Friday In Pictures

I have been greatly enjoying my Panasonic Lumix FZ300 and I have packed more photos than I can handle into my Google account. I hope they give you some cheer this Friday still in winter.

The joys of the telephoto lense, a single non removable 25-600mm job augmented to 2400mm (!) digitally. The modern camera electronics astonish me. 

The camera is rainproof, dustproof (they say) and has built in wi-fi making it simple to transfer pictures to my iPhone where I can adjust them and post them in the normal way.

I enjoy my iPhone camera of course but the Lumix does add a couple of extra dimensions, distance shots and depth of field which latter is bit more subtle in a digital camera than an old SLR.

The digital camera even when set to f2.8 struggles to overcome and compensate making it trickier than I expected to get decent depth of field. 

But I do like playing with the manual settings and some of the custom features too.

On Riding

Daytona Bike Week is starting tomorrow and runs through two weekends. I've tried to go and check it out but the crowds are appalling and I don't fit with the pirate themed posing and motorcycles-as-lifestyle-ornament standing around and preening on the waterfront. I've passed through, been deafened and been glad to move on. 

Naturally the motorcycles, mostly Harley Davidson's show up in the Keys as a spin off from Bike Week, usually the week before. It makes sense, because unless you have  a private yacht (shown below) or a plane a motorcycle is about as interesting a way as any to visit. And many of the riders fly to South Florida and rent a bike for the tour through the Keys followed by a ride up the eats coast to Daytona Beach about seven hours north.

This is one of those weeks, like Bike Week in September that I make every effort to leave the Bonneville at home and ride the Vespa. This puts me outside the field of Harleys on the highway. Triumphs don't rate the pirate world of Harley Davidson but Vespas aren't even a blip on the horizon. People who ride Harleys tend to be focussed on their brand to the exclusion of all others.

I think my preference for solitary riding rather than in groups is an extension of my personality, as I like to decide for myself how fast to ride and when to stop and where to go precisely. My time on my motorcycle even when commuting is a time to be alone with my thoughts. When I used to sail I spent hours on passages sitting on the rail watching the waves go by. It sounds boring but it was an excellent meditation. Listening to the motorcycle as I ride does the same thing on long straight empty stretches of road.

I'm not much interested in listening to music or making phone calls while riding. I like the purity of the ride itself. I am as grumpy as you might imagine when I hear distorted music playing from windshield speakers on passing motorcycles. I am also annoyed by motorcycles leading parades of slow moving cars on the Overseas Highway.  I was trained years ago to make progress on the road and I have this weird instinct to move smartly along the road at all times. I am genuinely surprised to see cruisers cruising...makes me an idiot! I use my mirrors and signals and only pass where permitted but I if you are bumbling along in car truck or motorcycle close to or below the speed limit I won't wait around for you to wake up.

And I find it odd how all our idiosyncrasies, prejudices beliefs and needs and desires burn along this narrow stretch of asphalt frequently supported by islands and columns all the way to the mainland. Scooters and all.

Rusty A Year On

Facebook reminded me I got Rusty last February 20th and in an amazingly short time, eight days after Cheyenne died.

Rusty is completely different from Cheyenne and cannot really be compared. She came from a home, not a very nice one but she was never a stray and she lived out her life with me in a form of retirement, as is proper. She always seemed to keep me at arm's length even though in the critical moments of her life she always sought me out. Public displays of affection annoyed her.

Rusty is young energetic and curious. He is intelligent in ways I have rarely seen in a dog. I enjoy his company immensely.

He hates to be photographed so I snatch a long distance telephoto picture when I can.

He has a lot of the predator in his genetic make up.

He is amazing at moving through the convoluted mangrove woods hereabouts.  He pops off the trail and circles around  appearing silently in front of me once again.

The warped and twisted trunks and roots of the mangroves are no obstacle to him.

The south Florida heat doesn't bother him much at all though I am quick to whip out the water bowl which he usually ignores.

He is an independent little dog, and puts up with the leash because I say so, though he could bite through it in two seconds. He did that once to come to my rescue when he thought my trainer was attacking me while we were working out together. Sean thinks he is very cool. 

He loves being out in the woods and every morning we spend an hour or two on the trails checking stuff out before the world is awake. It's the best way to calm down after a night at work.

He is learning to be friendly with large dogs he meets and his confidence in the last year has grown by leaps and bounds.

When people see him trotting confidently about they leap to the conclusion that he is a stray which of course he isn't; he just gets there faster than me.

He has the run of the house and there is no fence outside so when he pops out through his dog door he is free to leave any time. He hasn't run off so far. I like to think he is happy at home with me.

He has been great fun to get to know and these days I am encouraging him to stick close to me around the house, teaching him to enjoy being touched and petted. At first I thought he didn't want to be touched but I have discovered he just didn't know it was allowed so now he is always choosing to lay down next to me and flop on his back to indicate a need for a tummy rub. I am putty in his hands.

He is at home anywhere.

He is not much driven by food but he did find a chew on the road and he played with it for a while. I don't fuss too much about found food, I figure he knows what he likes and I don't want to put my hand there anyway.

I look forward to many great years ahead.

And no, Cheyenne is not forgotten.

Good girl, suffering the heat.

Key West Two Wheelers

Standing on the sidewalk recently I was moved to remember that in a month or so people will start to leave (I've noticed discreet numbers of RVs on the road already) and the migration North will relieve some pressure on city streets, which frankly hasn't been as bad this year as some years past.

Maybe more visitors are using two wheels? That would be nice, but it would be practical too on these small streets.

I ride  a 150cc scooter 20 miles up the Keys from my  home on Cudjoe Key and that is a source of some surprise though I don't know why. The 150cc Vespa will de  better than 60 miles an hour, fast enough to keep up with traffic. But unlike my Bonneville motorcycle not si fast I am at risk of a speeding ticket...

Besides which around town a small body Vespa is a much better tool for the stop and go nature of traffic and the stop and go nature of doing chores, even though my Triumph motorcycle is easy enough to ride and park. The Vespa seen below at the Key West High School mascot, the Conch Shell.

 A friend of mine remarked to me how few people he knows who live in Old Town ride bicycles regularly "the way everyone used to..." as he put it. Some do.

I prefer scooters because they fit in better with cars in my opinion. Bicycles flit between sidewalk and roadway, tend to skip some of the more fundamental road rules which makes some car drivers crazy and yet they highly desirable so if they aren't locked all the damned time someone will walk off with your ride. A Genuine Blur 220 like the one pictured below would be delightful overkill as it is good for more than 70 miles an hour...I should get one for my commute! Except I would be much more at risk of speeding tickets, again...Must...resist...temptation...to...go...Large.

There are lots of Harleys in Key West, the ultimate symbol of the open road and at 800 pounds or more they aren't exactly lithe and lissom urban street fighters. Still they are easy to park  compared to a car and even if desirable aren't that easy to steal. The nearest dealer is in Miami. 

I ponder why more visitors to Key West don't take their two wheeled habits back Up North with them. I think scooters and bicycles are elements of a fun vacation in the tropics and are thus invisible as useful tools for daily life.

I suspect a visitor who has fun buzzing around Key West on two wheels for a few days or weeks would feel silly doing the same at home where an SUV does duty as practical transport.

It's too bad really but I doubt the Key West two wheeled trend will catch on. It hasn't yet.

Bahama Village

I wonder if Rusty ponders the contrast between himself and the dogs he meets who are trapped behind fences. I doubt that he does but it is a question that provokes me once again to wish I could have a conversationwith him for an hour or so, about life and walks and the need to earn a living.

The thing that I enjoy about Bahama Village is that it's a tight community of mostly African Americans, still after all these years, and that their slice of Paradise was a cast off handed to them to keep them away from the Mallory Square hub of commerce. Nowadays Key West's black community ends up owning prime real estate and most of it isn't up for sale. There is a certain irony there.

Bahama Village  today is on prime land close to the water and close to the revered Duval Street attractions. It wasn't always that way because originally Key West was a smaller city centered on the corner that faced the water at Mallory Square which was the working harbor and thus valuable real estate. The cast off land designated for the black community was on the other side of the island, which as the city has spread has come to be in the center of things.

The great exodus from Old Town only took place in the white side of town when the Navy pulled out in the 1960s and commerce collapsed. A few people tried to buy up sections of boarded up Duval Street and they are leading lights of commerce in the city today now that their desperate rear guard action has paid off. The African American part of town never sold up and left for New Town when the gay community saw an opportunity to develop a gay-friendly destination in the 70s.

As a result one of the most picturesque parts of unreconstructed Old Town is Bahama Village, and there are still some few people who think it is dangerous to wander Bahama Village. It's nonsense and you will find clumps of tourists wandering here as much as anywhere admiring the architecture, some of it dilapidated in a way that actually looks attractive. 

If you choose to wander The Village as it's known there are all sorts of little details on view here as much as anywhere in Key West.

Afternoon sunlight making shadows on a  wall on Terry Lane:

Ground has been broken on the amphitheater on Truman Waterfront and some people think concerts will flood the neighborhood with traffic coming and going with loud music keeping people awake across the neighborhood. 

I doubt any of it will change the essential nature of Bahama Village. The African American community is solidly entrenched despite all inconvenience.