Vignettes XXIII

I actually went up and asked this guy if I could take his picture. That's how much I wanted to offer this nugget for all those people in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) who are thinking about listening to Cowboy Bill's Internet radio. Or whatever it was that guy was peddling around Key West blogs recently. I asked him his name. "Wyatt," he deadpanned. I could have called him on it but I was thinking maybe he would plug me full of lead. Duval Street is like that; you take your life in your hands every time you head down there, pardner.

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If you're looking for a fixer-upper check this out, on Eaton Street near Elizabeth.When you put down your hammer for the day you'll be just a short walk from all the Duval bars where you can get properly hammered. I hope the new price is really low because a pleb like me figures the sell-by date is long past.

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Ho hum another parrot out in public.
Key West, home of people struggling to be unique. All together.
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I am notorious for not giving a fig about fashion but this one got a double take from me.Surely not?
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On the subject of fashion I wonder when the fad for extra large, Saudi-friendly vehicles will start to fade? What, on these narrow streets? I've heard many positive things about this relatively new place on Caroline Street. However I include this picture just to point out there are lots of ways to waste energy.
My wife and I tried the first Braza Lena which appeared in the Upper Keys a couple of years ago. The bill was large enough ($75 each approximately) that we never went back.
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I am convinced that burning gas in cars or anywhere else, is going to get tougher as time goes by. The city commission is planning on rejecting a seven million dollar Federal grant (stimulus: where is thy sting? It must be in the terms of the ultimate payback), which could be used to build a transit center on Stock Island at the dismantled waste-to-energy plant. That was a loss, as it used to produce a nice lump of energy for the city, but that error by the previous commission is being compounded by the current commission. It is obvious to many of us that transit has a future in a community as compact as this one. However it is not obvious to the city commission that is clearly in the grip of some other lobbying interest. Oh well. Gas needs to get back to $5 a gallon for me to ditch the Bonneville for commuting. Then I'll wish there was a decent bus service around town.

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My buddy Bruce showed me his shade awning for his motorcycle when he was in the Keys last winter and I thought it was interesting. I saw this qwik shade on Eaton Street which seemed to do little more than keep the seat out of the sun. I remain dubious about it's value, but I am notoriously slow to change my mind. Using Old Glory's design for the purpose seems a little dubious also. This Yamaha looked pretty good, equipped with luggage attachments which gave it the air of a daily rider. However a closer look at the fuel tank offered up a blemish that reminded me why I spent 2100 reminbi to have my tank and front fender painted and why I think it was such a good deal after my wreck: The Bonneville looks just as it did before the June 1st slide, including a replacement set of fabric Triumph panniers (saddlebags to colonials). Not new, just well used at almost 27,000 miles (43,500 kms).
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I have been inspired to work on my sneaky picture routines (TM Scooter in Turkey) and I like to think the chihuahua was the only rider that spotted my camera: It was hot downtown but taking a break on the sidewalk on the 400 block of Caroline leaves one open to the charge of being a bum. However Key West's professional hobos like the bus stop as the place to wile away their endless empty days. This guy seemed to waiting for something:

They had no idea my waist high camera was capturing them in a reasonable facsimile of a properly framed picture. I hope they go home and tell everyone what a great time they had so we get some more deflated dollars (7 Chinese yuan to the buck at the moment) circulating around Key West in the summer.

Cool dude photographed below. It occurred to me this guy was old enough to have been skateboarding since the things were invented.

Well that was fun, pointless but fun. Wait, we aren't done yet.

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"Daddy, we need a Jack Russell terrier!" I heard the little girl importuning her father as they stepped out of a tourist shop where apparently the shop owner kept a dog. Daddy was unconvinced, but as they walked off down Eaton Street I could hear that high pitched refrain bouncing off the windows of Voltaire Books. "Yes, but does the Jack Russell terrier need you?" I wondered. I am not a kid person. I never much enjoyed my turn as a child and have never wanted to inflict the pain on a new generation. I like dogs though and I feel sorry for them when small children torture them or neglect them, as they inevitably seem to.

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I don't know what the passerby thought I was doing as I snapped this picture. I caught him staring at me like I was crazy for taking a picture of the Wendy's restaurant on Duval. Fair enough. What prompted the quick shot was the Snap-On tool vendor cruising Key West's main shopping center. I wondered if he was just taking a little detour down the main drag for a break from the urgent business of selling, or did he have a client down here? The maintenance crew at the hotel La Concha? I will never know. But The Snap-On tool van was definitely on Duval and I have the picture to prove it.

Mexican People. Tenacatita

It was a regular winter's day on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, with one exception: the offshore breeze was blowing and it was only early afternoon. Winds along Mexico's mountainous west coast tend to follow strict diurnal patterns. Hot sea air rises during the day as the sun warms the air over the water and at night the air cools and rolls back downhill producing an offshore breeze in the early hours. Passage planning in winter on a sailboat requires the frugal sailor take advantage of these breezes as one can save a few a few hours of motoring on a twenty four passage.

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We were entering Tenacatita Bay a few miles north of our destination on this leg, which was the little beach town of Barra De Navidad, a bizarre name given it by the Spanish explorers who located the sandbar the city is built on, around Christmas time. So it is called Christmas Bar. Tenacatita Bay is an isolated pair of bays, an inner and an outer, with hills, palm trees and only a few buildings clustered mostly in the village of La Manzanilla. It is what California sailors look for during a winter away from the cold wet months Up North.

I unrolled the sails and our Gemini catamaran took off like a scalded cat...amaran. We turned hard on the wind and sailed for the beach. One tack away and we were in the mouth of the inner bay. With my wife working the sheets and flopping the foresail we turned about and headed back to the beach on the next tack. And so on, all with the backdrop of blue sky, brown mountains and green trees. We had no time to look down at the deep dark waters we were slicing through on this unexpected breeze.

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"That was fun," my wife said as we took a final tack to the head of the bay where we were planning on anchoring. "Let's do it again," I said impulsively. She is nothing if not able to go with the flow so she threw off the jib sheet, the sail let loose and we headed downwind towards the outer bay. We turned around and did it again, tacking up the bay to the beach. It had been a short hop that morning from Chamela, a small indentation some 25 miles up the coast so we were full of energy and the dogs were in no hurry to get to the beach. Finally we dropped the anchor without even needing to turn on the engine. It felt satisfying, and an all too rare occurrence on the wind-free coast of Mexico.

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As is the way a neighbor came over in her dinghy to say hello and she introduced herself, telling us her husband was hunkered down on their boat, a trim 32-foot ketch, a sailboat with two masts, anchored nearby. We talked for a while of the local attractions, the river through the mangroves, the French restaurant on the beach, the setting for an obscure-to-me movie called Hale's Navy, she said. She asked shyly what had we been doing hunting around tacking through the anchorage- twice! "Oh," I said, feeling foolish. "We were just having fun enjoying the unexpected breeze," like a child caught stealing cookies. She got a dreamy look in her eyes.We asked how their trip was going. Um, she said, okay, but she wasn't enthusiastic. I'm not the most politic person in the world so I asked for details.

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Well," she began. "My husband is retreating into himself. Bob stays on the boat drinking our wine collection and smoking his cigars. But that's not the worst thing," she went on. "What would be your greatest fear anchoring here?" I looked blank. Fear? In Tenacatita? After you've got past the odd isolated rock near the entrance there isn't much to worry about..."Bob?" she interrupted my struggle to find something to fear. "Bob is worried about bandits," she said with finality. Bandits? what bandits?

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There are lots of reasons not to go sailing and I've heard a million excuses. At home it seems reasonable not to leave because you lack money or skill, or you like your life, or you have grand children. But once you've made the commitment and you've cast off it gets harder to find a reason not to enjoy the life that so many aspire to. That fear of bandits in Tenacatita Bay in the Fall of 1998 was a new one to me. Bandits in Colombia were on everyone's lips who was out cruising. Nowadays Bob and Jane sail a motor home and volunteer at parks up and down the Western States. We live in a house in the Keys and the bandits of Tenacatita Bay are probably still there, lurking in the mangroves, ready to shoo home any unwary sailor who may feel he has bitten off more than he can chew.One day I was working my job as a boat captain in Key West harbor a few years after we had been in Tenacatita Bay, when I spotted a pretty little ketch similar in many respects to the one picture above. I recognized the name with a start and I went over to complete this chance encounter. I knew Jane and Bob had sold the boat but I was moved to meet this old friend in this unexpected place. The new owner was a dour Scotsman worried about something and totally uninterested in me and my story. He grunted me off and disappeared below. The next day when I came back to work the boat was gone.

Whalton And South

The theme of this street is over abundant greenery: And yes, I was there on the Bonneville: Despite the summer heat there is no shortage of cyclists on Key West streets. Perhaps it helps that this is a shady street. I thought this brick house for sale, with no price attached, looked as though it should be under the pines of Alabama or Georgia, not the palms of Key West: The typical tropical growth looks good:

I don't have any lawns at my house, and though I'm no great fan of pea rock it doesn't require this sort of labor to keep it looking nice:I guess he was lucky to be hired to mow the relatively small chunk of grass at that house. Most of the block on the other side of the street is taken up by an estate surrounded by what looked like a coral rock wall, maybe it's granite or something but it is distinctive. Not least because of the sign nailed clearly to the gate:
The wall in fact surrounded a lush lawn surmounted by the usual array of palms and in point of fact water restrictions make no distinction between aqueduct water and well water when rationing is in effect. I suppose because wasting water is wasting all the same. If I run my rainwater cistern dry I guess I would then be forced to use the aqueduct water which puts added strain ultimately on an over taxed aquifer. The wall stretched for the better part of a block:I wondered what my wife would think if I decided to use her convertible as an ad hoc pick up truck...but I prefer to hitch a trailer to my Nissan when I need to haul stuff, unlike this creative soul: I checked the other side of the magnificent wall and found the home, shaded by palms with a garage alongside opulent enough to qualify as a spacious Key West home in it's own right:

A Sportster parked under a massive stand of palms:
And then it was time to get to work.

Blogger Screws Up- Again

Apologies are owed for the cretins at blogspot.com. I am finding the spell checker isn't working at all, failing to spot the errors and highlighting instead random collections of properly spelled words...Also the picture dragger feature is on the blink so I am forced to either cut-and-paste the pictures in HTML mode which is headache inducing, or I have to download the pictures as I write, from the end of the essay back to the beginning which taxes even my wordiness. I have tried to alert the imbeciles to these problems but we are entering the second week of composer's nightmare. So for the time being my blog may look more ragged than usual and my thoughts may not flow with their customary verve...

I live in hope that blogspot will one day hire some responsible adults. Until then I struggle on as I am lazy and a technophobia and have no desire to figure out my own website.

Marquesa Court

There was a mention by a reader, an eon or two ago, of a bunch of relatively new homes built next to the last trace of railroad tracks in Key West. Now that I have the Bonneville back it seemed like an excellent idea to go in to work a little early and take some pictures on the way:For the Mormons living in the complex their church is located but a stone's throw away, in the rather undistinguished building half hidden from the road by the abundant vegetation.

The easiest way to find this side street is by first locating the world headquarters of the local rag. The offices of The Citizen are visible through the trees, half hidden by this fine motorcycle that happened to be in the way. It was in The Citizen that I read a few years ago, of the new housing complex that was to be built, in the halcyon days of unbridled development, close to the last traces of the old Flagler railroad tracks across the island. On the north side...of...Northside Drive, there lies a well known physician's office, a certain Dr Boros who looks after people's hearts and makes an appearance from time to time in what pass for society pages in Key West:

The subdivision in question has a dozen homes or so, though I confess I failed to actually count them as I spun by on my Bonneville. There is a certain cookie cutter conformity though they are large by city standards: These "Key West style" homes have all mod cons, (modern conveniences) including......balconies, columns and white picket fencing, as well as granite counter tops I have no doubt, not to mention in some lucky cases basketball hoops:
And there is room enough to park a pretty big boat out front, which is a nice luxury in a city as tightly packed as Key West:

The path of the railroad tracks as they traveled west from the Cow Key Channel apparently ran through a mangrove thicket somewhere near here, though their location is lost to the passage of time, as far as I am concerned, though i did take the picture shown below. And anyone venturing into the "environmentally sensitive area" would likely get scratched, sensitively to death. Though there is a gate and it was open, almost as an invitation to self detruction on a 90 degree (34C) evening:This home in the back of the little complex was actually for sale, in what i thought is one of the prime locations. God knows what unrealistic figure they are asking for it:

The entire complex of homes is little more than a couple of ess-bends in the street ending up in a wide turn around: So I turned around and fled back to Northside Drive before anyone caught me traipsing on the hallowed ground of Flagler's former railroad...

Boca Grande Picnic

This is the best time of year to be in Key West in my opinion, because this is the time of year one goes swimming. Dolly and Robert invited us out for a picnic at Boca Grande Key, about seven miles west of key West. It was a massive organizational effort by Dolly as Boca Grande is entirely deserted, and we are Americans,, thus want for nothing even in Nature's most remote spots:There are a few small scraps of land that are more than just mangroves scattered around Key West, places that are naturally sandy and superbly isolated. Boca Grande is on the way to the Marquesas Keys, and ultimately the Dry Tortugas. The beach at Boca Grande is the farthest west of the string of small mangrove islands known locally as "The Lakes" a broad basin of shallow water surrounded by islands. On this chart Key West is off the screen to the right and the Dry Tortugas to the left:

Because we all live in the Lower Keys it was easier to simply rent a boat off the docks behind the Half Shell Raw Bar (305-295-BOAT if you feel inspired) than to drive our own skiffs 25 miles just to get to Key West. The docks were looking good as we pulled away: We also had an honored guest on board, Robert's 84 year old father, a man who loves to take cruise ships in retirement and who has been all over the world as a result. However he was rather apprehensive about a small boat trip to a deserted beach as he has several artificial joints which make him vulnerable to falls. The rental boat was a much more comfortable craft than our crude skiffs for him to make the journey:
Robert senior is also prone to getting melanoma, "My Norwegian skin!" he lamented, so he had to stay covered up and in the shade at all times. The logistics of this trip were remarkable, and Robert and Dolly pulled it off as we shall see...Robert enjoys sharing his knowledge of the water and the wildlife and we took a pause in the middle of The Lakes so his father, a massively curious man, could catch up:

The ride to Boca Grande took about forty minutes at the rental boat's relaxed pace, and soon enough we could see the thin sliver of sand, the full moon high tide was busy dropping even as we arrived and there was a tremendous current off the beach. We had our choice of location and Robert beached the boat whereupon we unloaded a mound of gear that soon transformed itself into an awning, chairs, ice chests, a Weber grill and so on and so forth. The awning was superb as there was a light southwesterly wind and in the shade we found ourselves to be refrigerated to a perfect temperature, and the lack of fresh water meant there were no bugs either:
We weren't alone but there was lots of room for all:

And I have to say we had to be the best equipped group on the beach, with the grill turning out hot cheese sandwiches, with my wife's Greek salad for garnish: And Robert is no slouch when it comes to enjoying the fruits of his own labor (he grills pretty much at the drop of a hat): And when I said well equipped I meant it. Dolly and Robert have this excellent ice cream churn. They found it at a yard sale and they use it from time to time and it never ceases to amaze me. It consists of a double walled bucket that gets frozen ahead of time and then one adds a mixture of one's choosing, in this case cream and eggs and milk I believe with some Ghirardelli chocolate, and then hey presto! with just a little churning out comes delicious ice cream, a full quart of the stuff:
And there we sat, in the shade, fanned by the breeze, hogging homemade chocolate ice cream.
One has to pity the poor plebs who came less equipped...
Though they seemed to having fun too, I have to say. It really doesn't take much to luxuriate in this deserted places, all sun sand and sea, just like the travel brochures tell us. Robert senior got into too, he marveled at the ease of the picnic and his pleasure was obvious. We youngsters took to the water, drifting past our campsite in the rushing tidal waters, stepping onto the beach further down and walking back upstream to do it again:
It was like a water park. Even though it hardly resembles it at all, this is in fact real life and we found time's winged chariot rushing us along and soon enough we had to stop this sybaritic playfulness and pack the boat for the return trip:
We got Robert Senior safely ensconced in the shade and off we went:

Robert's Dad carries his 84 years very well, but his mind is extra sharp and he exemplifies the notion that a sense of curiosity will keep you youthful. He engaged me in extended conversations about politics the economy and religion in a way that was non confrontational and engaging but also open to other points of view. I felt more like I was in a Greek taverna a couple of thousand years ago engaged in Socratic dialogue than being a bum on a Key West beach. He spent his working years as a financial adviser in Manhattan, and he had some choice remarks to make about the modern ethics of the trade. A confirmed Republican he voted for President Obama and thinks he's doing the best he can in an impossible situation. A religious skeptic, or a pragmatist as he put it, he faces old age with equanimity and a twinkle in his eye. He made the picnic for me, and I was as apprehensive about meeting him as he was about riding the small boat. I've known his son for twenty years and the old man's approval seemed important. He called me a philosopher and slapped his knee with delight whether we found a point in common or in opposition.

The return trip was the usual sedated ride back to base, everyone filled with food and sun and exhausted by water exercises:

We stopped by Robert's workplace at the national Marine sanctuary offices on Truman Waterfront and I got to snap a picture of the USS Mohawk still decorated for the Fourth of July, a reminder of my tour aboard last winter:
And in closing the view of the Key West waterfront as one crosses the harbor: So, remind me, why is it people flock to Key West in winter, when the waters are cold and the seas are rough? Long may they continue to do so, I'll take summer over winter any day.