The question from a reader was: How is the palm weaver doing? I noted a couple of weeks ago that Michael Beaudet had had a little adventure floating off to sea in his disabled sailboat. The latest is that he is doing okay. 
It's fantasy Fest weekend in Key West and some people have been worrying that not enough people would show up. This is the city's major fund raiser to sustain the tourist economy through the end of hurricane season, which ends officially on November 30th. People have been muttering about low hotel vacancies and the fear has been that the city would throw a party and no one would show up. When I came home from work this morning the 200 block of Duval Street was closed to traffic while public works crews swept up the sea of broken bottles littering the street. Key West's commercial recycling program in action...Michael was one of those worrying about attendance when I bumped into him in front of La Concha Hotel:
He took off on Bike week to get away from the loud motorcycles disrupting his place of work and while he was sailing off the Marquesas Keys his mast took a dive and left him wallowing in huge waves with no means to get home again. He has not an ounce of spare fat on him as you can see but he held it together for five long days and nights sucking down mayonnaise packets and flavoring his rain water with hot sauce as he waited for rescue. Finally a military jet spotted him and the US Coastguard helicopter directed the National Parks Service patrol boat from the Dry Tortugas to his location. In the 45 minutes it took him to get back to land Michael said he wolfed down five meals-ready-to-eat. Now he's back on his corner weaving palms.
He's living on land at the moment with a friend in New Town and business is reasonable. He''s been a fixture on Key West's streets for a long time and he is by nature an optimistic man, generally cheerful and sometimes that comes as a surprise. He did have a complaint though, noting he was recently attacked by a palm tree as he harvested his raw materials:
It's hard to have a conversation with Michael because he has a lot of friends who stop by for a chat... and he is gregarious:
He's been weaving for longer than he cares to admit but sometimes things go wrong and he can't stophimself from pointing it out! "See, I drew blood on my leg..."
I had no plans to face the crowds downtown last night as my wife had organized some friends to come round for a barbecue before I went in to work for some overtime. Fantasy Fest is an all-leave-cancelled holiday in Key West for the PD, and we get help from half a dozen Federal and State agencies to keep some sort of order on the streets on the night of the parade. Michael planed on being there, in his own costume obeying the law as he does. Women's nipples must be covered, at least by body paint, and no genitals, thusly:
And I am entirely sure there will have been much more of the same on display on Duval Street last night. The economy may be plummeting but in the Roman tradition of Saturnalia Key West still likes to keep things topsy turvy and be a refuge for a night, for former Stock market millionaires. Come on down, the waters are lovely. And if you need some palm frond sized equipment you know who to look for. My wife liked her more modest bowl and a rose to go with it.
Winter is coming and I can feel it, even though temperatures are still in the eighties and there is plenty of underlying humidity. The winds have been honking out of the east to fill a void created by a low over Texas and the winds have been cool and dry creating the illusion of a winter cold front. Winter is the time to go walking so that was what I did. All good walks start with a ride on a Triumph:
The old highway on the south side of Sugarloaf is now a wildlife area and they don't want Bonnevilles rumbling around there. Imagine that.
However this being the Keys it would be entirely possible to roll a motorized bicycle onto these miles of deserted roadway. There is a by pass to make it easy to get a bicycle onto the trail but motorbikes are out. 
It turns out you need wheels to explore this area as it is enormous. The road itself may have been abandoned but it's in excellent condition, even the gravel bit:
The first half mile or so leads up to a bridge which spans a canal which leads to a group of houses to the north, clustered near Highway One. The bridge itself is a solid structure covered in graffiti of course:
And anywhere there is a body of water in Florida there is someone dangling a hook in the hopes of snagging a fish. And there in the distance are the open waters of Hawk Channel more easily seen from upstairs:
At this early stage of the expedition it was sunny and breezy, with a little humidity in the air and it was a perfect afternoon to be out exploring. Looking north from the bridge the mysterious canal carved out of the living rock stretched away through the wilderness:
I was not alone either as there was a family enjoying a splendid afternoon romp with their dog:
But before I reached them on the horizon I found a wide junction in the road with a paved street leading off to the left, that is to the north. I decided to follow the paved road and see where it lead. The mangroves and scrub palms and buttonwoods were growing tall and wild on either side:
It was really quiet out in the roadway and I got a rather apocalyptic shudder down my back, walking along a perfectly serviceable road with no traffic, no sounds and no other signs of human life. I did find an old speed limit sign which was not applicable to my walking pace:
It didn't seem very fast to me, 35 for such a wide sweeping road but then I remembered the modern new straight-as-an-arrow highway across Sugarloaf Key is as broad and deserted as a runway, with a speed limit of just 30 miles per hour:
I had been trudging for the best part of thirty minutes when I started to wonder if perhaps I should turn around and head back. Clouds were starting to close in a bit overhead and the road kept just winding its way through the scrub, endlessly:
About the time i was ready to start bugging out, as unsatisfactory as that would be I saw a break in the bushes, which was my cue to follow a diversion. Boredom was banished and I started down the rabbit hole.
This VW Microbus was sitting there melting into its component parts, fading into the surroundings, like an icicle. It reminded me of my old '64 Bus that I drove all over California and Mexico when I was taken with the desire to go RV'ing on the cheap. Mine was a six volt model which meant it never wanted to start in anything cooler than perfect summer weather but it never actually stopped running. This one did, and its block and cylinders were scattered all around in the bushes. I wonder what happened? An orgy of frustration perhaps, or exhaustion at having to travel everywhere at an uncertain 54 miles per hour...They tell us metal trash will be around for hundreds of years, but not if that VW's rate of decomposition is anything to go by.
I kept going past the Bus and the skies seemed to grow increasingly wintery and cloudy as I strode on through the shrubbery.
Then I came across the canal as I was pretty sure I would. That meant if I turned left and headed south I would reach the bridge and the road back to the Bonneville. I started walking again. And I walked. And I walked. And I walked. And then I walked some more. It wasn't unpleasant, on the contrary I was enjoying the solitude and the outdoors after a long summer away from the back country.
It was almost like walking down a desert watercourse along side the canal. The ground was dry and dusty crunching underfoot and the going was easy. It was getting cloudier though and gave the impression it was going to rain soon. Had it been 50 degrees cooler it might have looked like an imminent snowstorm out of the low cloud cover. I kept walking. After about a half hour of this I expected at some point to see the bridge but it never appeared. The canal seemed to be in the rising tide stage of it's day as the water boiled along like a fast moving river, and I was walking in the opposite direction. Other than that there was no movement. Then I came to the bit I had been dreading, finding my path blocked. I came across a small lake that stretched from the canal all the way to the impenetrable mangroves to my left. I scouted around and could find no way around it. Well, bugger. Either I turned around to go the long way back, a 45 minute walk at least. Or... nothing else for it but to keep going; so I did: 
Luckily the water was warm, and I suppose I could have removed my shoes and socks but I had no idea where I was walking. The water rose up to cover my knees but I kept going and managed not to fall over. And wouldn't you know it, as soon as I got through the lake I saw this:
I got back to the bridge leaving a trail of muddy wet footprints and the fishermen were still out there killing fish, totally unaware of my perilous lone expedition facing all sorts of dangers:
And after a brief break in the cloud cover the clouds closed in again overhead, but I was off the bridge and heading for the barn like a Clydesdale smelling oats:
And then as I was closing in on the barricade at the entrance I caught another sign of winter lying by the side of the road:
This guy was sunning himself at the side of the road and didn't seem nearly as excited to see me as I was him. He was the second snake I'd seen out catching some rays in two days so I'm thinking it's getting cooler in the bushes for our cold blooded neighbors. For those of us with wet feet and and home to get to the time was good for the getting. So I got.
El Mocho on Stock Islands' main drag, Maloney Avenue, is the magnet for breakfast these days. They open at five in the morning and serve a mixture of American greasy spoon and Cuban delicacies till three in the afternoon.
Lunch at El Mocho is a massive affair, heaping piles of rice and black beans accompany the main course with sweet fried plantains to leave you stuffed and barely able to move... but this is the robust fare workers on Stock island have come to expect, and for well less than ten dollars too from the funky little hut a block away from the Tom Thumb convenience store and across the street from the last remaining independent home supply store on the island. This is a small corner of independent small business on Stock Island amid the mobile homes and dusty light industrial welding shops and carpenters and fishermen who all wait with bated breath hoping massive redevelopment slated for the island is held off by the economic misery generated by the derivatives collapse. We heard recently that the frou-frou Harbor Yacht Club situated in the new marina that replaced Peninsular, has folded, though the developers promise it will reopen in January, so clearly all is not well in the world of gentrification. In El Mocho the Cuban family that has owned it continues to serve up what the people want:
Eggs, bacon, and Cuban toast already buttered, cafe con leche, no soy milk low fat options here, in an atmosphere that would be no atmosphere were Formica and chrome Naugahyde furniture not nostalgic.
The lights are bright and the food is served in a hurry from the kitchen. Each of the half dozen tables wedged into the misshapen room gets a minimum of condiments, the basic oil/vinegar for your salad, ketchup, hot sauce, salt and pepper:
If you are on your way to work and barely awake put in your order and when it arrives piping hot in just a few minutes you put your head down and dig in:
Spanish is the lingua franca here but English is also spoken, perfectly fluently if masked by a smile and thick Cuban accent. El Mocho is a classic old fashioned hub and the espresso machine is the tool that creates coffee but also serves as the spot where information is traded:
My wife and I come here often enough to be greeted warmly and with a hint of recognition, but I am not one of those that is very able at the hail-fellow-well-met routine, in the places I go to eat. If no one knows my name that's fine by me so I cannot give you the family's story that runs this place for our benefit. I'm not alone in my reticence, reading the paper is a favorite way to accompany some breakfasts:
I first used to come to El Mocho years ago when I was hauling out my sailboat for maintenance down at Peninsular. One year we spent almost an entire winter it felt like sitting up on the dusty pea rock of the boatyard with a task list as long as a battleship's and El Mocho was where we came to escape the tedium and filth of the boatyard. It is not atmospheric in the traditional sense, but it isn't fake either:
The walls under the bright fluorescent lights carry a few modest period ads:
And some autographed pictures brought in as a token of appreciation by fliers far from home training at the nearby Boca Chica Naval Air Station. It's not rare to see the military in here looking for a bacon and egg sandwich and a con leche:
With the closure of the Vieques training ground off Puerto Rico, Key West has become one of two major training facilities for fliers in the US (Elgin Air Base in the Florida panhandle is the other) thanks to proximity to open water and mild weather easy to fly in year round. And because the US has its military fingers in pies all round the world our allies come here to get training too from time to time. This picture was signed by fliers from 433 Escadrille of Quebec and there was another similar from 4 Air Wing in Alberta nearby:
But for the most part the dress code at El Mocho is informal, and that's the way I like it too:
El Mocho reminds me of places I've eaten across Latin America, no air conditioning, no glass in the windows as a matter of fact, hot in summer, cool in winter, a cash only economy that keeps prices down and accessible. The porch out front is reserved for the regulars who gather like their counterparts in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico (or Cuba I'm sure) and talk as they suck down their Latin espressos, known in Cuban as buchi (mouthfuls). Through the grille that serves as a window I could see one patron repeatedly flipping a small paper cup to his lips:
Cubans order coladas, which are half a dozen buchis in a large paper cup, then they distribute the thimble sized cups among friends and pour the coffee out in rounds and throw them down the hatch. It's powerful stuff with lots of sugar (lots!) so they are well wired for the morning... All too soon it's time to go, my wife on her Vespa (sporting her red Turkey sticker she got on her trip) to the college on the north side of the island and me to bed by Triumph:
But before we left the haven I took one last picture of the Cubans arguing about nothing and watching the world go by:
Say what you like but to me this really is a last piece of Old Key West, unselfconsciously real. Vaya con Dios.
She was glad enough to see me and she wagged and wiggled just a little and let me scratch her neck and rub her ears in my attempts to give her relief from her awful plastic torture ring. I spent a half hour sitting and talking to her, in a room that smelled to my inadequate human nostrils, of hospitals, not least because that is where we were:
Lula Mae seemed almost relieved to settle back into her bed, exhausted by the contact. I wanted to say hello to her neighbor but one doesn't want to aggravate some unknown condition or other. She looked like she could have used a visit:
Lula Mae is long since home and mending. One of the lucky dogs in a world where animals get short shrift. A hospital as equipped and modern as this would be quite human, never mind humane in many parts of the world. 
I don't think this house is going to be loaded onto a trailer and moved, I believe it is simply being raised to get a new, and perhaps proper, foundation. Certainly it appears to need one, as it sits looking rather undignified, up in the air above White Street. Key West has an above ground cemetery as noted elsewhere and this is the reason why:
It's not just the dead that need to be kept above the water table on "the Rock."
I may be wrong but I couldn't help but chuckle to myself as I walked the new street. It has the undefinable air of being something of a passive aggressive statement by the city, as it does open a fresh access to the waterfront which is important to the Navy Base whose Commander has demanded twenty-four hour access to his property. However, while obeying the letter of the agreement with Truman Annex, the city has created a route that defies the ability of any large vehicle, military or otherwise to negotiate the corners. Thus it is, Southard Street remains the only viable waterfront access for trucks. Which is not anymore the city's problem as the agreement to end the lawsuit with the Annex has been adhered to. If the Navy wants 24 hour access for trucks, that will be their problem. A solution worthy of the machinations of the former city manager Julio Avael. I am impressed.
And this left over from my cruise ship pictures reminded me that they still want us to keep on shopping to keep the economy afloat:
I was on my home one evening and I stopped on Sugarloaf to photograph a sunset (see the next paragraph) and I got overwhelmed by a patriotic moment. No nation puts out more flags than the US. If any Cubans were to parachute onto the airstrip at Sugarload Key in their quest for freedom they'd be sure which country they'd landed in...
She was 56 and spent much of her adult life in Key West. My buddy Curt taught her the fine art of living on the water and she spent a good few years living on her Chris Craft anchored near Rat Key. I took this picture of our sailboat anchored nearby sometime around 2000 after my wife and I arrived here from our trip from California via the Panama Canal:
For me the half mile row into Garrison Bight was generally a pain and I was extremely glad when I organized an outboard. Cheryl disagreed:
Curt was always a fanatical rower seen here with Cheryl's dog his stalwart passenger. He still lives at anchor but even he these days has an outboard:
I look back at that time and wished I had taken more pictures, which makes me glad I've got it together finally to do just that. Better late, as they say.... 
...than never.