The Fourth of July has always felt much more like a personal holiday to me than the usual fireworks and barbecues and parades in the public arena. Today is a day I am lucky to have off this year as it falls by chance on the alternating weekend that I don't have to work. 
Thus because I am an Ironist by inclination I thought today would be the day to celebrate my commute home, especially as I was forced to drive this year on "Ride To Work Day." Talk about irony!
Also there is the indisputable fact that if your inclination is to snag pictures from a moving vehicle it is much easier and more effective- dare I say safer?- to do it from behind the seat belt of a moving car!
This is the time of year that brings us the longest period of daylight in the northern hemisphere and daylight savings time is in effect in Florida so the sun starts to come up even before I leave work a few minutes before six. By the time I have driven out of the Key West/Stock Island urban agglomeration of street lights, traffic lights and lighted buildings, the sun is suffusing the eastern sky with white light.
There's another irony, Baby's Coffee at Mile Marker 15 isn't yet open when I flash by in the 55 mph zone (I stopped to take the picture that particular morning) but the mangroves and flat waters alongside Highway One are clearly visible:
A few miles further on, deeply into the 45 mph zone from Sugarloaf Lodge all the way to Big Pine Key I cross paths with my only traffic light at Sugarloaf School. It was erected a few years ago to allow parents and buses to get out of the school and onto the highway. It rarely stops me and even when it does, the red light doesn't last too long:
Then it's past Mangrove Mama's restaurant and the Sheriff's substation on Cudjoe Key (pronounced "Kud- Joe"). There are occasions when you will see a deputy parked on the side of the road, so it doesn't do to blow by assuming that because there aren't windows in the building they can't see you...The car pictured above was a deputy heading home either to end the night shift or to start the day shift. I really enjoy the long straightaway that comes up past my wife's gym, Pirate Wellness next to the Kicking back convenience store. I don't usually stop by to say hello as i am no fan of organized public gymnasiums.
Some impatient loons pass slow pokes here crossing the quadruple yellow lines. I don't as a ticket for reckless driving would be hard to wiggle out of. In a more driver competent society we might have alternating passing lanes for traffic in each direction but around here such an arrangement would lead to a Darwinian cull. I'm not opposed to that you understand but politically speaking, allowing people to pass here would be electoral suicide. So we trundle along at speed limit plus five mph, per the rules. Then it's over a short bridge with splendid water views... 
...and onto where my post office is located alongside the best little Ace Hardware store in North America. This is where a good eye is needed as there are plenty of opportunities for deputies to park and write reports while waiting for the unwary commuter anxious to get home to bed:
The Niles Channel bridge seen in the distance is a forty foot high (12 meter) span that gives a view across the mangroves and the sun, by now risen above the horizon:
And then down the other side into a blaze of sunrise glory:
And into the waiting radar gun of a parked Florida Highway Patrol trooper. There used to be one parked frequently at the base of the bridge on the Ramrod Key side, but I haven't seen the cream and black car for a while so perhaps it was my neighbor who was a trooper and lived across the canal from me. I did catch a glimpse of an improperly attired rider heading towards Key West, and lacking other motorcycles to complete this little tale I present his blurred image here. It's hard to stick to 45mph over the bridge, it is quite inviting:
And then it's time to leave the highway and drive three quarters of a mile down my little one lane street to my house...
...where I arrive around 6:35am. I do enjoy my commute, especially I have to say, by Bonneville.
This very essay I photographed and wrote on June 16th for publication today, July 5th... I love Blogger's automatic publication function!
The salt ponds to the west of my house have filled up with rain water, transforming them from muddy stretches between mangroves into large reflective ponds. 
Here is Niles Channel Bridge in the distance:
Of course all this fresh water falling everywhere means it's mosquito season again. And even I who am not susceptible to their jaws find myself getting stung if I stand still for ten seconds under the house. Mosquito Vector Control comes by all the time spraying bacillus thuringensis up and down the streets but it's an eternal battle against nature.
I did get to spot a couple of motorcycles, a Road King for Alan Madding:
And some dude out enjoying himself while my Bonneville was still in the shop waiting for handlebars:
I was enjoying the air conditioning in my nice Nissan, thanks for asking.
All that tropical waterfront keeps attracting visitors who drive along and peer out of their windows pointing at stuff I see every day; a house on stilts:
Mangroves and water:
Me? I look out for brightly colored flowers even if I can't name them:
And i know this is summer if my neighbors have spare coconuts as do I. This homeowner has started the cull already in preparation for hurricane season:
And over us all we see the very un-tropical mourning doves flittering around enjoying the weather while cooing wildly:
The glories of summer in the suburban fastness of the Lower Keys.
So when the Uncle from America shows up at my sister's grandchild's third birthday, fresh off the plane he has to bring some sort of a gift. In Flavio's rugged rural environment I thought a large Tonka toy might do the trick:
The next day my brother-in-law went for a walk with me through the woods and up the hillside that overlooks their farmhouse. Vincenzo has been in love with my sister since they were fifteen and even now 47 years later they spend a large part of every day together. Theirs isn't an outwardly emotive relationship, in defiance of that other stereotype that puts Italian's hearts on their sleeves and when he and I are together we don't talk about our feelings. But it made me glad he wanted to share his mountain fastness with me. We used to come up here with my sisters on horseback forty years ago:
Umbria is the land of pork and grilling and mushrooms and truffles (which I love, but my sister the Phillistine, can't stand) and it's been a wet Spring so without even looking we stumbled across what turned out to be toadstools. If in doubt press the fleshy underside of the cap with your thumb:
If it turns black throw it away (or feed it to your enemy, if you have one). Mushrooms are risky eating but I'm pleased to say I did find the only edible fungus on our walk. I enjoyed ribbing Vincenzo endlessly that the townie in the family found the 'shroom. 
This is the only picture I have of Giovanni at the age I remember when our lives were the halcyon days of moped riding and Tom Sawyer adventures during the summer holidays. When I go to visit him nowadays I know I am an honored guest and they put on an effort for me. The fact that his wife is an excellent cook doesn't hurt:
My wife dreams of meals at Rossana's diner and were you to read my brief e-mails home during my time away they look like menu cards for the Italian traveler. Pork medallions, preceded by home made gnocchi (potato dumplings), preceded in turn by cheese and salami.
Their daughter may look glum in the picture but Eleonora is fifteen and that's an age when life tends to look critical from all aspects. Home made gnocchi from their housekeeper's expert hands make no difference to her. Especially when the honored guest is pointing a camera all the time...
On an afternoon ride we stopped off to visit his parents at their summer home and his elderly mother whipped up an enormous impromptu spread that Giovanni tucked in to without any apparent surprise. We had cured ham (prosciutto) a vegetable omelette (frittata)followed by chicken breasts sauteed with sausage rounds and sage, served with rice stuffed tomatoes. 
Not surprisingly Giovanni's 22 year old son prefers to stay with his indulgent grandparents while he "studies" for his law exam, though it is quite surprising he isn't gaining much weight during his retreat in the country. We gathered informally in the kitchen as they rate me a family member:
Giovanni's eighty three year old father got on with the important, manly work:
It was a cool damp June night in the mountains and faced with a forty minute moonlit ride back to the city we huddled round the fire, digesting our dinner, which wrapped up with slices of cake and Belgian liqueur-filled chocolates.
When Giovanni and I took off for a tour of the Alpi Apuane, a ring of mountains that separate northern Tuscany from the Po River Valley,an important part of the ride were the good eats. Breakfast in Italy is a heathen meal taken mid morning and usually consisting of sweet cakes and a coffee, all gulped down while standing up at the counter:
Working nights like I do, I don't eat breakfast much anymore, but frankly I like a nice plate of eggs and potatoes and meat for breakfast, washed down with several cups of weak American coffee ("brodo" Giovanni calls it contemptuously-"broth." He likes Starbucks' espresso as he thinks it's not bad and reliably drinkable). Eating pastry and sucking down an ounce of coffee isn't a meal in my opinion. This is though:
Truffle pasta...
...pork chops in a balsamic vinegar sauce (this was in the province of Modena, home of balsamic vinegar) with slivers of Parmesan cheese on top to offset the sweet sauce. Giovanni always orders fries for a vegetable ("My wife won't cook them for me!" he laments), and we washed this lot down with a slightly fizzy Lambrusco red wine (good for the heart). Finished off with a slice of meringue in a hot chocolate sauce:
I took the remainder of the Lambrusco to the sidewalk table and finished it off while Giovanni lit up his customary cancer stick as we watched the evening passeggiata, the stroll down the main drag of Pievepelago, the small mountain town we had washed up in. These were the local lads eating ice cream and waiting for the passing talent of which there wasn't much (else I'd have photographed it). A reminder of our youth, we said as we reminisced about our childhood. 
It didn't rain that day which was icing on the meringue, as it were. It rained the next day though, in a down pour that wouldn't have looked out of place in Key West in the summer:
We had a few miles to ride to the Passo del Muraglione when we spotted Da Sergio, a fine terraced restaurant overlooking the main road through the Tuscan village of Dicomano. Naturally Sergio, not being raised in the American tradition of the customer always being right, declined to seat us outdoors. "Then everyone will want to sit out and it will be a mess when it starts to rain!" he lamented. We laughed to ourselves at his pig headedness, laughter that turned to consternation when the heavens opened up as we sat snug indoors savoring another fifty dollar lunch:
We shared a plate of tortelloni, what an American might call ravioli, pasta that was so undercooked, by North American standards, it was almost crunchy, filled with creamy mashed potatoes, a first for me. We then sucked down some red wine while waiting for the grilled pork kebabs (spiedini) to appear. I ordered mine with Navy beans while Giovanni had the inevitable, and very good, roast potatoes. The rain did not let up:
The indoor grill warmed the entire room that was rapidly filling with Saturday lunchtime locals:
"Merda!"we shrugged and ordered a dessert each, a ricotta cheesecake for me, and a sweet pine nut cake for Giovanni. He has a very sweet tooth and a backhoe-like capacity to woof his food that outstrips even my capacity for fast eating, which I developed in English boarding schools:
I was reading last month's Vanity Fair on the plane and there was an interview with Johnny Depp who bought Hall's Pond Cay in the Exumas, in the Bahamas, a place I visited by sail boat before he put it out of reach of ordinary mortals. In the article the author described the food served by Depp's chef, a feast he said of tacos, guacamole, cheese steak sandwiches and other foods that one can only describe as veering towards the fast food end of the scale. I am no gourmand, but it did occur to me that were I ever to have a personal chef, these are the foods, pictured on this page, that I would order, and grow old and lazy on, day after day. That, and espresso and conversation:
As it was we faced a 200 mile ride home in the pouring rain, cold and damp with me screaming out for large cups of warming American "broth-coffee" while Giovanni lamented his freezing wet feet in what was almost July, in formerly-sunny-Italy. I had on every scrap of clothing I possessed:
These are the adventures we grow old on, not all that frou-frou eating and drinking and sitting around reminiscing. We are men after all, not gourmet foodies.