Florida Heritage Bike Path

You'd be astonished to see how many people ride this trail in the early morning darkness when I'm motorcycling home at 6 in the morning. Modern bicycle headlights on some bicycles are as bright as motorcycle headlights and as they make their way through the bushes they give the impression of a well off course motorized machine coming at you from the wrong angle.

The state is bury making a true Heritage Trail all the way down the Keys and soon I hope to post some pictures of a new bridge the state has built connecting Summerland Key to Cudjoe. I am quite surprised to see so much bicycle-related road work going on but it is welcome. Frankly I wouldn't mind a whole bunch of shade trees even ones as slender as hurricane resistant  sabal palms to make the path more bearable in summer. 

 I love seeing the winter riders out for a jaunt properly done up in safety gear and workmen's high visibility safety gear. This bright reflective stuff is everywhere part of the trend of passive "safety devices" designed to shift the responsibility for one's well being on others. When out riding I figure it's up to me to pay attention to look after myself and not to expect others to notice me, but I'm bucking all expectations there.

 The bicycle bridge is built on the foundations laid by Henry Flagler's railroad crew around 1911 which railroad was turned into a highway by the government in 1938 after Florida bought the right of way from the bankrupt railroad. And then World War Two require further upgrades as marked in the cement alongside the white water pipe on the "new" (1982)  road bridge. The first piped water from Miami was brought to Key West by the military in 1942. Prior to that residents of the Keys lived off cisterns and rain water which modern standards suggest is unhealthy. Who knew? About the only thing I miss from my house on Ramrod Key was the water cistern. I found it healthy and delicious.

A close up of some mangroves. Nature called and we live in a paranoiac society sometimes that can't tell the difference between peeing and sexual deviancy so I took a picture of some mangroves while I was otherwise engaged. Fascinating bushes are mangroves, sucking up salt water and expelling the salt to use the water. 

 It was a strangely alluring view across the waters. You can see why people would bust a gut riding a bicycle around here.

And when it all gets too exhausting they have the occasional bench facing the highway foir a better view of cars passing in your face.

I really need to stop more often to enjoy this odd little spot.

Rain In The Everglades

Imagine this, I took for a day ride in the Everglades two months before I found Cheyenne at the SPCA. Looking back I wonder how she spent that Friday with the family that was soon to dump her. I did alright and even enjoyed the rain. From September 2009:

Rainy Meditation

I had Friday off and I took the day to go on a long ride. I have been feeling a little trapped by the unwonted heat of this summer. My wife's shoulder injury has meant we cannot use our little skiff daily, so I pulled the boat from our dock and it has sat, disconsolate, on it's trailer for the summer. I determined I had to go for a ride, so I gave myself an unreasonable goal and decided I would ride there and back and see how I coped.The day went well on the whole, I arrived where I wanted to go and I managed to avoid all but the lightest of showers as I crossed the Everglades. In addition to a severe shortage of breezes we have enjoyed a surfeit of showers this long hot summer and I fully expected to be rained upon. As can bee seen from the photo above, I met my Waterloo on Snake Road in the Seminole Indian Reservation. It was to be the highlight of an excellent day.I pulled over to enjoy a spectacle I had not yet seen in a thundercloud. It was like a white blaze in a gray head of hair, and there were elements of a rainbow within the splash of white in the rain storm. Of course my attempts to photograph the phenomenon fell far short of what I saw with my own eyes:The temperature gauge had been hovering above 100 degrees all day (38C) and i was sweating in my helmet and my gloves and my waistband all day. The thunderhead was producing a phenomenon that Iwas used to, a down draft of cold air that rush across the fields and bent the leaves on the bushes and the scrub palmettos. When out sailing that rush of cold air was my first warning to shorten sail, especially at night when I couldn't see the black anvil in the sky that was producing it. Standing next to my motorcycle I just grinned and sniffed the cold air like a city-dwelling child first exposed to the ozone of fresh salt air. The rain was thick and blotting out landmarks across the fields:Rain spattered and I turned and fled, thinking perhaps to return to the U Save gas station in the Seminole village where I could buy a coke and sit at a table on the porch and wait for the rain to pass. As it happened I had noticed a corral as I rode and as I thought about it I figured that if i stopped there I could shelter my motorcycle and also probably not have to talk to anyone. I had a thermos of hot tea and a book I have been enjoying (Hitler's Pope, a biography of Pius XII, which is not nearly as dry as it sounds) in my saddlebag and I would take advantage of the pause to do some reading.
It is commonplace these days for riders to load up with music and GPS and blue toothed cell phones that allow one to be distracted by almost as many electrons as the average car driver. I am not one of those, I continue the practice of enjoying my thoughts while I ride. Partly I hope to ride with greater care, partly I enjoy listening to the silence and thinking thoughts as I barrel down the long straight stretches of Florida back country. To thus have to pause and refresh the memory banks with new thoughts is a chance not to be missed.
I could tell this thunder head was special. The edges were blurry, the heart was black and it spread so wide the edges produced rainbows even as it advanced on me. So thick did it look down the road, and so strong were the down drafts, I figured it was prudent to leave my waterproofs in the other saddlebag and take the opportunity to stay dry. I was at least four hours, possibly more from home and I wanted to stay dry as darkness was two hours away and my blood is so thin that riding wet, in the darkness in 80 degree (27C) ambient temperatures could set my teeth to chattering.

It's not easy to photograph rain I find but I had lots of time to try to perfect the technique. The wind howled, sending raindrops horizontally under the roof. The the thunder clapped so loud my teeth ached and I wondered if the zinc roof would act as a lightning conductor. I retreated to the interior of the corral and hid behind the slats trying to stay dry. And the rain came down.

It bent the leaves of the trees and shook the branches with it's force. The sound was the hissing of a dozen steam locomotives, the very air was damp with rain, even at the center of my shelter.There was a viciousness to the rain, it felt like it was pounding the ground into submission. The wind stopped and left the rain to do it's worst and like a guard dog released by it's master the rain hammered and worried and tore in a frenzy, trying to do as much damage as time allowed. How this neighboring roof stood up to the assault I don't know. Them Seminoles know how to build a strong roof, they do.

Well, I thought, I made the correct decision. Tea, anyone?

It was undignified I know, using the motorbike as a table, but the little folding chair thoughtfully left behind by the stock man (thank you, whoever you are) was the perfect height to allow me to read and drink tea with the minimum of effort.

And so time passed. I knew that if I had togged up and continued the ride would have been not much fun. Rain of this intensity would have penetrated my plastic clothing at strategic spots and anyone who tells you riding with a soppy crotch and a wet chest is fun are lying. It would have been a challenge, of that there is no doubt, but I met the challenge my way and it went well. Indeed I was reluctant to put the book down. I had got to the bit where the Vatican made no comment on the "Night of the Long Knives" and I was wondering what the author had found on that subject in the Vatican archives.

The rain was easing up but as long as I could see spray shooting out from under the passing vehicles I decided to stay put. Either that or put my plastic pants on to keep dry and sweaty.The cars drove by in a steady stream and I didn't envy them their mobility. They had no conscious moment of this storm, just another wet view through the window. For me it had been a calculated risk, a well thought out decision, a maneuver to keep me dry. An hour spent here was an hour that would live on in my memories for a good long while. "Remember when...?"

As we age our lives speed up because so much of our older lifetime is repetition. Routine creates fog in the memories, the same photographs taken over and over get filed in one place. New pictures merit a special look and a thought or two. That takes time, and the time taken is added to the bank of life well lived.I do like the perpetual sunshine though, and it got a particular applause from me as the cloud moved off to ravage some other place and left me to pack up and ride out in a world made fresh and clean by the rain. A Seminole police car slowed to look at me lurking in the corral as I was running my eye over the bike making sure everything was as it should be. He didn't stop to talk, perhaps he got a call of something more urgent than a motorcyclist taking refuge from the rain. I thus managed to hide out for the storm and spoke to no one about anything making the moment all mine.

Mine and the Bonneville's of course, for what would Timmy be without the dog?

Von Phister Street

From March 2009 this winterish meditation on a particular street in Key West with suitably pertinent ruminations on a  cold winter six years ago:

Von Phister

A winter evening in New Town; a Triumph Bonneville, a camera and me:

It's the corner of Tropical Street and Von Phister. I'm not sure I could live too easily on a street that goes by the unfortunately sounding name, but there it is, a fist of a street, harsh and uncompromising in name only::The sun was starting to hit the horizon which gives the light a golden glow and perhaps that made the suburban street look prettier than usual:And even though this isn't the world of narrow lanes and wooden tumbledown homes of Old Town it is pretty enough to pass muster in a world of bland mini malls.I'm not overly fond of streets without sidewalks but there's lots of grassy edges to park on, or walk along if you are crazy enough to be on foot. Ride a moped, drive an electric car if you live in Key West:According to J Wills Burke's book Streets of Key West there were two Von Phisters and either one could be the source of this slightly odd street name. The elder owned a grocery store where the Green Parrot Bar is today and his son was a magistrate in Key West in 1860. (J Wills Burke's book is available from your local independent books seller. Quote ISBN 1 56164 317 3). Nowadays Von Phister, which runs from Reynolds Street to George Street, shows off a whole bunch of architectural styles, the cute little Florida beach cottage:The old Key West balcony:And the mid century storm shutters that always look so appealing to me, be they ever so impractical:I spotted more of these tin shutters with the red stripe on a house across the street, a home dominated by a giant casuarina, also known as an Australian pine:I also noticed a lot of tin roofs in this neighborhood, which are a good thing in hurricane country but that doesn't mean you always see a lot of them:Technically speaking, if you were to speak to a realtor they might call this part of the world "Mid Town" which was a newer designation for that part of key West that lies more or less between White Street and First Streets. Historically Old Town was the original area of Key West between White Street and the waterfront. Gradually as the city spread east, absorbing the open spaces where cattle had grazed, the newer suburban homes became known as New Town, rather unimaginatively. However, in order to differentiate between the far distant suburbs of First through 20th Streets and those named streets lying closer to White Street, the term "Mid Town" got coined, kind of. In a city that measures one's value by the length of time one has lived there, changes come slowly. Von Phister is New Town really and thus has lots of room for big houses:It certainly isn't Old Town, but it has flowers:...and Art:...and some funky architectural motifs:...and families:But because this is New/Mid Town houses have room for the much desired OSP, off street parking:And just a reminder that even though this is 24 degrees North Latitude we still have leafless trees in Key West:I do like living in the Keys, you lot can keep your snow.

Duval In The Rain

I will say the weather is weird at the moment, not that struggling to reach seventy degrees in winter is odd on cold days. It's that the wind is blowing out of the north east and the rain clouds are sweeping in from the opposite direction, the southwest. And boy, it just won't stop raining.

The weather is one of two topics on the mind at the moment. Yesterday I touched on the absurdly heavy traffic and numerous accidents caused by distracted driving when people cross into the oncoming lane and there were many nasty injuries by people being ejected from their cars. I guess it's phone use and lack of seatbelt use respectively.

Food shopping at the new Publix, the one in Key Plaza not the one in Searstown, I landed in the check out line of a chatty cashier. I had hoped I wasn't going to be chatted at because I am nothing like the cute young blonde in front of me, the one with the Christian Academy jacket who declined to donate to the special Olympics despite Mr Chatty's best efforts. I donated promptly but I wasn't spared. He commiserated with me about the weather remarking his only day off is Sunday which is supposed to be sunny, the only day in the forecast without its share of rain. I refrained from pointing out my working weekend ahead, and plodded out into the soaking wet parking lot.

Wandering up Duval Street I was amused to see outdoor heating on the patio at Willie Ts. Cold wet soggy Duval Street. Frigid cold.

I am not fond of rain as it makes everything more complicated, even simply finding your way:

It wasn't crazily heavy down pouring rain like a summer thunderstorm, more like a constant niggling persistent endless annoying drizzle imported from the Pacific Northwest. I'm about ready for the next stage of a normal cold front, crisp sunshine out of cold clear skies. I think we have at least another week of this nonsense, on and off.

I was properly wrapped up against it. Decidedly not my cup of tea.

Cheyenne likes it but she likes anything that isn't 80 degrees. It wasn't 80 degrees when I got home. Grr.

 

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