Bikers Away!

"Nothing in his life became him as the leaving it," so spake Malcolm in the first act of Shakespeare's Macbeth, speaking of the death of the traitor Cawdor. Well, it is a bit strong as comparisons go, but it puts me in mind of the relief I feel as the horde of bikers takes to the road to leave Key West.
Many residents of the city face Bike Week with some trepidation, the noise of unbridled mufflers in the narrow streets keep people awake at night and keep their teeth on edge by day. With an estimated ten thousand motorcycles in the city for four days it's impossible to prevent all the noise and confusion from impacting the lives of residents. The other side of the coin is money, a nice injection of cash into our tourist town at the slowest time of the year.These people aren't necessarily daily riders, people who ride to work, ride to the store, ride on vacation. They parade their machines, be they ever so impractical for the pleasure of being seen. That so many of them arrive in the Southernmost City not in trailers is something of a miracle if you ask me. These pictures I took of motorcycles leaving town as I commuted to work Saturday evening, so this lot is representative of the non-trailer crowd on the Overseas Highway. This BMW represents the few hundred non Harleys who attend the gathering which is organized each year at this period in the low tourist season by the Miami Harley dealer. Petersen's Poker run raises tens of thousands of dollars for assorted worthy causes:You'd think that someone who enjoys riding would look forward to seeing his home town celebrating other riders, but motorcycling like every other lifestyle impediment, is broken down into groups and factions. I'd like nothing more than to stroll Lower Duval and look at a variety of motorcycles ridden into town and put on parade. However there are only so many variations on the cruiser/chopper/bobber themes that can hold my interest. As for leather vests and chaps, well let me draw a veil across the more fetishistic modes of dress of these chrome cowboys. Despite the presence of token babes perched on the back, homo-eroticism oozes from every rumbling twist of the throttle. It's all quite enough to make a bourgeois homebody like me sweat bullets just to be a spectator. I like severely practical motorcycle clothing, thanks.They came, they saw, they spent lots of money and drank rivers of cheap beer. Now it's time to go home and hang up the motorcycle costume and retreat to sober suits and understated ties for the drive to their cubicles for a while, before they will permit themselves to let loose once again the inner, ravening, chromium plated beast. For an afternoon though, they own the Overseas Highway as they retreat from Key West back to reality:Me? I sneak off on my wife's Vespa lest anyone should mistake my work horse for a participant in the v twin fest. I'd be the guy in the see through plastic jacket turning up to the bandana party on a submissive little parallel twin by Triumph, a brand rarely seen in Key West. So instead I ride my wife's sober little 150cc scooter and let them keep glancing nervously in their mirrors as the alabaster buzz bomb keeps up with their bombastic roaring, throbbing steeds. My colleague Paula worked for most of her adult life waiting Key West's tables and she has the proper perspective on Bike Week. "It means money when there is no money in Key West" is the gist of her argument. True enough but she drives a tatty old conch cruiser by Chevrolet, a full half a mile to work. No one is mistaking her for one of these people:I only followed this guy for a few miles at sixty miles an hour but he was sweating bullets trying to put some distance between his bobbed extravaganza and me on the cream colored moped. I stopped to take some pictures afraid he would climb up the SUV's tailpipe to escape proximity to my little Vespa.

Businesses all along the highway put out the welcome sign for these guys, but I think their sights were set on the mainland by Saturday afternoon:

Time seems to be flying by and one undesirable and unexpected side effect of this my daily diary is a reminder of how fast each anniversary is upon us. For my close up last year of Bike Week on Duval check this essay: http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2008/09/harley-week.html It was perfect weather for a ride into or out of Key West though I'm sure some would prefer the cooler temperatures of Up North along with the turning of the leaves lining hilly twisting roads. Well then, let them stay away in droves because we have had plenty of motorcyclists all weekend. For those that didn't make it next year's Bike Week will come around soon enough:I didn't realize until he flashed by that this was some weirdo showing up to a Harley rally on a rather toothsome sport tourer in the Yamaha FJR1300 mold. He didn't seem to mind being stuck with a powerful water cooled engine with shaft drive, excellent weather protection and properly built-in luggage. Poor thing. His sole concession to v-twin mania was riding in a tank top as one does in southernmost heat:
Here we are where we belong, a perfectly upright v-twin negotiating one of the few corners on the Overseas Highway in a perfectly upright posture:

This is cruising Keys style, with no ground clearance at all. This sort of cruiser makes a superb platform to enjoy Florida's straight roads and the Keys unusual scenery.
Or the backs of the cars in front. It isn't easy to figure out how to pass when you don't know the road, and even though there are lots of decent places to pass slow pokes it takes more effort than a visitor needs to be putting into the ride. Much better to sit back and enjoy the views. On weekends like these I give myself an extra ten minutes on my 27 mile commute to avoid feeling pressure to pass.

When caught up in a line of cars I recommend pulling over, the shoulders are ample almost everywhere along the Overseas Highways (not on bridges doofus!) and take a moment to let the long lines of cars pull ahead. Then you get to cruise at your speed with your own private views: By now I was on South Roosevelt, cruising into town along Smathers Beach. Officer Betz made a good living catching speeders along here Saturday night. The speed limit is 30 and though it seems a might slow, 45 mph is easily enough to get a ticket worth the price of a night at an expensive hotel.

I got heartily tired at work of entering traffic stops into the computer, I must say, and clearing them with citations issued. Key West isn't a town for speeders especially on Bike Week when overtime is mandatory in the police department and leave seems to be canceled judging by the number of Highway Patrol troopers littering the roads. Much better to pretend your bike is a couch, stick your feet forward and pretend you're Peter Fonda seeing America (minus the coke in the tank).And if you're in Key West with your squeeze you too can pretend to be Captain America for a while even if you are riding a modest Taiwan Golden Bee scooter and a man the age of your father rolls by on his chromium plated couch:

I have been suppressing a hankering to get another dog from Florida Labrador Rescue, not least because my wife balks at the expense of putting a fence around our home (squashed dog is too awful to contemplate), and then I'd need a hack. I'm not sure I'd like to stick a Velorex on my Bonneville and I toyed for a while with the idea of a Ural. These Russian made machines have had a reputation for zero reliability which has improved since they started using modern motorcycle parts from Europe and Japan. However the Ural (pronounced "ooo-rhal" their owners will insist, not "Urinal" as I have frequently heard them referred to) have two other problems. They can barely reach 65mph which even for a slow person like me is too damned slow, and at the same time if you try to go that fast gas mileage drops from an awful 30 mpg (11 km/liter) to an abysmal 25 mpg according to the Ural forum. All that while you drop parts as you go, and now need to find car spaces to park the machine in congested Key West. Cute, no?

Ah well, that's it for bike week. If I am to give advice (Heaven Forbid!) I would recommend renting from Classic Motorcycle Rentals of Orlando (407-583-6988 delivery to your hotel) at $50 a day for a Bonneville or a Scrambler, and at that price take a week to ride down to Key West along Highway 27 through rolling orange groves, past old town Sebring, around Lake Okeechobee and down to Key West for a couple of days of motorcycle racket, then riding back up the west coast of Florida to enjoy the beaches and the swimming along the way with a final ride through the magnificent forests of west central Florida to Orlando. Or you could just be like everybody else and rent a Harley in Miami and thud-thud your way down the Overseas Highway in a leather vest. Your choice. Sniff.

Conch Train

Streets blocked by trains, it happens all over the island as these convoys snake around the town showing off all that there is to see in a ninety minute tour. And as though that were not enough one can even take an alternative, the all-weather trolley car:

The shtick is the train, in a nod to Flagler's original Over The Sea Railroad:The drivers of the lightly disguised Jeeps treat this as a railroading experience around town. All Aboard!
There are a number of depots, train stops, around town and passengers can take a break and get off at any one of them.
The stops offer lots of different key West related dust catchers including mugs, ash trays and t-shirts of course:

And a place to sit in the shade when you are all shopped out:
This is the other depot on Front Street at the top end of Duval:

Like good train drivers everywhere the station is place to recharge one's batteries:

I think the fare has gone up to $22 a person which seems like a deal to me. The drivers are trained to give the same speech in the same spots as they drive around highlighting architecture and history and quirky stuff to keep the passengers amused. The amusement for people trapped in their cars behind these slow moving trains is a little less obvious.
The drivers keep to a speed not much above walking pace, and they spend huge amounts of time pulling away from traffic lights. The deal here is to catch as many red lights as you decently can to be able to take the time to expound on the story telling.

Lane splitting in Florida is not legal and it's probably wise as drivers here pay as little attention to their driving as drivers elsewhere in the US. But the temptation to sneak past these slow moving machines can be overwhelming:
The Conch Trains cause friction in the city, of that there is no doubt. In winter especially the Citizen's Voice reverberates with complaints from people who live alongside the routes and hear the same portion of the driver's spiel a dozen times a day. Drivers moan all the time about get the streets getting clogged by these dinosaurs ambling along. The trains fight back with their own propaganda:
For my part I just try to avoid them and use one of the many alternative streets paralleling their routes:Historic Tours of America operates these trains in several other cities all over America: St Augustine, Savannah, San Diego, Boston and the District of Columbia as well as a ferry to the Dry Tortugas and amphibious tours of the nation's capital. The duck tour of the Potomac is an ironic one for someone living in Key West. The city just settled a suit brought by the original duck tour operator who charged the Key West with running him out of town and giving an illegal "tour monopoly" to ed Swift's HTA. Eventually the city settled the suit for eight million dollars, but now there is another tour outfit vying to run trains in Key West. The city is apparently obliged to give the new company a license to operate though it seems the deal is still being worked out. The fact that the new operator is Ed Swift's former son-in-law leads one to speculate that there is more to this than simply business competition. So much drama in such a small town.
The Conch Train is a well established operation with a maintenance facility of Flagler called the Roundhouse:
I find it hard to imagine that some new start up is going to find it easy to get established in an expensive town like this, and with a limited pool of tourists to haul around town.

Ed Swift doesn't have it easy in Key West as he is the constant target of critics who hate his trains and his developments and his influence. He has supported the former school's superintendent with a job, he supports Mayor McPherson who finds himself embroiled peripherally in the college fracas and yet I find him rather admirable and I get shot down every time I say it. He built up his fortune with his own hands, taking a chance on redeveloping Duval Street when the main drag was a wreck, and he provided his own manual labor for that task. Since then he has run for public office and served as a county commissioner. He speaks up in favor of affordable housing and has built a great deal of it. He pays, I am told a decent wage to the Conch Train people. His high end development at the Steam Plant included a separate affordable apartment complex alongside and on Stock Island he alone has built the Meridian West complex which is decent housing on an island filled with substandard mobile homes. In short he puts his money where his mouth is and has a commitment to Key West that not many newcomers to the city, even the ones with money, can emulate.Of course he does plague the city with his trains and that, for a lot of people is unforgivable and i rather think there is a lot of glee at the expectation that he will now face competition on that front, even though that same competition will put yet more trains on our streets. I always recommend a Conch Train tour to guests if they have the least bit of interest in the history of Key West. I wonder if in the future I will be recommending the new outfit as well.

YCOA

Times are not as tough in Key West as they appear to be elsewhere in the continental United States, yet signs of struggle are evident here too. There is a house with a for sale sign on Highway One garnished with the words "Default-Bank Owned" and the Beachside Hotel, which was to have been the centerpiece of a huge new hotel development at the entrance to Key West was sold to the Mormons and has become one more Marriott property in Key West.
This area used to be a rough and tumble marina known as Peninsular Marine on Stock Island. I don't know if the original sign writers messed up the spelling of "peninsula" but this is in fact Pensinsular Avenue and is now known as Yacht Clubs of America. And very plush it is too, especially when compared to the old pea rock working marina and boatyard that used to exist here.
The place is fresh and new and brimming with facilities, and if you don't want to use the the gym or the sauna or the pool you can just lounge in one of the many seating facilities scattered liberally around the premises.

The place was designed to a sort of country club for the boating set, so there are dry slips with ample covered storage in these sheds, which also coincidentally block the club off from any errant views of hoi-polloi out on Pensinsular Avenue:
People do keep boats in the water here and I'm pretty sure this is a liveaboard boat. Who would have thunk of people living on their boats in this place? It seemed quite humanizing to me, that bicycle on the dock!
There was no dedicated motorcycle parking but I followed some other dude's exmaple and made do nudging my Bonneville up to the motorcycle already there:Across the water to the east of the club is Boca Chica channel with it's share of anchored out boats between Stock Island and the Navy Base on Boca Chica Key visible across the water:

In the main building there is a dining room upstairs with a balcony offering spectacular views to the south across the Straits of Florida:

The outer arm of the marina has been developed too with ramadas offering the possibility of cook outs in splendid isolation at the head of the docks.

My wife and I were guests of a friend with a membership and she invited a group of us to spend Labor Day afternoon by the pool for a cook out. We didn't need to be asked twice. It was an idyllic way to spend the afternoon. The club has a rule that no children are allowed in the club on weekends which makes membership especially alluring to me, and at $100 a month my wife and I were contemplating the value of joining especially as the owner is offering deals apparently.We joked that we would be the only Democrats in the place but this would be an excellent spot for us to meet weekday afternoons, me on the way to work, and my wife leaving her place of work on the north side of Stock Island. She has eaten in the dining room and she describes the food as excellent and reasonably priced and I can just imagine how pleasant a seat in the sauna would be prior to a night in the salt mines.I was having trouble thinking my wife was serious about joining and I was wondering if I am going soft in my old age but the showers in this building are quite a bit plusher than those at work, it goes without saying:The fact that Clyde Butcher pictures decorate the walls led me to think this place has more going for it than just superb facilities and decent grub. I like Butcher's art:
I suppose most people join these places for the social aspect and I grant you I'd rather buy a beer here than on Lower Duval, but my wife is a gym fiend and we both love to swim, in the pool or in the saltwater of the almost empty marina (much to the scandalized amazement of a an established member of the club- not a good start I suppose to draw attention to ourselves when we visitors swam happily in the peace and quiet off the little beach). And therein lies the problem. This is a club that would gladly have me for a member, not least because it was built at the end of the crazy money boom and the facilities are sadly under used. The food was eaten, the staff closed up shop, it was time for me to get dressed for work:We lazed under the umbrellas and watched the comings and goings of the club members on a holiday afternoon:

And this really is a splendid place to laze around:

As one member of our party put it, it doesn't feel like Key West at all. I think that was meant as a compliment. The owner has made a rule that no children are allowed in the club on weekends, which tends to surprise people when they first hear of it, and it did us too. But it makes sense if you want to preserve the atmosphere of an oasis and it's a rule I rather like.

There was a time when this place would have been packed, but times are tough and for the first time in a long time there are boat slips to spare all over Key West, even as the city plans to build a new luxury marina on the Truman Waterfront. I am told there were five facilities operated by Yacht Clubs of America but there are now only two survivors, one on Sanibel Island and this one. There are rumors this one might be opened to the public at some point.Times have changed in America, even as our leaders tell us we are pulling out of the Great Recession of 2008. I feel privileged that we can even think of joining such a plush facility.