My original plan, after I got off work at 6am was to retire with a couple of blankets to one of the interview rooms at the police station and take a nap for a couple of hours. There are no holding cells for prisoners at the police station, but sometimes prisoners are interviewed in these small rooms with no windows that are perfect for taking a nap in, unless detectives are actually speaking with some one in there. Instead six o'clock came round and I was wide awake. So I rode to Stock Island for breakfast. After eggs, grits, bacon and Cuban toast washed down by café con leche I was ready to go out and photograph the dawn.
I stopped in the turning lane in the median for the photograph above, aiming east at the start of the morning commute into Key West on highway one. After I turned onto College Road I stopped again for a picture of Key Haven across the water.
"Hey Michael!" a scooter rider called out as he rode by on College Road. I have no idea who it was but I'm glad I wasn't doing anything even remotely reprehensible at that early hour. In Key West the community is too small to get away with anything at all that you don't want people knowing about. Good morning to you, whoever you were on the silver scooter.
There was a fair bit of traffic on College Road and the sun was determined to keep coming up. The drag of it is, I'm not usually awake and busy at this hour, so the one day I was alert to the presence of the dawn i wanted it to last. Fat chance, daylight was polluting everything.
But fiddle with the camera settings and you can find rich colors in the sky if you work at it:
Back on the bike I took a left at the Triangle and headed south for a beachside sunrise picture.The problem is everyone goes to South Roosevelt to watch the sunrise:
And you can see why when you look east, in this case across Cow Key Channel toward Stock Island. The white fireball is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse coming to eat my Triumph.
Enough of this sentimental nonsense, sun rising over water. Five minutes down Flagler Avenue got me to the Key West High School. Somehow, in my effort to de-sentimentalize sunrise I have managed to make the school look like a Soviet Tractor Factory. It wasn't my intention, I quite like the school actually and I especially like that the school is an open campus. Key West is very small town and civilized.
I stopped on Bertha Street momentarily on way to my destination downtown, but nothing quite struck me. I wanted photograph the old men sitting around sipping buchi's (Cuban espresso) at the Corner Grocery Store, but the problem with old men in retirement is that they are sitting and looking at every little thing that goes by. A bloody great green Bonneville, even one with standard factory mufflers just draws too much attention and so I chose not to point the unblinking eye at them. I spotted these two pals out jogging and happily the light was still vague enough to give them a National Geographic blurry effect:
While the humans were acting busy on Atlantic the palm trees and buildings were just standing there in the rose-tinted dawn. The elevator shaft for the 1500 Atlantic Building looked like a church tower to me. I must just have been a little tired.
Higgs Beach attracted a share of sunrise worshipers. She looked like she was into sun worship until I realized she had a phone in her hand. And he, striding by with purpose, reminded me of Robert Duval smelling napalm in the morning in Apocalypse Now. Definitely not sentimental. 
My sentimental dawn journey downtown led me past the bums and the beach and this concierge hut ready to rent out water sports stuff next to Salute restaurant.
There's lots of stuff young Conchs don't get to see growing up and agriculture is one of them. The Sheriff operates the animal farm at the jail, a refuge for abandoned or mistreated wild or domestic animals like pigs horses and goats. But to see a tractor in Key West go no further than the beach where this agricultural implement isn't baling hay but cleaning sand:
This one appeared to belong to Casa Marina Resort:
The Casa itself, Flagler's original destination hotel in Key West for his new 1912 railroad, looked imposing in the dawn's early light; like a barracks:
The Spottswood Pocket Park at the end of Seminole Street attracted a jogger, who with camera in hand took no pictures but committed everything to memory by way of thorough inspection and spent some time inspecting the information plaque about the Key West Marine Park, which runs along the island's southern shore.
The easterly breeze was blowing as indicated by the flag on the pier. The boat was in calmer waters closer to shore.
I tried to catch the foamy effect of the modest little waves on the rocks in the gray light but got poor results:
I stopped in the turning lane in the median for the photograph above, aiming east at the start of the morning commute into Key West on highway one. After I turned onto College Road I stopped again for a picture of Key Haven across the water.
"Hey Michael!" a scooter rider called out as he rode by on College Road. I have no idea who it was but I'm glad I wasn't doing anything even remotely reprehensible at that early hour. In Key West the community is too small to get away with anything at all that you don't want people knowing about. Good morning to you, whoever you were on the silver scooter.There was a fair bit of traffic on College Road and the sun was determined to keep coming up. The drag of it is, I'm not usually awake and busy at this hour, so the one day I was alert to the presence of the dawn i wanted it to last. Fat chance, daylight was polluting everything.But fiddle with the camera settings and you can find rich colors in the sky if you work at it:Back on the bike I took a left at the Triangle and headed south for a beachside sunrise picture.The problem is everyone goes to South Roosevelt to watch the sunrise:
And you can see why when you look east, in this case across Cow Key Channel toward Stock Island. The white fireball is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse coming to eat my Triumph.Enough of this sentimental nonsense, sun rising over water. Five minutes down Flagler Avenue got me to the Key West High School. Somehow, in my effort to de-sentimentalize sunrise I have managed to make the school look like a Soviet Tractor Factory. It wasn't my intention, I quite like the school actually and I especially like that the school is an open campus. Key West is very small town and civilized.I stopped on Bertha Street momentarily on way to my destination downtown, but nothing quite struck me. I wanted photograph the old men sitting around sipping buchi's (Cuban espresso) at the Corner Grocery Store, but the problem with old men in retirement is that they are sitting and looking at every little thing that goes by. A bloody great green Bonneville, even one with standard factory mufflers just draws too much attention and so I chose not to point the unblinking eye at them. I spotted these two pals out jogging and happily the light was still vague enough to give them a National Geographic blurry effect:
While the humans were acting busy on Atlantic the palm trees and buildings were just standing there in the rose-tinted dawn. The elevator shaft for the 1500 Atlantic Building looked like a church tower to me. I must just have been a little tired.Higgs Beach attracted a share of sunrise worshipers. She looked like she was into sun worship until I realized she had a phone in her hand. And he, striding by with purpose, reminded me of Robert Duval smelling napalm in the morning in Apocalypse Now. Definitely not sentimental. My sentimental dawn journey downtown led me past the bums and the beach and this concierge hut ready to rent out water sports stuff next to Salute restaurant.
There's lots of stuff young Conchs don't get to see growing up and agriculture is one of them. The Sheriff operates the animal farm at the jail, a refuge for abandoned or mistreated wild or domestic animals like pigs horses and goats. But to see a tractor in Key West go no further than the beach where this agricultural implement isn't baling hay but cleaning sand:This one appeared to belong to Casa Marina Resort:
The Casa itself, Flagler's original destination hotel in Key West for his new 1912 railroad, looked imposing in the dawn's early light; like a barracks:The Spottswood Pocket Park at the end of Seminole Street attracted a jogger, who with camera in hand took no pictures but committed everything to memory by way of thorough inspection and spent some time inspecting the information plaque about the Key West Marine Park, which runs along the island's southern shore.
The easterly breeze was blowing as indicated by the flag on the pier. The boat was in calmer waters closer to shore.I tried to catch the foamy effect of the modest little waves on the rocks in the gray light but got poor results: The Reach glowing all splendid with the dawn illuminating the clouds for a backdrop on this lovely summer morning.
And from here to the Randy Acevedo trial at the courthouse, my destination for the morning ride.
And from here to the Randy Acevedo trial at the courthouse, my destination for the morning ride.
Fish is the theme here. In American English grouper is pronounced group-er. In British English for reasons I can't hope to understand they call these fish: grope-er. Which sound weird to me. But a trophy is a trophy to an angler and the walls are lined with them:
I nearly surrendered to the blandishments of the blueberry banana bread pudding in rum sauce but heroically held off. You don't have to have a table full of people to enjoy Square Grouper either, they have a very welcoming bar. That flash of white is high speed bar service in action:
In the 1970s the Keys were major entryway for marijuana and later cocaine into the Keys. Bales of marijuana such as those seen in the picture above were known jocularly as "square grouper" as they were frequently dumped at sea and could be found bobbing around in the water as smugglers evaded law enforcement and tossed the evidence over the side.
No harm done but he left a lovely streak of rubber in the road for a souvenir.
Now he is riding his KLR to work at Key West High School where he teaches. He said my Bonneville was more comfortable when he sat on it- his KLR was so tall I squashed vital organs trying to reach the ground with my toes. I had been planning to go on a ride with him to the Everglades when I fell off the Bonneville June 1st. I hope he will re-schedule when it is cooler. On the subject of cooler I quite liked this latest version of Harley Sportster, except for the side mounted tag (saddle bag impediment) and the single, very u-shaped saddle:
I thought a picture might be a good idea to remind us of another loss when some warm hearted builder throws up another lot of cookie cutter executive condos. Oh well.
Lots of mayo and a large with one sugar. Bu-u-u-rp. That will put me to sleep on night shift, digesting the fish while the coffee fights to keep me awake on these long slow nights of September when no one is in town.
My wife's shoulder is healing nicely from surgery but she still can't climb in and out of the boat so I decided we might as well haul the boat out and Robert nudged me into doing the necessary maintenance. That must be what friends are for. "You don't want to spend $80 an hour to pay a stranger to do it..." he said. "I don't?" I thought. He was right.
When I was a kid we used to sit in these kinds of junque-mobiles and make raspberry noises while we spun the steering wheel. I am not allowed to do that any more under penalty of being committed to an institution so I take pictures instead.
I don't think this machine will be rolling again soon. I rather wonder how it manages to just get left on the street in a town which is crying out for parking spaces. It must know someone important.
I liked it enough to take a second Green Parrot Bar picture of another, more standard v-twin cruiser.
I don't know how they do it, go out drinking and then ride safely home.