South Florida is mostly sugarcane fields south of Lake Okeechobee, miles and miles of straight roads and waving green leaves. In the distance one can see factory cities, sugar cane plants that process the raw cane:
They belch smoke when they are processing and provide big black smudges of sky to alleviate the open beauty of the fields. Sugar cane is an appalling crop, it sucks the nutrients out of the soil requiring huge amounts of fertilizer to be poured into the soil annually. The harvesting of the cane is such hazardous and horrendous work the companies import labor from the Caribbean (Jamaica principally) to wear armor in the hundred degree heat and slash at the cane with machetes. All this and the industry gets huge subsidises to make it viable. And the fertilizer runs off into Florida Bay and the coral reefs of the Keys. The fields are picturesque though...
Lake Okeechobee is the second largest freshwater lake in the nation, second only to Lake Superior. However prolonged drought combined with an excessively precautionary draining of the lake before hurricane season has left the place almost dry. I looked over the top of the levee and could see no water, just miles of reeds. Riding round the lake all one can see is a high berm of grass:
The weather for my trip was about perfect. It was about 80 degrees but south Florida was swept by cooling breezes all day long and at times I was almost (almost!) chilled, by the un-summer like breeze. The Triumph ran strongly, humming along at 70 mph along the dead straight roads. I kept stopping off to take pictures and ease my butt, because the seat, though authentic for a 1960's looking motorcycle is a bit hard.
Central Florida is a very rural, very different from coastal Florida and this area is home to trucks and tractors:
Moore Haven, county seat of Glades County was ravaged by the great hurricane of 1935, the one that trashed the railroad in Matecumbe Key, and the town itself appears never to have recovered completely. They have built a rather attractive waterfront walkway with trees and benches in a park like atmosphere: 
And the waterway itself is a cross-Florida stopping place much favored by traveling boaters. Though most land oriented tourists rarely bother to come inland to see these places...
Further north the state becomes less tropical, no longer frost free and filled with rolling hills and orange groves. Indeed Florida is bisected by a limestone spine that rises dozens, dozens I tell you, of feet above sea level. So much so they have turned Highway 17, a roadway that criss-crosses Highway 27 into a scenic route. It is scenic too. Check this out, a view across a valley! 
Hillcrest Heights indeed, and I keep insisting Florida isn't flat. This is the land of rolling hills, open parkland masquerading as cow pastures and gorgeous pine forests. I was in the middle of orange grove country which is where your winter Florida fruit comes from, these funky little trees:
And when they crush the fruit as they load it into trucks, fruit laboriously handpicked by emigrant pickers, the air is redolent with the smell of fresh squeezed orange:
Central Florida is also the home of retirees, less wealthy perhaps or less attuned to urban life. they come to towns called Winter Haven and Frostproof to spend their winters in tiny cottages or immobile homes, the retirement they always dreamed of. And they may be far, relatively from tidal waters, but they build their own beaches and docks around the many fresh water lakes that dot central Florida:
Friday was a great day in the saddle for me, swooping hills, winding roads, empty of traffic and mine to enjoy in perfect weather. My class is fun and i am learning plenty of good stuff so when the tourists come to Key West to fall off their scooters they will get better service than ever from the bozo who answers 9-1-1... oh, and I learned how to download pictures ( rather at random I'm afraid) on the hotel computer. Well, would you look at that?
But the theory was that if the state made it two lanes in each direction it would aid and abet development as it would allow more people to evacuate within state guidelines. One way of putting a brake on development in the Keys is by calculating how many people can get to "safety" off the islands within 24 hours. Local officials work the numbers to accommodate developers anyway but the Stretch will remain two lanes wide when all is said and done, creating ample opportunity for road rage and tailgating:
I will continue to favor the Card Sound alternative and its one dollar toll.
Homestead saw a fair bit of prosperity in the 1990's on the coat tails of the wild land speculation of the housing bubble and lots of farmland was gobbled up by little box houses at inflated prices. Nowadays enterprising developers are staving off bankruptcy by turning the tracts into Section 8, federally subsidized rental housing, rendering those formerly $400,000 mansionettes almost worthless, the ones that did sell. Downtown Homestead continues along unperturbed slumbering gently in the 1950s:
Unlike Florida City Homestead has retained a proper downtown, populated by mom and pop (mama y papi) stores and local restaurants.
One of the better known Mexican restaurants is El Toro Taco which despite the odd name serves up pretty decent Mexican grub. Its right on Krome Avenue at Second Street:
I usually head a little further down the street and chow at an unnamed hole in the wall which has a banda jukebox 
and six dollar dishes, which with a Styrofoam cup of rice milk called horchata, keeps the hungry motorcyclist nourished:
Homestead used to have a big air force base here but that got blown away, literally, by Hurricane Andrew and the minuscule reserve base doesn't do much for the local economy. I predict a future of somnolence for Homestead as the economy totters on for a while. Perhaps its charming period flavor has been saved from the wrecking ball:
Nice to visit and pause in if you are on your way home to the Keys, not perhaps as much fun if you are wondering where your next decent paying job is coming from.
I wanted to go in the garden and sit at the tile topped table, but I figured if someone looked out they'd throw eight different kinds of fit so I limited myself to picture taking and moved on.
I like the feel of air dried clothes and I hope the fabric will last a bit longer and get less shrivelled in the process. Plus its a green thing to do. I am nothing if not in the avantgarde. Very cool, that's me.
It's based on a play by Tennessee Williams, a writer who did actually spend a fair bit of time in Key West and the movie though not set in Key West was shot partially in the city. This is described as Front Street (actually Duncan Street in Key West, apparently) by the taxi driver of the unnamed Gulf Coast city (in Mississippi) where the action takes place:
There's a lot of indoor action though I should point out there is a car chase and a shoot out so there's something for everyone. Anna Magnani got best actress Oscar for her role in the 1955 film, playing a wild Sicilian emigrant who gets widowed and has to get her life back on track. Aside from the fact she bears a striking resemblance to my mother who's been dead these 35 years she plays a "pleasantly plump" (not my description) housewife who goes to pieces in a rather public and humiliating way. And she learned to speak English for the role.
Along comes a man, "the body of my husband with the head of a clown" played by Burt Lancaster who literally jumps for joy at their first date, which scene alone is worth the price of admission:
Its a movie filled with drama and shouting and misunderstandings, young love, old love and lots of banana trees and a couple of street scenes from Key West in the good old days. I was surprised by how little St Paul's Cathedral has changed since 1955 (in the film it became a Catholic church!) and I quite enjoyed the exotic dancers in a downtown bar wobbling gently and seen only from the waist down, their antics rapidly overshadowed by the mother of all cat fights. there was a lot about this movie I had forgotten. Not least the clown up a mast:
The young truck driver has to overcome not a few obstacles to hunt down his Sicilian flame the Baronessa Serafina delle Rose but her daughter played by the 30 year old (!) Marisa Pavan has a tough row to hoe too. Lots of tears.
It was a great romp and being as how Tennessee Williams wrote it there's no certainty how it will all end up, tears before bedtime or not. The chorus of Italian crones was the best touch of color of all, not least because they were real Italian speakers and let rip in their native tongue from time to time:
Rose Tattoo has been released in a new digital version which has to be good news as I understand video cassette players are getting as old and out of date as I am. I just wish there was a real crowd like this to enliven a hot summer afternoon in Old Town. I guess the cinematic version will just have to do.
Yesterday Boondoocks was holding a MG car show, which was pretty enough:
I'm thinking it was a secret plot to decimate the population of elderly MGs in the southeastern United States. How else do you explain the offer of free beer for their owners:
The negative about living in the 'burbs is that one's friends who live in the Big City 25 miles away tend to be reluctant to get in their cars and drive out to visit and tipple and find themselves subsequently unable to drive home. I enjoy the commute, not least because it gives me a reason to ride the Bonneville. When I lived in Key West I got rock fever, with nary an excuse to get out and see the bridges and the waters alongside Highway One. Besides Ramrod Has most of what one needs day to day. Plants:
...quiet back streets, with my bicycle substituting ably for my Triumph:
Not forgetting the best deli north of Key West for a good long ways. It's part of the Five Brothers empire, an "empire" of two stores, the other being the deli on Southard Street in Key West. This one is named rather unimaginatively, Five Brothers Two:
For those without docks of their own the Looe Key Resort will provide a bed waterside overlooking the motel's own docks. Or better yet for those seeking a snorkeling experience Looe Key has a boat, what captain's call a head boat:
I don't pay a lot of attention to all this stuff, seeing as how I live here (not at the dive shop) but there;s plenty going on, on Ramrod Key:
And if Boondocks isn't enough bikers (and cage drivers) can stop in here for live music from time to time:
And booze in the other World Famous Tiki Bar:
And, in between pouring the beer they advocate paying attention to motorcyclists, because we are everywhere, sometimes on pedal bikes too:
When I decided to settle in the Keys it seemed obvious that one would want to live in Key West, in Old Town of course, caught up in the romance and beauty of the narrow streets, greenery and cute houses and all that. The reality is that Key west is noisy and cramped and crowded and romantic but I like riding my motorcycle, I like the peace and quiet of my neighborhood and I like having lots of shaded parking for my Bonneville, even if underneath my stilt house isn't a proper garage:
Gas is around $3:75 for a gallon of regular, pretty much the same as elsewhere and living in Old Town within cycling distance makes sense if your only alternative is a cage. For a lot of people that convenience, and the excitement of urban life is enough. For everyone else God knows, there's lots of real estate for sale, on every street:
Prices aren't dropping though which is a little weird. Sellers still expect to get more than half a million for a two bedroom twelve hundred square foot house. I don't see many of them getting sold. Any of them, anywhere. 
There's a bench on my street where the drunk hung out for a while but the neighbor across the way was raking it up recently, reordering the plants so we can ride by and admire the symmetry, not that I've ever see anyone else actually use it. It looks nice.
Which should be enough for all of us.