The prospect of pitting my wits against those of a fish has never filled me with unalloyed delight. I cannot help but feel that I let people down when they discover that I dislike fishing and yet I live in the Fabulous Florida Keys. Fishing is on the same order of need as breathing for lots of people, and to think of me living here and unwilling to fish is a crime of a high order of magnitude. All I can say in my defense is that I have tried fishing and found the business disagreeable.
Even if, like me, one doesn't enjoy the process of hooking an innocent fish and jerking it out of it's world. it is possible to share the delight in the environment in which this hunt takes place.
Cycling back home from a trip to the house insurance agent's office on Big Pine Key I was struck by the very physical beauty of the afternoon. Granted it's colder than the proverbial witches' appendage nevertheless the frigid winter afternoon was bathed in perfect sunlight yesterday, and I was glad of an excuse to stop pedaling and warm up, on the bridge between Big Pine and Little Torch Keys. The place was looking delightful and rustic:
There are craft anchored between the islands in waters just a few feet deep, and several of them are permanent homes, rather unseaworthy they appear too. Its an odd fact of life afloat that would be boaters who like to live on their boats are frequently not travelers and the practice of living aboard descends into a state of immobility that could be the cause of envy in the average well anchored suburban home. They may be boats but they move less than a house on stilts nearby might move from year's end to year's end. Not so the fishing fleet, those are the boats that are constantly carving wakes across the placid waters of the channels. and they aren't alone in their pursuits:
It was probably more than a week ago that I noticed a strong smell of fish emanating from a bridge over which I was cycling and when I looked over the parapet I saw a wizened old Conch sorting sponges in his boat. His presence was marked by a white van frequently parked along side the highway at that spot where apparently he keeps his skiff. Indeed one day I saw the Marine Patrol, known these days as Fish and Wildlife checking up on the van. He must have passed muster. In any event I spotted someone who may have been him hunting in the waters off Big Pine:
It used to be that sponge fishing was a big industry in the Keys until the sponges started to die off. Indeed Greek spongers were encouraged to emigrate to Florida to set up the industry and their descendants operate a few boats and a great many Hellenic restaurants in the white washed town of Tarpon Springs, north of Tampa. In the 21st century it comes as a bit of a surprise to me that there are still sponge fishers operating in the Keys. I've seen them from time to time poking around in the near shore waters but they retain an otherwordly, almost Biblical appearance, patiently stabbing the waters with their hooked poles:
He stood on the bow of his skiff for a while, poised like a bird of prey waiting for a victim to drift under his boat:
I stood next to my bicycle for a while snapping pictures and then he gathered himself up, sorted some sponges in the boat and apparently decided he needed more to complete the day:
There was something completely enviable about his situation, sitting on the water with nothing very urgent to do, while cars rushed past me in their headlong busyness on the Highway.
As he puttered away I wondered if I had seen the last of him for the afternoon, but he reappeared under the highway bridge heading north:
And then he settled down to drift silently some more up the Big Pine Channel, hunting for more sponges and stabbing the waters from time to time as he went:
I was getting chilled as I stood and I starting earnestly peddling the four miles home, but pretty soon I had to stop and pull the camera out again. It is not an unusual sight to see in the islands but it is a sight worth recording a few times:
Later I fired up the Bonneville and rode into Key West to meet my wife for dinner and a delightful performance of Willy Wonka at the key West High School. Temperatures were back below sixty degrees (15C) but the clarity of the skies gave the sunset a peculiar intensity:
I overheard a couple of Conch parents stepping out of the auditorium after the Chocolate Factory performance and one was telling the other that never has it been so consistently cold in the Keys which I declare to be an exaggeration. On the other hand, I do wish, rather ardently, our modest air conditioning unit had reverse cycle heating. And that desire doesn't manifest itself very often at all.
Bahia Honda (deep bay in Spanish) is home to Blue Butterflies, which we are assured are hard to spot. Not least apparently because they are in fact brown in color:
You'd think they could assign the naming of butterflies to a biologist not afflicted with color blindness. 
Personally I found the interior of Bruce's truck to be an excellent place to observe the outside world, with heating and everything. This was an opportunity for me to view my world not from the driver's seat, or the controls of my motorcycle but instead as a passenger in a visitor's vehicle. It was, for a Bonneville rider, quite a change.
Bruce and 
It's a leisurely way to travel. They took seven languid days to drive to Key West from Santa Fe and the pace didn't pick up while on Highway One:
The stories were good and I didn't spend too much time contemplating our lack of forward progress in 
I might have to try this again. Not being in a hurry. Weird. 
Life is simpler for Bruce who has been retired for 14 years from a life of building secret whatsits for Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor that used to be reviled daily during the Cold War, but which paid Bruce a handsome war dividend in the form of secure employment and a proper, old fashioned pension. What's a retied engineer to do? Why tinker of course so he decided to get a motorcycle, load it up with computers, and then park it in his garage out of the blizzards 
I suggested he and his wife rent a home in the Lower keys for a few months and do the snowbird thing but he demurred, worrying about driving so far with their dogs. The fact is that after a life spent fiddling with slide rules and micrometers Bruce has lost the drive to plan, so a nice slow road trip followed by a stay short enough to require but one visit to our washer/dryer is sufficient apparently to take the edge off a New Mexico winter. 
It was a pleasant winter afternoon in the Keys, the recent cold front had blown through with some force, leaving us basking in afternoon temperatures above 70 degrees (20C approx) and we took advantage to head out on the back roads of Big Pine Key. We checked for alligators at Blue Hole but finding none we spotted this one, in pink, on a seawall at Port Pine Heights, on the northernmost tip of Big Pine Key, where we took a stroll to admire the architecture and the balmy afternoon air. We weren't alone:
These women peddled past and on turning around asked if the nice dog was ours, we shook our heads though when we strolled by this "nice dog" used a great deal too much energy yakking at us from behind his upstairs bars wherein he felt safe:
Bruce and Celia's lives are dominated by an obscure breed of massive dog called Bernese, which look a bit like the animal in the Canadian comic strip For Better or For Worse (which the Citizen doesn't carry, unfortunately) and like most breeds of big dogs, Bernese are relatively quiet companions. This was not a quiet bucolic neighborhood. Someone was out being industrious with a weed whacker buzzing loudly and someone else parked their 
This is a man who has spent 
As though the fence somehow failed to carry the stern warning all on it's own. We strolled past a 
I thought he was joking at first but his precise mind 
Carl's design seems to have fallen on hard times, but this isn't the only 
Bruce insists he 
Love them or loathe them, and they like to 
Hitting them while riding might not be so great even if they are half the size of a white tailed deer:
I took a short spin on Bruce's 800GS BMW and he took my Bonneville for a tour of No Name Key:
Of which comparison more later. It was a most satisfying, simple afternoon, for me a day off work for him another in an endless series of days off:
Just messing about on motorcycles.
Looking down I saw Finnegans Wake, the Irish pub enjoying the last of the evening sun along with a couple of cyclists:
And on the other side these evocative, old Key West tin roofs proudly displaying rusty marks of the passage of time:
And then I photographed the sewage plant for the Whalton Lane essay and walked back down to my motorcycle. 
I hardly dare speculate what it might have said.
Working scooters, someone's main transportation, parked ready and waiting to go:
And that other symbol of key West transportation, the working cyclist:
And then there are the visiting land cruisers, huge machines lumbering around town hauling the kitchen sink in their multiplicity of bags and stuff, like this BMW outside the Courthouse Deli on Whitehead Street:
It's a style I've always liked but it seems like overkill in a community a hundred miles from the nearest freeway. Not to mention the purchase cost equivalent to two Triumph Bonnevilles... 
So the dreaded auction is coming to Key West gradually. I have heard of numerous properties headed towards foreclosure but so far house prices are nowhere near collapsing. Home sales have dried up compared to the boom years but I heard a rumor a six million dollar Old Town home was recently snapped up by singer Kenny Chesney who probably isn't short a buck. For others though the prospect of forking over three quarters of a million for a home might seem a bit much these days. I saw these listings for middle Keys homes:
I expect 2009 might bring a few more bargains to the market.
They were a dozen motorcyclists riding in a gaggle of discombobulated idiots, blocking both northbound lanes on Boca Chica and holding traffic down to less than 50 miles per hour in a 55 zone. The white van was fit to be tied trying to persuade them to let him pass but they droned along in a mess of 46 mile per hour weaving bikes holding back a dozen impatient drivers. I hung even further back anticipating a disaster.
They fumbled their way through Big Coppitt and the sewer installation roadworks and popped out in the Saddlebunch Keys where the limit goes all rural and gets back up to a heady 55 miles per hour. Not us. We were stuck behind the morons still weaving and and out amongst themselves, still facing sudden death from the white van caught in their midst. A couple of them dropped out of the pack suddenly slowing and stopping on the shoulder for reasons known only to themselves and their women perched high on inadequate pillions. We passed them by at a funereal pace only to find the extra lame slow pokes suddenly bobbing in our mirrors:
We were moving so slowly I was tempted to ask my wife to get out and stroll alongside and take a few pictures as we rolled through the sunny afternoon... but eventually we got closer to home with me wondering if all this talk of wanting to see more people out on two wheels is really a worthy goal for advocates of motorbikes and motorcycling.
As I turned off the Highway to go down my street the last I saw of them was a slow moving procession dawdling along towards Big Pine Key, and happy to see the last of them. There will be more I'm sure.
It would have been a better conveyance for some people who think they should be out riding motorcycles.
Night night.