It was about time, but the job is done at last, and now I can count the revolutions of my engine as I ride. When the new Triumph factory at Hinckley in England brought out the original 800cc Bonneville in 2000 the machine was viewed as being a little lacking as it didn't come with a tachometer, the instrument that measures the engine revolutions.
Traditionally, motorcycles have been supplied with this tool to help the rider determine the best gear to be in for the speed of the motorcycle. I don't remember buying more than two motorcycles that didn't have one, and then I bought my basic Bonneville in 2007. This was the "upgraded basic" Bonneville, with the 865cc engine but still no tach...So I decided I wanted a tach for my Bonneville and my wife came through for my birthday and I bought the little round object illustrated above from Performance Triumph USA's catalogue, priced at $200. It's illuminated at night too:
The T100 (Fancy) Bonneville's tach is also available from Triumph but it costs $325 and what's worse requires one to lose the rather attractive black instrument fascia and replace it with the bright aluminum of the T100 "upgrade":
I decided to go with the "retro" upgrade instead, with the smaller instrument that fits alongside the original fascia. It only took Jiri at JK Motorsports two weeks to install it for me... 
...his excuse was that he was rushing to fix his race bike for a meet at the Homestead track...whatever! I was delighted with the final result:
The Parabellum windscreen does a great job of keeping the wind and weather off me and the instruments, and the windshield mounting system is simple and solid even though in this picture it looks rather bulky as it surrounds the instruments in the middle. I now have a plethora of instruments, speedo, tach, clock and air temperature gauge. My, we are sophisticated now on the carburetted basic Bonneville.
The Triumph is known for sounding like it needs a sixth gear and riders of the Bonneville frequently complain that they would like one more cog. Personally I like the gearbox exactly as the ratios come from the factory, but there is no doubt the tach has a useful purpose to serve.
I now know that when the speedo shows 70mph and the tach shows 4,000rpm I am in top gear and cruising comfortably and economically in 5th gear. When the tach shows 3,000 rpm I am in the same gear as the speed indicated- above 50mph I'm in fifth, above 40mph I'm in fourth, and above 30mph I'm in third, very suave I'm sure. I think I am congentially compulsive.
The question then might be, if one wants a tach so desperately why not buy the T100 over the basic Bonneville, especially as engine size and everything in the performance area is identical? Well, the T100 was considered an upgraded model in the carburettor era when I bought mine. The T100 has chrome engine covers which I'm not a fan of, especially in salt air environments, it also comes with two color paint jobs; plus there's the matter of the giant tach and the fact that the T100 commanded a $2,000 premium over the basic Bonneville. However nowadays, in the new 2009 line up, the only Bonneville that comes with wire spokes and traditional "pea shooter"exhausts is the T100. This is the basic SE Bonneville from the Triumph factory website:
The basic Bonneville called the SE, is aimed at a younger demographic with alloy wheels, reverse cone exhausts and smaller wheel size to accommodate the petite among us. I am very fond of my old fashioned carburetted Bonneville, at last complete with tachometer...
So with my wife at a staff meeting and my chores done I thought I'll take a little ride and see what I could picture. It was a beautiful winter's evening, cool air blowing strongly from the east and clear skies and a strong patch of pink and orange to the west. There were lots of motorcyclists, cruisers, rumbling up and down the highway.
I stopped a couple of miles from home and parked the Bonneville next to the new Niles Channel Bridge that arches 40 feet over the water next to the old, flat 
Well, I thought, I'd better get the picture taken as the sun was rushing to the horizon.
Nice enough but perhaps one without the intrusion of human ingenuity?
That was more like it. But where did that bloody bush come from? I realised I was running out of time if I was going to catch the golden orb above the mangroves of 
But between those two images I met this:
And I hit it stoutly with my tennis shoe, propelling me forward onto my hands and knees and forcing me to launch the camera and gorilla pod into a sublime arc across the pavement. The camera, amazingly, still works okay even though it now sports a big scratch across the back. I amazingly, still work okay even though I managed to graze my right palm, my left elbow and my left knee which started to pour blood in imitation of a very active and scarlet volcano:
"Wow!" I thought, "I should have stayed home!" But then immediately I realised that was an unworthy thought. I stood there dripping blood and stinging like a 51 year old version of 18 year old me when I laid my first "real" motorcycle down. I was doing hairpins up a hill in central Italy in 1976 on my 350cc 
In this case too no one was around to witness my stupidity so I took a few more pictures before darkness closed in, which happily would also hide my stupidity and then the phone rang. "Great," I thought, "now what? Do I tell her the truth or hide it?" In the event it was my buddy Bruce from Santa Fe. I wondered why he was calling me at that very moment. What a coincidence! Nice to hear a friendly voice through the dripping blood! "Well," he said, "You called me!" We figured my phone must have decided to call him as my parabola ended and I probably landed on the phone which must have felt compelled to call for help.
We shared a laugh at my temporary predicament while I fished around a for a rag in my saddlebag to contain the spreading pool of blood which threatened the top of my sock...by now it was getting dark so I hoped that I could get home with no one being any the wiser. Because you know they'd see a bloody elbow and a bloody knee and start making groaning noise about those dangerous motorcycles....
This whole kerfuffle was actually planned a as a response to the recent essays discussing risks and riding techniques recently posted on Scooter in the Sticks and Musings of an Intrepid Commuter. My point? Walking can be bloody dangerous too, so perhaps we should wear safety gear all the time, not just when riding those nasty dangerous two wheelers.
The East Martello Museum, of which I wrote previously, has a wing devoted to local artists, and of those two in particular struck my fancy. Stanley Papio lived in the Upper Keys and settled there after he had a career as a welder. His artwork developed from his passion for found objects and he took a fancy to welding them together to create objects of whimsy:
The story goes that Papio's neighbors were none too excited about his welded junk lining the Highway, but he didn't much care it seems.
And the way these things go, before too long the welder became an icon:
And the East Martello has a number of these "culturally important artworks" in it's collection:
The other artist on permanent display is Mario Sanchez who died in 2005 and who, like Papio came to his art later in life. Sanchez took to making wood carvings, intaglios, of Key West life. Including a picnic at the East Martello Tower:
He carved street scenes from memory, and made three dimensional the Key West of his childhood, remembering the merchants, the buildings and the activities of Key West long ago. These wood blocks are much more vibrant and immediate than the posed stiff black and white photographs of the era:
Funnily enough Sanchez himself springs to life out of a simple black and white photo:
He drew his ideas on old paper bags before committing them to wood:
And then he went to town with all the finely carved details, like this scene from a cigar factory:
I particularly liked the caption on the wall: "...in Spanish English or Bahamian..." The mind boggles, and ponders the life and times of Mario Sanchez.
I have often pondered whether or not I could ever do a wordless essay,
...so I'm guessing this is as close as I'll ever get:
It was a cool evening:
...but this woman was talking loudly about how she was glad to be back in Florida after moving Up North for a spell, as she checked the jewelry on offer:
This woman reminded me of my buddy Giovanni's wife with that school teacher expression on her face of amused disapproval, like when Giovanni and I take off motorcycling: 
Nothing to do with people watching but I like looking at it.
There is a fee to get in, but all I noticed was that with the local's discount I paid five bucks so I'm guessing an out of town visitor might pay $6. It's well worth it, as the museum has been spruced up quite a bit since last I was there a few years ago. Fred the cat patrols the front desk area and gift shop:
The first stop was a diorama of the lighthouse with some of it's history but as I've already written about that delightful point of interest I limited myself to recording this gruesome instrument of torture, which previously I had only ever seen in the movies:
No museum worth it's salt in Key West will skip the desperate love affair that Karl Tanzler enjoyed with a young Cuban woman:
The German X-Ray technician employed at the naval hospital looked paternal enough but he conceived a most vivid love for the young Cuban woman called Elena depicted while alive just above Tanzler's shoulder. He promoted himself to Count Von Cosell and lived in a hut on the beach, whence he repaired with the unfortunate young Elena and played the pipe organ to celebrate their love. The only glitch was she had died of tuberculosis and he had been forced to dig up her body and repair the ravages of the grave as best he could. This ghastly parody of love went on for about seven years and when he was finally busted it was the 1940s and there are people alive today who remember Elena's waxy remains on display in the city:
That story never fails to give me the creeps and Ben Harrison's biography Undying Love spares no gruesome details. East Martello is also host to another of Key west's weirder characters, known simply as Robert the Doll. It is traditional to respectfully ask permission of the doll prior to taking a photograph, and you'd better believe I did.
The story goes that a servant in the Otto family gave the son and heir Gene this doll in 1896, and because the Otto's treated their servants so badly the servant put a voodoo hex on the doll which became Gene's constant companion. The adult Gene set Robert in a room overlooking Eaton Street and such was the doll's reputation people were afraid to walk past it. Even today there is a wall at the Martello Tower dedicated to letters from people thanking the doll and apologizing to the doll asking for their bad luck to be lifted:
In the interests of my own good fortune I have no comment. There are others who had bad luck but of the meteorological kind, namely Cuban rafters. There is one such machine,if it can be called that, in the corridor of the East Martello, dating back to the 1960s. It was basically a collection of saplings bound together, found with three ID cards, and the fate of their owners remains unknown:
The sign behind the raft says, Could the last person to leave Cuba turn out the light... Before the US decided to embargo Cuba there was a long history of exchange, both cultural and economic between Key West and Havana. That exchange was typified by the cigar industry which settled in Key West for a while before moving north to the wide open spaces of Tampa and Ybor City. The Key West era is marked in the museum:
The first international flight left from Key West in 1913, and took two hours to reach Havana 90miles (150 kilometers) to the south. Cuban Domingo Rosillo was at the controls of his featherweight monoplane: 
Augustine Parla, another Cuban aviator was the second person to make the flight a while later. Pan Am started mail flights between the two cities in 1927. 
And aside from all those splendid lawns there is a viewing platform at the top of the central tower, reached by climbing three narrow flights of an iron spiral staircase. From the top one gets a view across the Straits of Florida.
A pleasant afternoon at the Martello Tower.