Vignettes XXVI

Fausto's grocery stores with two outlets in Key West bill themselves as a social center as much as a grocery store, and the Fleming Street store serves the downtown area in a town where lots of people have trouble driving ten blocks from their home base. I stopped in to pick up a head of broccoli for my wife and I noticed something. The former mayor of Key West, Jimmy Weekly married into the family that founded the store and he is running again, this time for city commission. However he has no campaign signs on his store that I could see. The building across the street did though, which I thought was funny.Jimmy Weekly is a mild little man, often seen slicing meat behind the counter, but he made his share of noise when he was in office, both in his private life and in his role as first citizen. I sort of hope he gets elected to the commission especially if his arch enemy Morgan McPherson makes it back into the mayor's seat. I live in the county so I am a bystander in all the noise making, but I am an employee so one has to hope that city leaders keep things rolling without too much acrimony.

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The fourth screen at the Tropic Movie theater is stuck in limbo. Unfortunately they advertised it as probably being ready by July 4th. That deadline came and went and I understand the employees cringe now every time they have to explain that the new 48-seat theater isn't quite done yet.It looks good from the outside though. Further up the street is a coffee shop were a group of regulars meets to play chess. barely visible inside on the left is another mayoral candidate for the city of key west.Sloan Bashinsky has a website called Good Morning Key West and he is an avid supporter of the nude beach concept. His policy ideas aren't all bad but he thinks he gets them from angels in his dreams, which is a concept that may have value but it hasn't got him elected yet.It's all part of the color of Key West, the stuff that doesn't show up at sunset at Mallory Square, the color of Key West that isn't in the tourist brochures. And probably just as well.
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I was at Fort Zachary Taylor with a con leche in hand and a half hour to burn before the movie (O Horten, a delightful Norwegian meditation) started at the Tropic Cinema. My plan was a good one, park the Bonneville in the shade, sip my coffee, read a little and watch the water a little form the comfort of a picnic table. Instead a young couple approached me as I was sorting out my Jeanna's coffee and my newspaper. He held out a business card with a pedi-cab number on it. "Puo..." he stumbled trying to think of the English to say "...make a call."
"Of course I can," I replied in Italian startling him half to death.I don't know how it happened but here was another couple of Italian tourists stranded in Key West. His phone was dead and the unpleasant woman at the concession stand wouldn't make a local call for him to get his pedi-cab to take him to his tour bus appointment. So I called Brian for them and made their afternoon.

We chatted for just a few minutes, they were from Sicily and had come to realize they need to speak English to visit the US...He liked this country saying the US is "disciplined" unlike Italy. Giovanni says that all the time too when I go back to see him in Italy. It must be true but it sounds odd to me.Another good deed in the bag.

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I threw in this picture of Truman Annex.I was walking back to the Bonneville at the Westin parking lot when i saw this endless sidewalk view. I liked it, so I snapped it. Key west looks much bigger when you see the island from a certain angle.

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I was riding into town on Highway One of an afternoon and found myself following a Triumph Bonneville with a Maryland tag. The rider and pillion were obviously enjoying the afternoon and were in no hurry so I passed them and as I did I was mildly surprised to see two women on board. Later I got into town and women were everywhere. I have no idea who is here visiting for WomenFest, the annual week long celebration for women but I did notice pairs of women all over downtown as usual for this time of year:

I find it rather nice that Key West can offer women a place to take a vacation and be themselves.Of course I find it odd that most of the rest of the country gets bent out of shape about the love that dare not speak it's name.I saw in the paper that Vermont has approved a gay marriage law so perhaps the tide of history is turning and this may be a civil rights issue that we close the book on before I'm dead. I have a great deal of difficulty identifying lesbians as they walk down the street.Indeed I've worked with a few for quite some time with no knowledge of their lesbian-ness, so I figured I might as well throw a few pictures of women ambling to illustrate the point. And women riding bicycles could be in town for WomenFest or just because they are on vacation.But I'm trying to get smarter about categorizing people and these look like run-of-the-mill tourists:Whatever. Right now it's Lezzie Week and up next it's Bike Week to keep the tourist dollars flowing during the quietest time of year. Personally I prefer the lesbians to the loud pipes and strutting leather nonsense of Bike Week, but that is beside the point. They all help keep the town solvent,so the more the merrier.

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Between waves of tourists the regular denizens of Key West are still hanging out waiting for I don't know what:

I was pretty surprised to see this lot milling around in Mallory Square but I guess the new Sheriff's Deputy patrols at Higgs Beach have moved a lot of residentially challenged along. And here they are:I cannot imagine how boring it must be to sit around all day waiting for the shelter to open, or to go and look for a bush to sleep under.

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I thought this might have been the Bonneville i met on Highway One, but it wasn't. It has the same T100 color scheme but the tag was out of Florida. It had all of 8,000 miles on the clock and looked quite well preserved.

I noticed there was one small modification to the Bonneville and that was an extra in-line fuel filter, which we are told is a good thing to add. I've found this things to be a perfect nuisance over the years. They get tired and blocked up, they spring leaks and they need to be fussed over. I prefer to ride and use the fuel rather than let it sit, and so far the myth of "dirty fuel" hasn't interrupted me.

Over the years it has occurred to me that muscles and machines have one similarity: they go to pieces if they aren't used. I haven't quite closed in on 30,000 miles (48,000 kms) just yet but I'm working on it:

I read on the Triumph forum during the long quiet night shifts of September how unsightly luggage is when it hangs off Bonneville. I think a motorcycle equipped as a daily rider is a thing of beauty. I saw this well used scooter and got the same impression: a daily rider.These Chinese scooters get a lot of grief among the Vespa snobs but in Key West they are work horses, always out and about providing basic and needed transportation. Even if they name their models rather weird, them Chinese folk. Perhaps that's what I should call my Bonneville if I wanted it to break down all the time. The "Sickly."
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I found three pictures of my recent trip to Anne's Beach i didn't use in the main essay but I still liked the shots. This is the south parking lot at Mile Marker 73:Looking south across the Straits of Florida. This car is traveling north toward Islamorada,passing Anne's Beach to the right: This, more prosaically, is the sink in the men's bathroom. Either it's a simple effective way to shore up a bathroom sink that people really shouldn't sit on. Or it's government inefficiency.Personally i find it smart cheap and elegant, like so much the government manages to accomplish, unnoticed. We toil in obscurity, we government bureaucrats.

US vs Costa Rica

I found this video on Huffington Post, it's by Paul Hipp who has integrated some rather recent images into his song. Who knew Italy was #2 on the list? Or the Republic of San Marino was number three? Anyway here's Hipp's take on the WHO rankings:

Here is a song celebrating our proud ranking in the World Health Organization's list of world health systems for all the obstructionist hecklers to sing as they continue down the road to total irrelevance. Enjoy!!

September Lassitude

Up North they tell us autumnal breezes are starting to blow, cooler weather comes in September in the Northern Hemisphere and people start to look through their closets for warm clothes to fend off the encroaching season. Not in Key West.Key West is said to be part of the United States, as evidenced by the massive putting out of more flags all the time...
...but the cartoon strips in the newspapers reflect a different reality than one observed in the islands at the tip of Florida's already different seasons. When I lived briefly, and horribly, in Fort Myers, only three hours north by ferry, winter sometimes brought frost, a most unwelcome thing, but in Key West the coldest ever recorded was 41 degrees one winter long ago. 41 degrees (5C) is the often quoted figure below which the thermometer will never go, but I don't recall seeing a temperature recorded much below 50 degrees (10C) which I will say is quite cold enough. However all this talk of cold weather is premature in September.
Perhaps we will get a mild cold front on October, a harbinger of the drier season to come, but it's not until the second cold front hits and marks a moderate temporary drop in temperatures that I will start to park the Triumph brazenly in the sun of an afternoon. Till that second firm cold front afternoon temperatures will continue in the 85 degree (30C) range. Pedaling a bicycle is quite the trial still in September's hot still air and I see more and more electrical conversions appearing on our streets:If you read the book "Quit Your Job and Move to Key West" you will find an accurate appraisal of September, a quiet month in the city when one sits around hoping for work if employed in the tourist industry and waiting for the heat to break. This year has been hot, with relatively little breeze, and even for someone like me who likes the heat, it has been rather intense this summer. So with all the cultural indicators pointing to a change of season one can get a bit impatient for things to change down here too. Or one can sit and wait it out, if one has the patience:

Even riding the motorcycle gets to feeling a bit like riding into a hair dryer, and vinyl seats like the black one on this cute Daelim 125cc single will burn human flesh if left out in the sun:

Removing clothing can be hazardous unless sunburn isn't a concern:

I find traditional Florida louvered windows to look lovely...

...but I confess to my carbon rapacity: I prefer air conditioning.

This is the time of year that all normal people, those who are not mad dogs or Englishmen, seek out the coolness of the shady side of the street:

People can be seen everywhere walking around with ice filled cups of fizzy corn syrup, which they abandon where they can, adding to the bleakness of the afternoon heat:

I spotted a Federal Fly Trap of some sort. It seems rather too hot even for dangerous insects to be flying around these days:

And over a fence I heard a water pump humming and I smelled the smell of chlorine liberating itself from molecules of water. I stuck my camera over the top of the fence and shot a picture at random. It looks cool and refreshing, even now in the comfort of my air conditioned home:I am not alone riding a green Triumph in Key West, though this aggressive Speed Triple has a few more horsepower than my Bonneville. If I were a youngster this is probably the bike I would riding:

And even though tourist season is supposedly in hiatus for a few weeks, until Fantasy Fest brings some life to the town for a weekend, there are still people arriving and dragging their sweaty suit cases along the sunny side of the street:

Roll on winter, say I, summer's heat has outstayed it's welcome.

The President's Plan

This is the plan the Republicans have been fighting while saying we don't need reform in this country. If you look at the points it addresses you will understand this is a modest enough goal for the world's leading industrialized nation. especially as we spend 13 trillion to save big banks and trillions more to kill people in Afghanistan and Iraq to no visible purpose. I would prefer the cheaper more sensible single payer system, but for the next 14 years until I qualify for Government-run "socialized medicine" in the form of Medicare this will have to do. Is this so damned revolutionary? Really? I despair of my fellow Americans sometimes.

From Getty Images Republican Joe Wilson (South Carolina) calling the President a liar:
THE OBAMA PLAN
More Stability and Security for ALL Americans

If You Have Health Insurance

More Stability and Security
• Ends discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.
• Prevents insurance companies from dropping coverage when people are
sick and need it most.
• Caps out-of pocket expenses so people don’t go broke when they get sick.
• Eliminates extra charges for preventive care like mammograms, flu shots
and diabetes tests to improve health and save money.
• Protects Medicare for seniors and eliminates the “donut-hole” gap in
coverage for prescription drugs.

If You Don ’t Have Insurance

Quality, Affordable Choices for All Americans

• Creates a new insurance marketplace – the Exchange – that allows
people without insurance and small businesses to compare plans and buy
insurance at competitive prices.
• Provides new tax credits to help people buy insurance and to help small
businesses cover their employees.
• Offers a public health insurance option to provide the uninsured who
can’t find affordable coverage with a real choice.
• Offers new, low-cost coverage through a national “high risk” pool to
protect people with preexisting conditions from financial ruin until the
new Exchange is created.

For All Americans Reins In the Cost of Health Care for Our Families,
Our Businesses, and Our Government.

• Won’t add a dime to the deficit and is paid for upfront.
• Creates an independent commission of doctors and medical experts to
identify waste, fraud and abuse in the health care system.
• Orders immediate medical malpractice reform projects that could help doctors
focus on putting their patients first, not on practicing defensive medicine.
• Requires large employers to cover their employees and individuals who can
afford it to buy insurance so everyone shares in the responsibility of reform.

Long Beach Road, BPK

This a winding road a couple of miles long that finds it's way through a sub division rarely noticed I am sure by people driving rapidly by on Highway One. The turn off is to the south at the northern tip of Big Pine Key (abbreviated locally to BPK). It curves for a couple of miles through the inevitable mangroves:

I am getting a yen to explore New England, a corner of the US I have never visited and until I get to do that these mild corners will have to do.
No good thing lasts forever:

And that red diamond shaped sign indicates you are out of public roadway altogether. This area got a bunch of signs thrown up by a property owner indicating Armageddon awaits any who are incautious enough to penetrate the swamp. I used to walk my Labrador here but she went to her reward and nowadays I have no incentive to cross the line. The occupants of an SUV parked nearby were apparently enjoying the wilderness judging by their laughter. I got back to riding.
The small brown blob up the road is a Key Deer fawn, so if you are going to come down Long Beach Road to enjoy some twisties you might want to consider that you could get into a mainland style crash (just like New England) and go arse over tip. This one isn't so bad, bad enough I'm sure but it's mother was just out of sight in the bushes and she was big enough to kill an incautious rider.
People who live in these suburbs like to be left alone.
I wondered if this might be Afrikaans, but happily they translated it into the world's language for us kaffirs who haven't learned God's tongue. I liked the pineapple, a symbol of hospitality and welcome in the Keys, normally. Perhaps here it was offered as garnish:A long driveway like this gives lots of room to pick off intruders and plenty of time to fire up the barbecue to roast the impudent trespassers.The Deer Run Bed and Breakfast across the way has a rather less apocalyptic greeting:This neighborhood includes some older homes, cement structures with an air of having been around a while. The newer homes are BIG with lots of dinky little windows that make hurricane shuttering much too complex for a simple man like me.
I'm not sure how far the Conch Republic extends. I'd guess the Seven Mile bridge would be a suitable limit, but in pursuit of the tourist dollar people in the Upper Keys have organized their own Northern territory which puts them at odds with the Key Wester who claims the rights to the state of mind. The flag flies all over the place, and very pretty it is too.

If woody lanes and corkscrew country roads are to your taste the Keys probably don't hack it. I read of the impending arrival of Fall (Autumn) in the Far North and i rejoice that I live where winter is just like summer only cooler and drier. I used to dread the onset of winter when I lived in cold wet California.

Winter also has the side effect of bringing back lots of people who are currently elsewhere. These people rely on a chain to carry a message and spare us the ugly, superfluous signage.So there aren't any hills and yellow leaves to speak of, but that doesn't mean it's ugly around here:

And the ocean beckons:

Some people feel it's best to crane their necks to get an ocean glimpse:

These are the homes that enjoy Mediterranean architecture, delightful I'm sure but terra cotta tiles on the roof make no sense in hurricane country. Still, living in the keys isn't necessarily all about good sense. If it was they'd have built the roads crooked so we riders could have enjoyed them properly- year round.