"Marriage is the triumph of hope over experience." That quotation I have most often seen attributed to Winston Churchill, and at first glance you might be forgiven for wondering what that has to do with Key West's current predicament. Here's what happens before a hurricane shows up. At first people start out full of piss and vinegar "I've never evacuated..." "They never get it right..." "I've never had a problem staying at home..." And then, as the storm gets closer and the "cowards" have lined up on the Highway to leave, and the TV is threatening the imminent arrival of the Storm Of The Century ("This is gonna be a bad one...") that's when the resolve weakens and perhaps, maybe, possibly it's time to wonder if they should actually consider evacuating. Then starts the wild clean up and preparation. And people do the damnedest things:
I mean, do you suppose duct tape will do anything useful? And whoever thinks to tape the mailbox has too much time on their hands and too much anxiety. Or this:
This boat was tied to the house by pieces of rope that I can only imagine are there to ease the nerves of the owner. I'd rename this boat Samson just in case a strong gust uses the boat and trailer to bring down the house. Or snaps the ropes like banjo strings. This guy, my neighbor tied his pride and joy to the power pole, thus putting the sub division at risk of prolonged post-Ike darkness:
On the other hand these people are sadly misinformed if they think trash pickup will take place as scheduled Tuesday morning:
I took a bike ride before I went into work yesterday to enjoy a beautiful serene summer afternoon in my neighborhood. I've passed this pontoon boat more than once but this was the first time I noticed the name brand:
I don't suppose anybody in Elkhart Indiana has even heard of Ike, and they probably weren't sitting around on the factory floor at Godfrey Marine saying: "Hmm, lets call this model the Hurricane so when people in Florida are about to buy the farm under a storm they will enjoy a wry laugh when they look at their boat." There was a sailor in evidence on one of the lateral canals:
The theory of hurricane survival for a boat in the water is to tie off with as many lines (ropes) as you can find. Then you leave enough slack that the boat can rise with the surge and go as far inland as you can and hope for the best. In 2005 a colleague of mine failed to follow the last piece of advice and instead of staying with his mother in Key Largo they found him after the storm dead, drowned in the cabin of his semi-submerged sailboat in Safe Harbor.
I do not think, based on current projections that Ike poses the threat that has been hyped up by the weather services and television "news." I have done what I can to make sensible provision for the arrival of a tropical storm or possibly a hurricane of Category One dimensions or possibly an outside chance of a Category Two. But it's all a crap shoot. Storms are unpredictable and what worked last time may not work this time, or next time.
This person sensibly cut down coconuts, potential missiles in 100 mile-per-hour winds. However it would have been nice to chop them down at the start of the hurricane season so they would have been safely trucked to the landfill and mulched already. They are still potential missiles
on the ground. At gas stations the lines have diminished finally but people are still loading up with fuel. I fill my jugs in July, add Stabil and store them with the generator. The fuel lines these past couple of days have been exasperating, endless and unnecessary. There's been plenty of fuel for everyone. I try to keep the tanks in the cars on the high side of half during hurricane season, but it was an absolute pain to find an available pump for three days.
Gas stations are starting to close down now but there are still fuel pumps available for those in town. Indeed I saw a tanker driving into Key West just after midnight as I was on my way home early this morning. I know the guy who runs the Shell at North Roosevelt and First doesn't believe in evacuating and he will be open till the very last minute and beyond for the true procrastinators...
Some people are too compulsive for their own good and I have to confess I have never seen this before:
I'm sure dozens will write in to let me know that they do it all the time but I have never seen color coordinated storm shutters before. And it will be a cold day in Hell before you see me painting my aluminum shutters, I promise you that. Mine are up early and come down as soon as I get home after the storm but they are all natural:
Of course my shutters
au naturel go quite nicely with my understated gray vinyl siding and white accents, don't you think?
I was surprised to see that the Looe Key Tiki bar was closed, which is a sign of how fearful everyone seems to be this time. You'd think they'd be out boozing doing the hurricane party thing, but no. However if you lacked wheels to evacuate there was another option. Buy this car, forlornly for sale at the shuttered business:
Modern plastic signs don't do so well in strong winds so they have come up with the idea of straps to keep them together:
You'll see the brightly colored straps on bus stop advertising and small business signs everywhere. I also saw a guy taking down a billboard along Highway One when I was out riding the Bonneville to the storage locker. Personally I wouldn't mind if they never put the big old sheets of plastic back up again, but they will right after Ike has gone by and we need to be encouraged to spend and buy, once more. Ah, normality!
I am seeing more shutters on buildings and less plywood which is the old fashioned way to keep missiles and storm debris out of homes and businesses:
Frequently people don't bother to cover the doors, a last minute oversight which can be fatal as all it takes is one piece of glass to shatter to allow the storm inside. Looe Key Dive shop isn't one of those, there was one last piece of wood lying on the ground ready for final installation.
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I am ready to be done with hurricanes for a while and I have a bunch of essays lined up about ordinary every day life in Key West, and when I passed this sign I wondered how it was that I had never bothered to notice it before. It would have fit nicely among my recent pursuit of Key's signage:
Quickie wedding anyone? How romantic right before the storm... There are other ways to cope with the stress, like this lady who was busy doing a bit of light gardening in her yard in 91 degree heat:
I suspect salt laden surge waters from the storm might do a nice job of killing the wild grasses in her pea rock but she calms her nerves by doing some hoeing and weeding, even as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rape and pillage below the horizon.
Meanwhile the waters of Newfound Harbor were as blue and as tranquil as ever and all I could think was what a shame my wife is in Istanbul (having a great time she says especially as it's Ramadan and the crowds at night are wild) and we aren't out taking a swim together:
It's still calm before the storm! Lucky us, we happy few, still here in the Fabulous Florida Keys.
Storm preparations are cancelled and the Police Department has returned to it's normal schedule. Suave! I am working tonight but not with the other shift that loves to gawp at the TV, a noisy intrusive distraction which is permitted in the communications center during storms for the "news." I am a happy camper because I like my own shift and now I can look forward to a serene and peaceful shift tonight. Hurricane Ike is projected to pass almost 200 miles west of Key West after it leaves Cuba and its the turn of the Gulf Coast to fret, and they have much to fret about unhappily. Last night, Highway One at Boca Chica, 'round midnight:
I have been thinking for some time that the city and county should stop issuing evacuation orders. It would be tremendously controversial and it will never happen, but it seems to me we are about to go through an endless period of recrimination and second guessing and anxious political leaders can never defend themselves adequately by saying they did the best they could with the information they had at the time. People lose money in evacuations and naysayers gain credence about leaving the islands at all during a storm threat. I have to say here I figured this was what it was going to come to as the track kept moving west. I never was impressed by Ike's size as a threat to Key West. Read my earlier posts if you think I am using hindsight!
Currently lots of people remember the misery of Wilma, and all the flooding, so in a knee jerk response they... take their garbage to the side of a deserted road hoping it will miraculously get washed away... before they got the hell out of Dodge! People! And indeed parts of my island are already comfortably under water from it just being normal rainy season. Imagine a storm surge on top of this:
It seems to me the city and county should provide information about what services will likely be available and let everyone decide for themselves. That's more or less what happens now when a "mandatory" evacuation is ordered, but it just sounds draconian to a population that is not trained to listen carefully and pay attention.
A mandatory evacuation just means rescue services won't come and help you until the storm dies down, it also means the hospital is closed and there are no support services of any kind. People think that's okay until things start to go wrong and then they tend to get a little het up and they call the police department and start demanding we do something. As it is people will fill the Citizen's Voice columns with second guessing and complaints about the ineffective bureaucrats instead of just being happy that this time we weren't slammed by a Category Four. I'm glad I'm so far down the totem pole I don't have to justify difficult decisions taken under impossible circumstances. Imagine the headlines if the city didn't order an evacuation and someone died in a storm...
I went for a bike ride this morning (still getting my exercise dear, please note!) and was delighted to learn, when I got home we're back to normal so now I've got to go and do some homework. My fondest hope is that the college be open for classes Wednesday. 
I dropped the wife off at the airport this morning amidst a huge gaggle of Turkey bound women gathered at the unloading area and I got a nasty snit from the Sheriff's deputy telling me to move my car along. See if I send help next time she asks for it at two o'clock in the morning... Wouldn't it be great if I could pick and choose who to send back up to?
I read the mystery and found it to be a decent workmanlike job. It's set in contemporary Key West and follows a more or less believable plot involving drinking, killing, boats and Cubans. The first person narrative is peppered with insider commentary on Key West, and I have to confess I found the separation of tourists from us locals to be tedious. I suppose it's necessary to give readers who don't live in Key West the feeling of insider status. Never did I live in a community where being a local conferred so much status inside the heads of some people. And the good writer takes notice of that fact.
Not really, we're just two white men with beards you might say. If you need a Key West fix this winter check out his novel. It will put you right in the streets of Key West for a few fast paced hours, and it makes more narrative sense than my blog.
So Key West by night takes on a slightly old fashioned air. It puts me in mind of Prague in 1995 as modernization started to creep across eastern Europe. The streets of the city at that time were darker and old fashioned looking, lacking as they did the inevitable gloss of modern encouragements to shop and spend.
I find it somewhat surprising this massive structure is still a real estate office on White Street. The bloom is definitely off the market, and I suppose one could argue that only the strong flourish in these hard real estate times. Laundry will always be a necessary chore, alleviated only by the superb profile of the Pegasus parked in front. It's actually my winged horse, my Bonneville:
I wanted more time on my early morning lunch break. I wanted to sit and watch no one passing by on White Street at three in the morning. Instead I stood in the middle of the broad roadway that divides Old Town from everywhere else in Key West and took a picture of Glynn Archer School:
I wonder what awfulness would happen should they turn out the lights and plunge the stone structure into darkness. Instead we burn electrons for some mysterious purpose. Across the street the National Weather Service was burning the midnight oil with reason:
We have storms barrelling down on South Florida from all angles across the Atlantic, Hanna heading north, while Hurricane Ike appears set to head across the Bahamas straight at us (gulp!), as Josephine possibly peters out into a depression in the middle of nowhere. When interviewed by the Key West Citizen the meteorologists said they will hide in the toilets in the center of this building should a major hurricane promise us a direct hit.
It seems a bit undignified but the National Weather Service tells us that is the only safe place inside their building should a Category Five storm hit them head on...Maybe I shall throw dignity to the wind and do the same at the Police Station when the Big One hits. Even the light breezes blowing across the Keys from all that Atlantic storm activity look pretty busy when viewing a palm tree under a street light through a slow shutter speed:
All motion, no direction. While standing around in the middle of the street I notice that even from the hub of White Street at Truman Avenue there is no visible traffic. White and Truman is where the all night gas stations are and they also offer fried chicken and a gathering place for night owls, so its a well traffic'ed spot:
There's time enough in the middle of White Street to take a picture of this decorated traffic light control box at United Street:
I used my flash to make sure the last all-Cuban bakery in town really is dead:
La Dichosa in Spanish means lucky (woman), and perhaps the bakery was lucky to stay in business as long as it did. It's departure leaves a hole in not a few home and restaurant tables around town. But Sandy's Cafe is still going strong, a place where you can buy food and con leches all the time. Their decision to stay open 24 hours added immeasurably to the food options in town for night shift workers, from cheese toast and coffee or the usual Cuban selections including Mexican specialties, as the staff are actually not Cubans, as their Spanish indicates they are from south of the Rio Bravo del Norte:
Night shift workers include, need I point out, cops from the nearby cop shop:
Whence I repaired at the end of my lunch break.