The people at the Fort Lauderdale Triumph dealership sucked air through their teeth when I said I didn't want to "upgrade" the exhausts on my brand new motorcycle. To make them more noisy is what they meant by upgrading. In order to make modern motorcycles meet high European air pollution reduction standards manufacturers employ useful little tricks to clean the exhaust fumes. They add fresh air to the combustion chamber and put a catalytic converter in the exhaust system. They quieten the air intake with elaborate air filters so new owners tear it all out, add loud exhausts and gain a few horsepower. When I told the lads at the dealership I liked my Bonneville as is because I like to ride fast, they scratched their heads and wrote me off as eccentric. It's much easier to ride fast on the open road when the Old Bill can't hear you coming for a mile. Loud exhausts would be a real pain wandering the streets of Key West as narrow as they are, and at three am it would be hard to go roaring around town snapping pictures of the pretty, illuminated houses when the good burghers of the city are tucked up asleep. Bike Week generates tons of negative, anti- motorcycle comments in the paper. Some argue loud pipes might save lives, but I know they make residents crazy with irritation.
I never thought of myself as a night owl but I love taking off on my lunch breaks and wandering the city when no one else is around. My colleagues like to take their breaks earlier, Noel goes home to play video games with Matt and Diggy roars off on his Honda and rarely tells what he does. I leave for lunch hours later and the streets of the city are mine, all tourists have either already staggered home or are still wobbling on Duval Street sucking down one last cold one before vomiting in a nearby flower bed to give their vacations the proper flavor. Deserted is how I like William Street:
I don't like to use a flash for night shots, partly because the flash isn't much goodon my little pocket camera and partly because I like the warmth of the sepia tint that shades the natural night tones. Plus I can't be bothered to carry a tripod which laziness forces me to get imaginative on how to prop my camera. At three in the morning I can park the Bonneville in the middle of the street and use that to act as a support for the camera:
This next picture I got by balancing the camera on the branch of a convenient tree. One can poke around in the lower braches of a tree at three in the morning without attracting critical comment. I love the look of these porches, even if sometimes they appear too formal to actually sit in:
The streets of Key West aren't overly endowed with street lights fortunately, and there are lots of trees overhanging, all of which adds to the ambiance of the middle of the night. That and the fact that everyone feels the need to illuminate their homes like Christmas trees.
Then there is the matter of noise, or the lack of it. No planes, no engines and when the Bonneville is turned off total silence descends over the whole street. There isn't even the sound of air conditioning humming on a cool winter night.
In the part of town west of White Street known as Old Town, the city's Historical Architecture Review Committee lays down rules for what can and cannot be done to these homes. It's actually trickier than at first might appear and as one can surmise, HARC is the source of lots of controversy. For instance one source of irritation has been HARC's requirements that windows be made of suitable materials that are in keeping with the historical theme. However home owners anxious to use modern hurricane resistant materials have to stick to the historically authentic renovations. I get the best of both worlds: the opportunity to enjoy these preserved homes and also to go home and bolt on my hurricane shutters as the next storm heads our way...
And to close, the historic Fleming House, all balconies and strings of lights just sitting there all night long, waiting for someone to come by and appreciate the historical serenity of these quiet streets. And when I get back to the Bonneville I can fire it up and take off with only a slight chance of disturbing the lightest of sleepers. I get to go where my less acoustically sensitive brethren make a great deal of rumbling and piss off the slumbering residents with their altered exhausts. Noisy motorcycles, another source of communal irritation in the sensitive, narrow streets of Key West. America's hardest town to live quietly in.
Bob was an electronics engineer tremendously proud of his employee number 22 with Tandem Corporation, a pioneer of the Silicon Valley revolution in California's Santa Clara Valley. He wa salso a keen Ham radio operator W4RFU, and spent hours at his desk onboard Freya with his electronics. I was fond of noting that cruising brought us together and made us firm friends despite our different social, political and career backgrounds. He was like a father for me when we were out sailing. In 2004, cruising the Bahamas he helped rebuild our water maker on our cabin table, his patience and perseverance a shining example to an impatient young wretch like me. 
Bob seen here in another picture from his website showing him with his wife Barb in the back alongside her sister Anita, celebrating his 70th birthday. He died in Arkansas February 27th 2008. He was 71 years old.
They are nice enough units offering garage space underneath and a price tag I believe of around $180,000 for a one bedroom. They are part of a luxury deal because this isn't a charity operation. The larger development is called the Steam Plant, because that is what it was before they decided to build apartments:
The low cost units look like quite a deal to me, but the Steam Plant luxury apartments are supposed to sell for several millions each and they have all the penthouse bells and whistles, including I'm told individual elevators from the garages. Its quite the lump, which isn't surprising when you know that this was actually a power plant supplying the city of Key West with life enhancing energy.
And that, in the long version, is where the term Toxic Triangle comes from. The power plant had to spew its effluent somewhere and there is tidal water nearby, across the street actually.
There was a time, not so long ago that people lived on pleasure boats tied up along this waterfront, and it didn't cost a thing. Of course there were no amenities but inasmuch as the basin is protected from wind and wave to the south by downtown Key West , and to the north by the Coastguard Base it was a good place to tie up out of the rougher waters of the main harbor. It still is for the few commercial boats that continue to tie up there. Behind them lies the US Coastguard Base where the coasties keep their cutters:
The base entrance is at the end of Trumbo Road:
The Toxic Triangle isn't locked in everyone's memory as a foul blot on Key West's history, not at all. I spoke with Carol, a colleague of my wife's and she remembers coming down here for picnics and to go swimming. She thinks of this sylvan spot as a sort of public swimming pool, crystal clear waters and a good spot to relax.
This is also the spot whence the Sunset Key landing craft takes off to haul moving vans and garbage trucks and delivery vehicles across to the luxury island. I actually took the trip over there a few years ago helping to deliver furniture. The development of Sunset Key generated its own controversy when the city took control of the Navy's old Tank Island, so called because of the (unused) fuel storage tanks on the deserted fill island, and sold the island and the mainland waterfront to the Hilton developer for all of eleven million dollars . When the landing craft was being serviced in the boat yard to take over haulage duties for the new and exclusive development the yard workers baptized the vessel and painted a new name on its bulky stern. "Tank Island Whore" was what they painted to express their disdain for the resort. Apparently the name was spotted by the new owner of the island and there was unhappiness all round. Nevertheless when I see the craft plowing across the harbor in a welter of foam, the unfortunate name keeps popping, unbidden, into my mind. 
Its hard to imagine anything other than yet another development of expensive homes taking the School District's place and that will be something else for us to look forward to. Meanwhile the big yellow buses come and go.
And across the way is a development that sprang up almost a decade ago, as far as I can remember. It was an Argentine company of all things that put in a bid to develop a ferry terminal in Key West and on the riverfront in downtown Fort Myers on Florida's West Coast. The company, called Buquebus collapsed inevitably in the great financial meltdown that wrecked Argentina. and its legacy is two ferry terminals that are still known to some people by that peculiar name (pronounced: boo-kay-bus). The one in Fort Myers isn't used anymore as it is more efficient for the ferry to dock at Fort Myers beach as the Caloosahatchee River is a slow speed zone for 20 miles to downtown Fort Myers.
The Key West Ferry Terminal is a surprisingly modern facility, all steel and glass and light, though a bit of a hike to get to Duval Street if you are elderly and loaded with luggage, after your three hour ride from Fort Myers Beach. And across from the Ferry terminal is a monument to the man who first enabled easy mass tourism in Key West, Henry Flagler himself:
In the background you can see the panels painted by local youngsters to mask the construction detritus along Trumbo Road. Of course they reflect local conditions to some extent, though where the notion arose that a shark might nab a cat dockside, I'm sure I don't know:
Another day at the Toxic Triangle as it faces a fresh new incarnation, condos for all.
When Jan sent the invitation to take a sunset sail to celebrate Lucy's birthday I remembered what I had previously forgotten: that I hadn't been sailing in a long time. We sold our catamaran two years ago and that was after it hadn't left the dock in a year and that was when we got back from our Bahamas trip in 2004 I think. So it was past time to get under sail and even though my wife was away shopping I wanted to go and celebrate in style. Carol and Chuck had fun also, on the schooner Hindu celebrating Lucy's unspecified birthday: 
Oh well, I'll probably never know as teak and canvas and six miles per hour is more my waterborne speed. 
And the Angel of Cleanliness had the same reaction as Lori when my wife told her she was off to Tampa for a few days. "Oooh, excellent. Shopping!" In fact so keen were they to go shopping that my wife and her colleague left town early to put in some quality time at the outlet maul near Fort Myers. Its one of those things, shopping as recreation. Everyone on the island misses it. Except me.
And they also come with a handy little clip so you can secure them to your person or your purse. I have made a habit of overloading my Chico bags and they are very tough and durable. They dry instantly as they are made of nylon and they are very useful to carry all the crap that accumulates in a busy life, school books, left overs, even trash and they can be tossed in the washing machine with the laundry.
A couple of Chico bags in the saddlebags lend great versatility to the motorcycle-as-daily-pack mule concept. Plus they may be good for the planet, if you care. 
Bob lost a two stroke Vespa P125 to Hurricane Wilma and he was pining for a replacement. He's lucky Vespas command no market down here("Huh? I could get a Harley for that!") but with that cash my Bonneville is paid for. 
And my wife has promised that she'll let me ride her Vespa ET4 from time to time to ease the bitter loss.