I found my hardly lost youth last week and though it lasted just a few minutes, playing in the mud was very good for me. I was cycling in the Key Deer National Forest in the back of Big Pine Key when I came across one of those delightful trails to nowhere, and it was all hard packed stony ground. Until it wasn't; the thing was that bicycle tire marks kept going and in less time than it takes to tell, I was saying to myself: "If they can go there why not me?" Which led me directly into the mire. The tracks seen below are mine:
Suddenly the tire was sinking and it was all I could do to force the pedals round to keep my balance. I found another patch of rock, paused, gave it up for a bad job and rolled back through the mud, watching great clods of clay stick to the pedals, the frame, the wheels, and fall onto the hubs. I stayed upright:
I cleaned up as best I could riding hard and using bits of dried grass to wipe the bike down. The next day I was parking the car at the police station prior to unloading the bike for a ride around town when one of the senior detectives came by. She paused and stared at my bicycle perched on the car rack. "Hmm," she murmured, "I recognize this stuff," she picked a piece of dried clay off the side of the tire and tested it between her fingers. I watched her wondering what on earth she was thinking. "Reminds me of when I was a kid," Brenda said smiling at the happy memories. "I used to play in this stuff all the time." And she walked off. Really I need to get used to working around people with guns. I have no skeletons in my closet. 
I admit it: this is the time of year I tend to get cranky and it's got nothing to do with hallmark holidays. Its the visitors on the roadways. They are everywhere, crowding out the city of Key West jamming Highway One, dithering at intersections and slowing down on the bridges to admire the views. Getting around is getting impossible, and this happens every year and every year I struggle to maintain my equanimity in the face of driving stupidity. For a start, why do snowbirds and tourists who have no schedule to keep, get on the roads during commute hours and clog everything. This is North Roosevelt Boulevard at 5pm at Salt Run Creek:
Looking at this picture one has to wonder why lane splitting isn't allowed in Florida...And while I'm on the subject of lane control check this next sequence out. I took these pictures in the car just after crossing Cow Key Bridge into the City of Key West. The first sign reads, Right Lane Go At All Times, which is a simple enough instruction you'd think. But at the triangle where Highway One joins North and South Roosevelt Boulevards, traffic making a right into the city stalls. This makes me crazy because the right lane merging with North Roosevelt gets its own lane. Barring pedestrians at the crosswalk, there is no need to stop! Just take the corner carefully and stay rigidly in your own lane.
Instead just about here visitors lose their nerve and come to a dead stop backing up traffic all over the place... when the mantra should be right lane, Go at all times...
Because once through the pedestrian crosswalk the road into the city is wide open, and the lane to the left of the white line is for traffic coming up from South Roosevelt from behind, and that's what unnerves visitors. Your lane is for you alone no matter who is coming up behind:
I can fulminate all I want and I know it won't get better so I am desperately trying to bear myself in patience until they all go home again...leaving lots of money behind we hope. However the crowding isn't all bad, and there are lots of new motorcycles on the streets for me to ogle. I saw a maroon Vespa 250 in the meadows and it made my heart go pitter patter as it looked just like mine:
Suddenly the tire was sinking and it was all I could do to force the pedals round to keep my balance. I found another patch of rock, paused, gave it up for a bad job and rolled back through the mud, watching great clods of clay stick to the pedals, the frame, the wheels, and fall onto the hubs. I stayed upright:I cleaned up as best I could riding hard and using bits of dried grass to wipe the bike down. The next day I was parking the car at the police station prior to unloading the bike for a ride around town when one of the senior detectives came by. She paused and stared at my bicycle perched on the car rack. "Hmm," she murmured, "I recognize this stuff," she picked a piece of dried clay off the side of the tire and tested it between her fingers. I watched her wondering what on earth she was thinking. "Reminds me of when I was a kid," Brenda said smiling at the happy memories. "I used to play in this stuff all the time." And she walked off. Really I need to get used to working around people with guns. I have no skeletons in my closet. I admit it: this is the time of year I tend to get cranky and it's got nothing to do with hallmark holidays. Its the visitors on the roadways. They are everywhere, crowding out the city of Key West jamming Highway One, dithering at intersections and slowing down on the bridges to admire the views. Getting around is getting impossible, and this happens every year and every year I struggle to maintain my equanimity in the face of driving stupidity. For a start, why do snowbirds and tourists who have no schedule to keep, get on the roads during commute hours and clog everything. This is North Roosevelt Boulevard at 5pm at Salt Run Creek:Looking at this picture one has to wonder why lane splitting isn't allowed in Florida...And while I'm on the subject of lane control check this next sequence out. I took these pictures in the car just after crossing Cow Key Bridge into the City of Key West. The first sign reads, Right Lane Go At All Times, which is a simple enough instruction you'd think. But at the triangle where Highway One joins North and South Roosevelt Boulevards, traffic making a right into the city stalls. This makes me crazy because the right lane merging with North Roosevelt gets its own lane. Barring pedestrians at the crosswalk, there is no need to stop! Just take the corner carefully and stay rigidly in your own lane.Instead just about here visitors lose their nerve and come to a dead stop backing up traffic all over the place... when the mantra should be right lane, Go at all times...Because once through the pedestrian crosswalk the road into the city is wide open, and the lane to the left of the white line is for traffic coming up from South Roosevelt from behind, and that's what unnerves visitors. Your lane is for you alone no matter who is coming up behind:I can fulminate all I want and I know it won't get better so I am desperately trying to bear myself in patience until they all go home again...leaving lots of money behind we hope. However the crowding isn't all bad, and there are lots of new motorcycles on the streets for me to ogle. I saw a maroon Vespa 250 in the meadows and it made my heart go pitter patter as it looked just like mine:And then I saw this yellow apparition turning heads on Duval:
They call these things "bobbers" and it was based on an elderly 650 parallel twin all done up in Yamaha racing livery:
I was driving in to Key West to pick up some stuff that wouldn't fit on the Bonneville and I saw this motorcycle in front of me,quite the eccentric with a New York tag, fishing poles in rod holders, flip flops on his feet and a helmet that could barely contain his flourishing head of hair:
That is one way to go in the Keys, this is another, trim compact and ready to ride fast:
But if you want to wander the streets of Key West checking out the contents of the garbage cans a good old fashioned pedal tricycle may be just the thing:
I prefer my Bonneville all the same:
Which would be the large one to the right, in the picture, not the silver Yamaha scooter.
That is one way to go in the Keys, this is another, trim compact and ready to ride fast:But if you want to wander the streets of Key West checking out the contents of the garbage cans a good old fashioned pedal tricycle may be just the thing:I prefer my Bonneville all the same:Which would be the large one to the right, in the picture, not the silver Yamaha scooter.______________________________________
Odd signs caught my eye,not necessarily odd but something like that.
I don't molest anything much, certainly not traps. If you do, and you get caught the fine can be $10,000 which in our debased currency is still real money. Plus you lose all your friends and neighbors who previously trusted you will no longer be inclined to do so. This next sign is a simple explanation...
...of why your animal should have a tag attached to the collar. Much less stress all round. Which brings me to the next one which encourages...what? Ho hum, the little dears must be off their meds.
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I saw little bottles for sale on the shelf at Waterfront market and I was astonished to see they were labelled by the world's greatest living marine artist: 
I am clearly not a businessman, nor am I an artist, but it seems to me the world would be just fine for a little while if artists stuck to art and businessmen to commerce. "Body wash" (whatever that is) has nothing to do with marine art, that I do know. No matter how prettily it is wrapped.
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I got a gift that intrigued me, and it's called a Backtrack by Bushnell. It uses a GPS in a hockey puck device to tell you, not where you are, but where you are going and where you've been:
In this instance I was nine tenths of a mile from my way point which is in the direction of the pointing arrow. The Backtrack is simplicity itself to use and offers a magnetic compass which points to magnetic north and three way points to enable the user to find their way back to where they came from:
A clever, nerdy, gadget which now lives in a pocket of may backpack. I never know when I might lose my car in a parking lot...
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Apropos nothing in particular a few pictures that I just liked and have nothing to say about them:
And that's all she wrote today.
We got a call from Mrs Sailorman saying they had dropped anchor in Key West on their way north to a consulting job and did we want to do lunch? This is a couple we had a passing aquaintance with when we lived briefly in Ft Myers on our boat. They call when they are in Key West and we have had a couple of lunches with them in the past and this year it seems the tradition was to be maintained. My wife and I don't have much of a world view in common with them but one listens and tries to learn. So there we were at the Shrimp Shack of a sunny winter afternoon ordering grouper sandwiches for us and shrimp and fries for them.
I find these kinds of encounters instructive because I get to hear how the world works form a different point of view, even though the point of view itself frequently leaves my head spinning. Sailorman is one of those people I like to describe as having a bluff exterior masking a bluff interior. He pontificates on subjects with a no holds barred attitude that is refreshing and somewhat confusing as he expects me to share those opinions. The "ladies" were inside placing the orders and we were outside holding down a table in a crowded seating area, and lacking sports for common ground economic bailouts were the opening conversational gambit. There at least we could share some scepticism, as clearly our first modest $700 million "bailout" has done bugger all good for anybody, except the jerks pocketing the bonuses. Though I would cautiously welcome a recovery plan that might hope to do some good, Sailorman thinks government stinks in every way at every level. He is one of those people who believes that government can do nothing right. And the autoworkers...well, of course they want too much money to raise their families. A whole $27 an hour i was quick to point out the famously incorrect $80 figure includes costs that are paid out to former employees in pensions and health care benefits ( damn those benefits!).
And the fact that I work for the government, in my albeit modest capacity gets overlooked in the smirking runt of the conversation that relegates government to a level of incompetence worthy only of disgust. This from a man living off a buy out from AT&T, his steady employer for decades, that gave him a large sum of money to quit which which he bought a home and took to a life of pottering about and sailing. Not exactly government but god knows government-like when one remembers American Telephone and Telegraph's monopoly that enabled him to work and retire on such generous terms. The irony of his fulminations against car workers seeking similar compensation packages was completely lost on him.
Atlantic Avenue in Key West runs east and west along the south side of the island, but, unlike South Roosevelt, Atlantic isn't in sight of the water along most of it's length. Part of the way is covered by tall apartment buildings at 1500 and 1800 Atlantic and the area in between is filled with a lot of mangroves. It is actually, though not obviously a nature preserve:
The entrance to the preserve is easy to miss as it is an inconspicuous little gazebo next to the 1800 Atlantic Boulevard parking lot.
You'd think that people choosing to walk the little quarter mile trail to the beach were taking on an undertaking worthy of an expedition to the Himalayas, judging by the severity of the signage, all manner of warnings about the rough trail littered with obstacles:
"Walk at your own risk," "Many obstacles," and God forbid you ride a bicycle else you might run down and injure more modestly equipped trekkers in this natural wonderland. If the trail were that rugged you'd think pansy Florida cyclists simply wouldn't bother. But where's the fun of a city park without warning signs? And then there is the sign proclaiming no access to wheelchairs- if you're in one you have to go to Rest Beach up the street to check out the ocean front:
Which I found a little odd but there it is. The other odd thing, and decidedly unnatural is the proximity of 1800 Atlantic's utility apparatus.
However in Key West there isn't a lot of room so these things happen quite frequently. You can, for instance find yourself in the bucolic serenity of the Tropical Botanical Garden on Stock Island and see the Aqueduct Pumping Station looming above the trees. The trail itself doesn't seem that tough to negotiate, though there is a pile of sand up next to the water which would be tough to get a wheelchair through.
A pity really because the view is the usual delight, south across the Straits of Florida:
Off to the east the 
And in the other direction, towards the White Street Pier, there is another expanse of sand:
There were a few people on the beach when I was standing around there, but it wasn't nearly as crowded as perhaps it should have been. By Florida standards even this beach is fairly modest, but compared to much of the waterfront up and down the rocky Keys this is expansive indeed:
And up above there was all manner of traffic:
The biplane is to be seen (and heard LOUDLY!) buzzing the beaches towing a banner offering rides, a good long ride for a couple of hundred bucks for two I believe. I still want to do that, and check out the islands from above. Like a pelican, as it were.Meanwhile back on Earth we see humans doing what humans do, calling their friends on their cell phones and (LOUDLY!) wish them a happy new year, in between puffs on their big fat cigars. Quite the life...at 1800 Atlantic.
In the last rays of the sun this enormous block of apartments has some pretensions to beauty. Or something:
Passing by the condos on the way out, the way I came in, I took a quick stop at the mangrove lookout platform, built out over the water alongside the trail. In the right circumstances it might look a tad bit more spectacular I suppose:
And so I found myself heading out to get to work on time, but for others this time of day, close to sunset is the time when recreation replaces obligation and this woman found a spot to perch and draw.
When the Natural Retail Group bought Waterfront Market in Key West from local icon Buco Pantelis, everyone who cares about "things local" announced the sky was falling. There was a great deal of affection for the local grocery store which operated with an emphasis on fresh and organic, but that wasn't a national chain box store. NRG has thirteen stores between Massachussetts and Key West, ten of them are in Florida, two in Maryland and the other on Cape Cod. Key West joined the chain in March 2008.
Since then I have heard from Waterfront adherents that things don't look as good as before and that things are slipping, but I would expect no less. The place has lots of employees all wearing olive colored NRG t-shirts, a touch of uniformity that does strike a discordant note at the "alternative" grocery store:
From the outside the store looks much the same, the same Wyland marine wildlife scene remains on the walls. The name hasn't changed either on the front doors:
But inside the doors, on the parking lot side of the store I found a notice urging people to use reusable shopping bags, such that one gets 20 cents off for every such bag used, in the manner of Whole Foods the national organic chain that does operate big box stores:
And the produce section still offers organics in a community that struggles with the concept of paying more (for anything) that is of higher quality:
My wife's sister, the general practitioner, has come up with some bizarre "cleansing diet" for my wife's inflamed joints which consists of ten days of squash and rice only, so we laid into the squash section trying to find the most interesting range of squashes we could find. Spaghetti (which is a crime to an Italian let me tell you) and acorn and zucchini and some round knobbly thing that is probably native to New England and poisonous to anyone else. We got some help from the olive shirted Natural Retail Group employee who struck me as being cheerful and local, despite early complaints that management imported non locals to run the store after the change over:
Waterfront still offers the array of yuppie sauces, oils, potions and other exotica that the Food Channel on television has introduced across the land:
And the deli section still offers ready to eat meals to the delicate skinned visitors who wear their sun protective hats even indoors such is the strength of the southern sun:
Some foods are so interesting they even tempt, gradually, employees to try them:
Plonk (English slang for wine, often cheap) comes from around the world in proper looking bottles, enough variety to require some serious meditation:
All these exotica may seem run of the mill but Key West has spent much of it's existence since wrecking went out of fashion, just getting by. Wreckers imported anything they found on ships they salvaged and any tour guide in Key West's historic homes will tell you all about where there fittings came from. Nowadays island exotica comes by food truck:
And for those visitors who seek local inspiration Waterfront Market carries a few books, not just cookbooks, for inspiration:
It used to be that there was a fabulous juice bar and Internet cafe upstairs in the mezzanine, but that has gone and that's a loss. 
One acquaintance who was a fervent Waterfront Shopper told me she was disappointed with the change as she has lost a source of products she used to like to buy there. Nowadays she looks for her sodas and soy milk at other stores, including Publix the chain store by excellence. Then there is the fact that things aren't where they used to be and that pissed some regulars off. One point the disaffected brought up to me, who is not a waterfront regular, is that the new management failed to clean up the store when they had an opportunity. They tell me the place was a mess at the end of local ownership and the building could have used a good clean.There is still art hanging around though:
I'm guessing that growing pains will yield to a new generation of shoppers who will gradually forget the "old" waterfront. I remember the annual newspaper listings for jobs paying something pathetic around $7 an hour and the annual turn over of low paid staff. I am not cut out for retail work and those that struggle to deal face to face with the grumpy public have my respect, which I try to retain even when I am grumpy. They do a tough job:
Besides, you can still get a decent sandwich and an organic soda and sit outside facing the water and know you are supporting, if not a local store, local workers and a very small chain in a world still dominated by mega chains. That has to count for something, and the sandwiches are still good.