Scott and Heather a return trip some day, to see the Giant Sugarloaf Mansion (Not near the Airstrip).


------------------------


Volunteer Life Savers.


It remains true that most homes in the Keys are protected from fire by volunteers, a fact that does not appear to surprise anyone who owns a home down the Keys. The City of Key West has a paid fire department and has had for decades, which is not surprising as the city is packed with tightly packed wooden homes that burn like packed wooden torches.
People whose homes catch fire on say, Big Pine Key, need to hope their firefighters are close to their phones and are not far from the fire station while their homes burn. It seems terribly old fashioned to me, but I'm probably the only home owner within hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles who wouldn't be too offended to pay a tax to hire full time firefighters. An ounce of prevention...

-------------------

High Speed Weed Whacker.

I've seen this combination around town for several years, which means business, in a notoriously fickle corporate environment, must be good for this high speed entrepreneur in Key West. It's hard, impossible really, to find reliable tradesmen in the Keys so if your gardener shows up driving a Formula One you don't dare raise an eyebrow. Just be happy he's there. Unhappily he only has room for one helper in his Corvette, but they must spend very little time traveling between jobs.

----------------------

$3:60/Gallon.

I am grateful that more people don't use Shell gasoline cards and thus leave the pumps free for me to take my gas and my discount. I enjoy getting the Shell 5% rebate at the pumps and now that premium has hit all time highs, five percent is starting to equal real money, even riding a 43mpg Bonneville. People bitch at the cost of gas but apparently prices have yet to get high enough to force changes in the way we do things, not least grab a small discount where available. The cost of gas in the Keys is high by Florida standards, $3:40 for regular, and today I filled my tank with 3 1/2 US gallons of premium for $12. It wasn't so long ago that $8 would have been an ample sufficency. I don't ride to increase my mileage(I'd still be using the 70mpg Vespa 250), but I'm glad I take my traveling pleasure on a motorbike, and don't require a 15mpg SUV to make me whole. Even among these restricted highways and the few byways I have run up 3600miles since the Bonneville came home with me in mid October. Thats a few gallons under the bridge.