A Gannet In Marathon

Marathon has a rather cool motorcycle rental shop which  seems to have weathered Hurricane Irma:

 Pigeon Key has re-opened for business out of a trailer:

But  my business took me to the  boatyard for a quick check of the circumnavigating Moore 24, a lightweight racing boat designed for the downwind "sledding" in California coastal conditions.

 It's owner Webb Chiles is on his sixth time round the world on about as small a boat as you can imagine though he did once get almost all the way round on an open boat. Check this LINK .

I climbed the ladder and found myself surveying his tiny domain 24 feet long and three quarters of the way around the world. 

 I feel an awesome responsibility doing the minimal stuff I do as Chiles admires this boat a great deal.

 From Wikipedia:

Gannets are seabirds comprising the genus Morus, in the family Sulidae, closely related to boobies. "Gannet" is derived from Old English ganot "strong or masculine", ultimately from the same Old Germanic root as "gander".^[1] Morus is derived from Ancient Greek moros, "foolish", due to the lack of fear shown by breeding gannets and boobies allowing them to be easily killed.^[2]

The gannets are large white birds with yellowish heads; black-tipped wings; and long bills. Northern gannets are the largest seabirds in the North Atlantic, having a wingspan of up to 2 metres (6.6 ft). The other two species occur in the temperate seas around southern Africa, southern Australia and New Zealand.

Gannets hunt fish by diving into the sea from a height and pursuing their prey underwater. Gannets have a number of adaptations which enable them to do this:

• no external nostrils, they are located inside the mouth instead;
• air sacs in the face and chest under the skin which act like bubble wrapping, cushioning the impact with the water;
• positioning of the eyes far enough forward on the face for binocular vision, allowing them to judge distances accurately.

Gannets can dive from a height of 30 metres (98 ft), achieving speeds of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) as they strike the water, enabling them to catch fish much deeper than most airborne birds.

The gannet's supposed capacity for eating large quantities of fish has led to "gannet" becoming a description of somebody with a voracious appetite.

It's not a lot of boat for such a journey but so far so good.

I met my wife for wings at Marathon Grill and Ale House where they have local beers from Key West and Islamorada Brewing Company (Iguana Bait? quite delicious and not all IPA bitter) 

We had a beer each and 16  wings of different flavors for less than 20 bucks according to my accountant.

And so homeward over the seven mile bridge:

And there was a full moon when my patient small brown companion needed to stretch his short active legs. 

A pleasant Friday afternoon.

Winter Time

We march to the tune of a different drummer in North America where the US and Canada as well as border states in Mexico switched to winter time last night. Other northern hemisphere nations and the rest of Mexico switched on October 29th.  I am actually fond of daylight savings time and despite some inconvenience caused by dark mornings I wouldn't mind keeping it year round.  

Young Rusty, seen here at the courtyard of the new city hall helping me take a break in our breakneck walk, finds the dark mornings inconvenient because I can't see to walk the mangrove trails in the dark. So we either wait till seven, and he's impatient, or we walk where there is a clear rail and maybe a street light to help us on our way. 

It was about seven in the morning when we stopped at the city hall rest area and a city employee I know popped out to have a chat as she was early for her work. The conversation soon turned to the storm and she had some hair raising stories about her neighborhood on Big Pine Key at the heart of Hurricane Irma's destructive sweep. Her car flooded and two unoccupied houses across the street caught fire and went up in blaze as swift and powerful as an oversize firework. She and her cats couldn't escape as the car wasn't working. They had no water ( for two weeks) and no electricity for longer than that. She still has no Internet or cable TV and when she gets home she has no distractions to take her mind off the stress of work and living in a trashed neighborhood.  It's the kind of thing you don't hear much about in the drive to make Key West tourist friendly, but those lives are being lived out there.

We set off for the car which I had left at the police station half a dozen blocks away. As we passed the welded steel tiger I couldn't resist juxtaposing my little brown tiger with the fierce  big one on guard at its street corner:

It was actually the mascot of the school that used to occupy the space which is currently city hall and it was welded as I recall by an instructor at the school. Naturally a whole boatload of people had an opinion about the refurbished tiger being located back at its old spot and all sorts of proposals were put forward. Some wanted it at Horace O'Bryant School, others said the Montessori School would be suitable and yet more thought  other spots entirely. After the dust settled the tiger was put back in the spot it has occupied for forty years and that seems to be that. Finally. 

I was strolling a way up United Street and I was struck as I cross White Street what an iconic moment I was missing. That wait for a hot cup of Cuban coffee, Key West's favorite way to greet the day. 

I did not do a good job as Rusty scampered and I was in the wrong spot and there it is. The frustration of combining dog walking with photography. I am grateful to Rusty for getting me out of my comfortable house but slow meditative picture taking is rarely on the cards for me.

This building, below, has a bit of history.  Bruce Hall was part of the Navy hospital complex in the world war years and was later turned into a commissary and now is used as a maintenance facility for the schools. Read about it HERE...Looking at the building I set to wondering how exactly it is that Key West is such a big Navy town and you would hardly know it walking around. There are actually seven bases scattered throughout the area but unlike say 50 years ago you hardly ever see anyone actually in uniform walking the streets. I don't mean that as a good thing or a bad thing, its just that things have changed I guess, in modern garrison towns.

From the Historic Marker tour linked above:

Bruce Hall was the third building in the educational complex at Ruth Hargrove Seminary. In 1889 Bishop Warren Candler of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, representing the Woman’s Board of Home Mission established a committee of seven prominent local businessmen to establish a seminary of learning in Key West.

The seminary began in a modest way in rented buildings while the committee raised money and secured a suitable site for their new institution. The first building purchased for the seminary was completed in 1901and was located on the corner of United and White Streets. The structure was a large colonial frame building with recital rooms, dormitories and living quarters for the faculty. It stood where the national weather station stands today.

Bruce Hall was built in 1911. It featured exterior walls of “Indian block”, a solid concrete block that was considered to be “fire proof” at the turn of the nineteenth century. The architectural style and use of building materials is very similar to the large cigar factories of the day.

Key West Night

 A  few pictures from my night walk around White Street and Olivia.

 Classic Key West architecture.

That survived 130 mph  winds and a near miss by all the tornadoes embedded in Hurricane Irma. 

A red window seemed more in the spirit of Halloween than most decorations. Not intended I'm sure!

 I could only think of Oscar Wilde suggesting the best way to resist to temptation is to yield to it...

 Many people in Key West find the expense and effort of pool maintenance to be worth it.

No sales between 4 am and 7 am. 

 All you need: a conch cottage and a couple of bicycles. And stout locks.

Dusk On Sugarloaf

I was off work and my wife was working late because she runs the adult education class in Marathon and a few nights a week stays late to benefit  people who work. Consequently there was no pressure on me to get home so Rusty's walk stretched out into a two-and-a-half hour meander. 

 It's how I relax, with dog and camera as I mentioned yesterday and I like a mix of back country and city walks and my dogs likes the same. There is part of Rusty that likes predictability but variety keeps him alert. Lately he has preferred running up our trash filled subdivision to getting in the car and seeking out his favorite trails. So I concur, it is after all his time and if he wants to walk the trash who am I to argue?

Then I wanted to check out the farthest reaches of Sugarloaf Key because it was a lovely afternoon and I knew Boca Chica beach would not be empty of people. The Sugarloaf Loop  was  busy when I drove past it. I saw half a dozen cars parked near the entrance so we motored on by. 

Of course when we finished the wooded part of the walk, completely alone on the walking trail, except for the wildlife...

...Rusty wanted to keep walking so we left the car behind and strolled off up the empty road.

How far? I asked myself as I dawdled and played with the camera waiting for my dog to come back, tired surely after an hour running in the bushes?

Nope, we left the car far behind and eventually found ourselves at Sammy Creek which pictures I published here earlier this week. We were no longer alone on the road either:

The dude on the bicycle went back and forth a few times getting his exercise and waving cheerfully as he went listening to a radio on his handlebars. I was never ready for him face  on and only caught his  compact form gliding apparently effortlessly away. I think he was older than me and dare I say  fitter too, by far.

On the road we had wreckage dumped not by a  hurricane I doubt, while on the waterfront amid all the natural beauty beyond the rocks recently battered by Irma, I had a manic tireless dog running up and down leaping among the rocks fearlessly and without injury.

 The light was fading so I took a flat rock to sit on and watched Rusty playing happily by himself.

I'd take him to dog parks and stuff but he hates them even when they are empty. He seems to find the smells of so many dogs in one place completely overwhelming. 

 So we play alone together and that seems to suit us.

I thought this was a channel marker with my naked eye. The power of my modest bridge camera, an FZ300 by Panasonic, is astonishing.

 Pelican heading for the palms.

It was dark pretty much by the time we got back to the car and drove back to Sammy Creek where I stopped again and took this picture:.

We still got home before my wife. Result!

Walking With A Camera

My life is  back in my hands at least a little bit  now that Fantasy Fest is over and after nearly two weeks of working and sleeping I got to go for a wander for the sheer pleasure of making my acquaintance once again with the quiet streets of Key West.

 This is the last week of daylight savings time in the United States. There are a handful of locations that don't do the time switch but for the rest of us Sunday the clocks fall back, a few days after the rest of the world that observes daylight savings and standard time changes. 

 I like the dark mornings which are unsuitable we are told for children going to school though I dare say many young students wouldn't mind a later start, as discussed by sleep scientists but not by parents who have to go to work.

So even though these pictures were taken by me after six in the morning and before 6:30  it might as well have been midnight as far as ambient light goes. Consequently there weren't many people about which suited me also.

The thing about walking Rusty and taking pictures is that I don't have time to do much in the way of composition, and I certainly can't haul around a tripod and a remote shutter release and spend time fiddling with manual shutter speed and f stop settings. It's mostly all automatic and thank heavens for low light enhancements and a decent telephoto lense built into my Lumix camera. 

 In these marginal conditions I fond black and white works better and the sepia setting best of all. Then I come up against a colorful gallery window. Color? At the risk of being banal:

 Or sepia at the risk of flattening the picture too much? I prefer sepia.

Rusty is actually quite patient even though he too was keen for his own reasons to be walking the streets of the big city.  And then he sits and waits a moment while I compose a shot, giving it the extra thirty seconds it deserves...

Still I have to remind myself if it weren't for Rusty I doubt I'd be out on the streets at this awful hour anyway. Good dog.