Horses And Scooters And Bicycles And Deer

Go on - tell me you expected to see horses strolling a Lower Keys street. Some people do bring their quadrupeds down for the winter. There are some stables on Cudjoe Key where I see horses year round, standing in the shade swatting flies idly with their tails. These two were in Eden Heights on Big Pine Key.

I was lounging with Cheyenne on No Name Key after a walk and this scooter buzzes by. So when I see an adult riding, legally without a helmet and the kid is riding pillion also properly legal with a helmet I ask myself, why? Why do parents make their kids wear helmets but don't set the example? Do as I say not do as I do is stupid. There, child-free me has said it.

 

No Name Key was a freeway... And then came the Spandex cyclist. And there I was lounging with my dog.

And then as we drove home I saw a herd of deer grazing in suburbia.

There is a move afoot to hold a new marathon foot race. There are so many going on all winter that you'd think one more would be hardly noticeable. But the proposed Cow Key Bridge race is going to be a hundred yards long crossing from Stock Island to Key West. I'd like to have it be run in the universal cause of Awareness. All races are an effort to raise awareness so this eminently Key West marathon should be strolled in order to raise awareness of Awareness. The good news is, on another note, that palms are back on the Boulevard. Normality returns, slowly.

I have enjoyed looking out on the waters these days. Flat vistas like this have always appealed to me. Too bad it's only 72 degrees and thus too cold to swim.

I posted a couple of pictures of my Vespa in front of a bar. My preferred drinking hole on Grinnell Street, Finnegan's Wake.

And the more famous one on Duval at Greene Streets.

And, what the hell, here's a picture of the Vespa stuck in construction traffic on the Overseas Highway.

It's time the country followed the California Highway Patrol's lead and allowed lane splitting. Then motorcycles would make traffic jams fade away. As it is sitting in the sun waiting for movement makes you wish for a roof and air conditioning.

Key West on Dwellable

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Buggering About

I pulled in to the Shell station to get gas for my car. One of my quirks is that I don't like to stand around at the pumps very long so as soon as the needle shows a quarter empty I start thinking about filling up. By the time it's floating near half I am very ready to get more gas. I love using a credit card, standing at the pump, no human interaction required...So when I pulled into the Big Pine Key Shell and the gray haired doofus pictured below stepped around from his truck on the other side of the island and snagged my pump with a fuel jug in hand. I just thought evil thoughts, got back in my Ford and backed up to the empty pump behind me. I pumped four gallons into the Fusion in less time than it takes to tell while the jerk with the fuel jug was unable to get his pump, which had been mine, to pump. He looked at me seeking sympathy but I sent the Cuban shithead mean spririted vibes while thanking the Gods for screwing up his day while I pulled out withy. Full tank of gas. Last I saw the jerk's side kick and one of the staff were still trying to get gas into his cursed jug. Served him right. Grr....

Well golly, I was in a bad mood wasn't I? I blame all the extra work and time spent talking to drunks on the 911 phones but there really was no excuse for me to be so bitter about a minor lapse of manners on a stranger's part. I had better things to do than bottle up frustration. I took my dog for her overdue amble. She didn't care about the stupid non drama at the pumps. I should have taken my cue from her, so I did.

Above Cheyenne, below me with a new hair cut. I get my hair chopped every three months or so when it gets too long and tangled for comfort. Then I start again and let the stuff grow as it wants. I was not actually grumpy at this stage, just squinting.

It was a lovely day to be hanging out reading and petting one s dog - with a full tank of gas. The best part of this place on West Summerland Key is that even if people show up here there is no sandy beach to induce them to stay. Sometimes some anglers or kayakers stop off but usually even in winter Cheyenne and I have the place to ourselves.

There are no facilities so when I had to lurk in the bushes for a minute I figured if I took a picture I had some cover as it were. There are moments when you wish you lived in France or Italy where peeing by the side of the road is considered a fact of life. For men at any rate. The relief was inspiring but the picture was not.

When all was in order we took off for a stroll. First we checked the graffiti in the old pump station near the water's edge.

Then I inspected the remains of the 1942 water pipe that the Navy installed to bring 20th century reliable water to the military base in Key West. That pipe was replaced by a larger model in 1982 running alongside the new road bed.

It's days like these that help dissipate agitation, watching your dog have a good time exploring.

 

We climbed to the top of the artificial hill where Flagler's engineers built up the railroad bed to get the train onto the Bahia Honda bridge in 1912. In 1938 the State of Florida bought the railroad right of way and turned it into a road. The sort of public work that would never get funded today...

The old bridge is rather the worse for wear. The state park at the other end has turned it into a pedestrian area that overlooks Bahia Honda, and is well worth a visit.

Cheyenne wanted to lay down and enjoy the cool afternoon...

...so I obliged and laid down next to her, propping up my feet for added comfort.

 

It was an altogether pleasant afternoon.

All minor irritations forgotten.

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Generic Key West

It puzzles me how my neighbors seem to not notice odd things about how our lives are ordered for us. I wonder how it is Canadians can flood Key West in winter, driving expensive cars, owning or renting homes in some of the most expensive dirt in Florida, and yet they live in a world we cannot afford. To hear the Republicans tell it, Medicare for all would bankrupt the US, like being bankrupted for blowing up Iraq and Afghanistan was a good deal, yet Canadians can afford the dreaded "socialized health care." How does that work? Note they get to live pretty well and if they get cancer they don't bankrupt their families? Or organize bake sales to make a pathetic gesture toward their uninsured neighbors? They aren't clamoring to be forced into the private insurance racket. Weird huh?

This sticker, Slow Down This Ain't The Mainland doesn't do much for me, not least because this part of the world isn't really laid back. The saying originated on Maui where people they say really do live at a slower pace. In the Keys the umbilical cord that connects Key West to Miami generates a mainland attitude. When I'm stuck in traffic on Highway One dawdling behind vacationers enjoying the views I wonder how cool they'd be if they dialed 911 and got a recorded message telling them we'd be answering 911 when we got to work. Try that on for laid back when you get a sudden urgent need for an ambulance or a cop...the other thing I find is that the so-called laid back drivers blow a fuse when you pass them. They don't slow down, pull over and let the worker bees get a move on. No they speed up when you try to pass them and they are about as laid back as a bunch of hornets whose nest just got poked with a stick.

I saw this splendid bonsai and because I was in an enquiring mood I wondered how it is I kill anything I try to grow. And if I don't kill it an iguana will. I tried to keep a bonsai once. It died.

I've photographed these penguins before but it's been a while and they are still cute. They decorate a gate in the meadows.

I really liked these two bicycles. I am not sure if I should admire people who ride color coordinated bicycles or if I should shrug them off because sooner or later they will get stolen or wrecked or something and all that work...call it envy. In the end I am about as useless at landscaping as I am at coordinating my life's accessories. Rust and heavy use is my style.

Here we go, a Key West pick up. If you can stand the crowding and the noise and the dreadful quality of most of the housing you too can live by bicycle and something like this will become your model T runabout.

I drove by the college on day with sunshine and high wispy clouds. I spent six years on and off studying marine bits and pieces in that building. It's supposed to get rebuilt as. A new super modern facility. Idiotically I have a lot of nostalgia for the desperately hot classes of Fall - September in the lab was desperately muggy fiddling with grease and nuts and bolts your feet boiling in protective boots. Yet we had fun.

It's life lived in the fast lane, kind of, not on the mainland.

 

Key West on Dwellable

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A Day Not A Vacation

I took my break in the middle of the night and I went to Duval Street to see what the crowds looked like, hoping the Spring Break fever was finally breaking. The crowds didn't look that big to me, but Saint Paul's looked good so I took a picture of that.

Police officers have some strange innate capacity for work, and they can do without sleep it seems and work longer hours than any civilian I know. I may work for the police but I need my sleep and I need to get away from work and that's hard to do in a Spring Break month. Yesterday I screwed up my post until GarytheTourist got in touch and asked what's wrong. Spell check doesn't seem to work as well for me when I am in a work haze. I have been sleeping but I have not been getting enough time away from the 911 center. So I'm feeling sorry for myself. Sue me.

Actually it's been lovely having Cheyenne to myself when I get home first thing in the morning. She hops into the car like a puppy. The sun is barely rising by the time we hit her walks around 6:45am and for a little while in the dark we wander here and there while she wakes up and I wind down.

I find it not a little ironic that I walk my dog loaded with plastic bags while just a few hours prior I was taking a call from some poor dog walker in Old Town who got back to his front gate to find some drunken twat defecating liberally and liquidly all over the sidewalk. The dog walker was mad as a we then not surprisingly and the defectator ended up in handcuffs. Stuff like this makes me wonder if the prohibitionists weren't right. Alcohol has some really bad side effects.

Meanwhile Cheyenne and I were 38 miles away at Veterans Park alone with a full array of facilities should anyone be taken short.

It is lovely on the water's edge at dawn in your shirt sleeves with nothing much to think about.

I am endlessly fascinating to my dog. Mind you I take enough pictures of her...

If you can't get rid of it, turn it into a tourist attraction, or a piece of public art.

The Cuban chug has become slightly more permanent each visit. Now it has a sign telling you to bugger off in no uncertain terms. Creative use of a road sign.

We had sniffed everything of value out if the little park, Cheyenne and I. Time to go home to bed and leave the beach to intrepid swimmers from Up North.

Spring Break has been unusually aggravating this year because in the recent bout of construction Key West has lost hundreds of cheap(er) hotel rooms and I'm told lots of a Spring Breakers have sought cheaper shared accommodations in Marathon creating daily lines of traffic waddling back and forth at ten under the speed limit. Add to that endless construction to install 200 million dollars worth of sewer infrastructure and I am looking forward to a not too distant future where everything reverts to normal and all this orange stuff goes somewhere else.

More like this, on the Bahia Honda Bridge:

Sleep, lunch, exercise, brief afternoon walk and then it's time to say goodbye to Cheyenne and head back to Key West for another night of intractable drunkeness outside while we try to keep a lid on it from the inside.

Keith said he wanted to order dinner from Kennedy Cafe which plan I resisted for a while. Then my wife sent me an email saying she got an award from the district for being a good teacher, which she is actually, and so I had an excuse to celebrate. I really do like their lamb donner, a sandwich made with Uzbek bread and a creamy sour cream and dill sauce. Keith has their rather boring turkey dinner; why I don't know.

Plus they deliver. I love my job. I get to sit in comfort, or stand as I choose, I don't have to meet or touch anyone and I share the room with two other people with odd senses of humor. Plus Key West has some tasty exotic food.

And thus endeth the cycle. Not exactly like a vacation. But then there are the days off...

 

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