Well, even the most devoted nurse needs to take a little time off, so a quick run to the video store to return 92 In The Shade, say, can lead to something more... like a ride straight up Key Deer Boulevard, just before sunset in a crisp 70 degree evening. Perfect. A motorcyclist looking for twisties will have a hard time in the Keys, as will a commuter expecting alternative routes to work, but for a middle aged man with years of riding alternative roads stacked in his memory, all it takes to have a nice ride is a thundering putt through the pines of Big Pine Key. 
On a dead straight road, even. Key Deer Boulevard is the left-hand road heading north form the traffic light on Highway One and it runs dead straight to a dead end about five miles into the pine forest. Along the way it passes three churches, the Blue Hole and a Trail Head, part of the wilderness area that is most of the pine forest. 
The wilderness area tends to butt up a bit against homeowners. Co-existence can be a bit tricky where people resent wildlife, and they choose to live in the would-be-hinterlands of BPK, the island home of those in the Lower Keys that want to be Left Alone. These are not people that want National Wildlife in their backyards.
I mean really, who do they think they are kidding with "unauthorized entry?" Key Deer wander at will and local gardeners are always in a tizz about deer ravaged plants. Personally I'd love a few endangered Key Deer on my Key, as they make development extra complicated and restricted but those that have them, tend to hate the deer. I might start hating them if I actually hit one. They are small, but not that small and could easily wreck a 30mph motorcycle. I saw a couple on my expedition but they stood on the roadside and made no false moves.
So the anti-tree-huggers trying to get away from it all live alongside the canals of Port Pine Heights, a place that I rate as less than scenic in many respects, not that inexpensive, as even these depressed days you'll be facing an asking price of at least $600,000 for a 1500 square foot run down stilt house on a canal.
And the canal may not be so scenic, but it gives a boater easy access to Bogie Channel, where, rumor has it, is to be found excellent fishing, with easy access to the Content Keys and the Gulf of Mexico. The best part of this back country for a two wheeled rider with a yen to explore is the number of odd streets, most unpaved that wind mysteriously into the mangroves, pine trees and scrub. I make a mental note as I rumble by, and I shall return with my camera and stout walking shoes. I've checked quite a few back roads around here (on the Vespa) but there are always more. The trick is to check for a) Street Names and b) a mailbox. A dirt road with a mailbox and no street name is probably a driveway, and boy! Won't they be surprised to see a stranger on a Bonneville show up in their yard uninvited. The biggest handicap I've noted on the Bonneville is the Ducati-style, minuscule steering angle. Its fine on the open road but turning at walking speed is a protracted and tiresome business as the steering lock is tiny. Not the best feature for a high speed u-turn and getaway from an irate homeowner in his narrow driveway.
One nice thing about the Bonneville is it lends itself, without protest to some weird pictures which pop into the viewfinder as the owner stands back and admires his hunky ride. Or stands back to admire the open water views at the end of Key Deer Boulevard,
while carefully avoiding the angry No Trespassing and Trespassers will be Shot signs hemming in the view. I must be a simpleton, I had a great ride, mostly at 30mph or less because the Sheriff's Deputies positively love to lurk in the 30mph zone on the dead straight road. I got no tickets, I got fresh air and my wife was happily zoned out on pain pills and Netflix when I got home.
My Bonneville: my panacea. And there's another of those bloody "Unauthorized Entry" signs in the background. I feel an upswelling of rebellion,
one day I will just force my way into the scrub thorns and palmettos to prove a point. Bloody but unbowed, that will be me.
The saying" bright enough to read a book by," is sometimes used to describe a full moon and lately its been that way on my street. I'm lucky enough to live where street lights have yet to penetrate so every night is a light show, stars on no moon nights, and crisp white light bathing everything for the other ten nights a month. When we were out cruising I preferred traveling by night, partly because it was cooler, partly because the ocean is a marvelous place at night. On moonless nights I sat in the cockpit of my sailboat and watched a deeper darker sky than a city dweller could imagine possible, and the term "velvet" sprang to mind. But to be on a tropical passage under a brightly shining moon is another brand of magic altogether and even though the silver disk obscures the stars, I really do prefer a full moon. It's an event I notice even when the moon is just starting to rise over the mangroves with the sun still high enough in the sky to be able to...read a book by.
I was turned on to the book in question by the Moto Philosopher, a mention of a motorcycle biography by a Canadian university professor who told the story of riding to Texas on his highly unsuitable Ducati. 
The notion that a 700cc standard motorcycle might be "unsuitable" for a journey of several thousand miles is a modern conceit, propagated in a consumer driven economy where every garage should house a multiplicity of cycles, one for each purpose. A huge cruiser to travel, a dirt bike for fire roads, a scooter to commute and a classic to admire and on and on and on. Ted Bishop turns his back on that theory, falls in love with a Ducati Monster in monstrous matt black and takes off across America. Except this isn't the oily reminiscences of a wrench monkey. Bishop feels like he has climbed his mechanical peak when he has checked his chain final drive tension every evening.
And perhaps, that is why the book is delightful. It is about riding a motorcycle, seeing places and enjoying America in all its grotesque glory. That's because travel writers love to zoom in on the weird and the whacked, and Lord knows there's plenty of grist for their mill in these United States.
The other reason this book makes a good read is because Bishop is a professor of literature and he's a part-time detective and he's on the hunt for first editions and buyer lists and all sorts of other irrelevant nonsense. Don't get me wrong I love to read but Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are not anywhere near my list of classics I need to re-read, since I last hacked them in school. Thus Ted Bishop's orgasmic research in the ivory halls of Austin's academe don't do much for me, but I appreciate his well written fervor.
On the other hand, T.E. Lawrence and Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) are writers of a different and much more interesting caliber, so they, and the Ducati keep me going between chiffon waves of Woolf and Joyce and their drawing room dramas. I am having a blast with this story; everybody should. 
The waters, the fishing the beaches are all in place as they always have been. The streets are similar, the houses and greenery lining them are there and the essential quality of other worldliness that attracts people to Key West is in evidence. Old bars, long gone will cheer the hearts of old timers, but my brief visit in 1981 wasn't stamped strongly enough to enable me to remember much. I think the other side of Key West, the drab, hard scrabble, know-nothing booziness is clearly portrayed in a way that looks cool on film but reminds one that life in Key West has long been nasty and tough. The plot is simple enough. 
Tom Skelton is a talented flats fisherman and gets hazed by the old timers on the dock who are threatened by his potential. Warren Oates plays Nichol Dance, Fishing Guide and all around nasty guy. 
Tom doesn't take kindly to the practical joke Nichol plays on him, and overreacts to establish his turf and the retaliation spirals down from there. Throw in Burgess Meredith as his weird old monied grandfather, a bra-less girlfriend, Elizabeth Ashley and a crusty Greek Chorus played by Harry Dean Stanton and all Key West needs to be is a pretty backdrop.
The video has apparently not made it to DVD, not on Netflix at least. I found an old VHS tape at the Big Pine Video Store in the "Keys" Rental Section. That's what its about really, its just a B movie set in the Fabulous Florida Keys, and the locations are real even if moved around a little. 
A good film for an enforced afternoon at home, post-op, with an arm in a cast and a large supply of pain pills.
The thing is I've started to slip into the Bonneville habit. I'm molding to my motorcycle. The handlebar grips slip into my gloved palms, my feet find the footpegs without hunting, and the clutch slides in and out with no effort or conscious thought at all. I am at one with my Bonneville.
The Vespa, sitting low on that extraordinarily comfortable seat, seems alien. I like the image of the Bonneville, raw and mechanical where the Vespa, still beautiful, flows around its bodywork.The other benefit of enjoying the ride as an exension of habit is that I can take whatever the road has to offer, whether its the all too rare open stretch or the more common clustered clumps of slow moving cars. These days, with an ice storm ravaging the Great White North, the number and variation of out-of-state tags is spreading all around us. This means Highway One is slowing down and its not getting to be worthwhile to even bother passing when the line of cars and trucks extends half a mile in front of me. 
I came home, unloaded the groceries from my saddlebags ("How did you pack so much stuff?"my astonished wife asked from her handicapped throne on the leather couch), and I passed out on the bed, tossing turning and waking up coughing. Thinking about the sun on the flat waters, twinkling with the promise of a warm ice free winter, feeling the 79 dgeree breeze blowing across my face, it feels good to be living here in the flats of Florida. A California friend came visiting and as she reminisced about the crumbling path from her Aptos house to the rumbling Pacific Ocean, I could picture the cold and the damp and the fog and I know where I want to call home.
The spot where she died at 90th Street is marked by a broken stairway, a pile of flowers and teddy bears and votive candles wavering in the winter breeze. This was the day after we got back from Miami and I left my wife propped up in bed, her arm in a cast, surrounded by hot coffee newspaper and reading glasses. I took the Bonneville out for my first ride since last weekend and I have to confess I missed it. 
The memorial was held at the sheriff's Aviation Hangar, where they keep the medical helicopter. The field alongside was packed with law enforcement vehicles, state agencies, police departments all over Florida and our own blue and white KWPD cars scattered amongst the strangers. Outside the hangar the honor guard lined up alongside the motorcycle cops ready for the ceremony.
I took my place inside the hangar next to a Highway Patrol Corporal I've talked to from time on the phone, behind a row of anonymous State Marine Patrol Officers.
The greatest tribute of all was also the most modest, made a day earlier away from the all the uniforms and dignitaries. It came from a local homeless man who donated his five dollars to Toys for Tots in Deputy Tanner's name. Because, he told her Lieutenant, she always showed me kindness and respect. No greater tribute can a deputy have than this, from the least among us.
