Sugarloaf Boulevard cuts dead due south from the Sugarloaf Lodge on Highway One. The road slices through a nice suburban subdivision of expansive homes and flourishing lawn covered tropical grdens, all worthy of an essay of their own. At the end of the Boulevard the paved road takes a turn to the right (west) and heads off down a seris of invirgorating turns to dead end into a pathway that follows the old road, now overgrown, to the first trestle bridge, now collapsed, a road that used to parallel the beach out to Boca Chica. A left turn at the southern end of the boulevard brings one to a gate:
I walked the Loop Road itself just recently, but this essay follows the old state road all the way up to the broken bridge that used to connect with the road that comes down from Highway One near Mangrove Mama's restaurant which I wrote about a while back (November 9th, 2007, "Paved Road Ends"). I was going to cycle the old state road but it was a lovely afternoon and I chose to ride the Bonneville instead, leaving me on foot for my explorations.
Sugarloaf Key is low and watery and in these parts water is everywhere, as is mud which turns to water in the rainy season.
Unfortunately while the mud is wet and transitioning into water it gives off a particular smell that I can best describe as "rich barnyard." I grew up around farm animals and this particular type of methane gas smells to me nothing quite like anything so much as a pig's byre. A pig that has been eating table scraps and plant material in addition to it's commercial feed. Just like the ones I grew up around in Italy. It is a fact of life around the salt ponds of the Keys, just another romantic image of the Keys I have now shattered, for which I apologise.
There is evidence at the beginning of the old state road where it branches out beyond the Loop Road, that it was once paved, and lumps of asphalt appear from time to time along the gravel roadway. Judging by the squared off edges of this body of water I imagine this was once a gravel pit or quarry of some sort for the innumerable new roads built around the islands:
I hadn't tramped very far before the road turned into a track and pretty soon became a narrow pathway through the encroaching shrubbery:
And then to my delight I found myself walking through amature mangrove forest. It was surprisingly cool in the shade, with a light southeast breeze blowing through the trees and across the salt water they were growing out of, it felt like outdoor air conditioning:
And I saw a bird, though being the pathetic ornithologist I am, I have no idea what it was:
After the mangroves the ground seemed to get a little higher and drier, which doesn't mean much in these islands, but enough to change the composition of the bushes:
And it was along here that the silence got to em a bit. I kept hearing this rustling sound alongside the trail as I strode along. There were no sounds at all aside from the "crunch-swish" of my sneakers as I walked. But then I would hear rustling in the bushes, but as soon as I stopped the rustling stopped and I started to think that either I was a character in a cartoon strip being pursued by Wiley Coyote, or I was imagining things. I'd walk a bit and stop and the rustling would follow and stop. This went on for longer than I care to remember until one time I stopped suddenly and heard a loud clang from the bushes nearby. Then I figured it out- land crabs. One klutz must have fallen off his perch on an old discarded can and the mystery was solved.
It took me about half an hour but finally I reached my destination: the cut in the road that I had only previously seen from the north side of the creek:
The road on the other side was the one I rode on my Bonneville in my essay "Paved Road Ends" November 9th 2007. The creek looked as lovely as Miranda has described it to me, memories of a youthful conch. And from this shore I had a better view of it than I had from the north shore, looking off to the east...
...and to the west:
Without getting my feet, and a good deal more of myself, wet in the fast running salt water "creek" I had to turn back and return the way I had come.
So I did, but not before resting for a moment on a heavy wooden bench that was sitting in the roadway. It was long and heavy and made of wood and I have no idea how anyone got it there, nor why. But it did occur to me, since I was seen wearing pink crocs at Fort Jefferson, that my wardrobe has made me a bit self conscious. Here are my usual walking shoes:
Whcih are I think normal enough, though no doubt Allen Madding will have lots to say about riding a motorcyle wearing shorts and sneakers. The path home was of course the same as the one out but it looked a little different with the sun in my eyes:
The sun shining through the trees gave me cause to meditate on the meaning of the word "dappled" as I walked. My brother in law Bob McGahey, lives near Asheville in North Carolina and the fire department in Burnsville wanted to give all rural roads a name to make it easier to find them in the event of an emergency, a sentiment I can sympathise with, right enough. He grumped about it for a while but then he and my wife's sister Geeta, came up with a name for their lane and he wanted to call it "Dappled Dharma Way" which I thought was charming. In the end they had to settle on "Dharma Way" and every time I see something that looks dappled by the sun I think of this road in Celo Community:
Even though I am on this path in Sugarloaf Key, a place where people like to walk, enough that they clear a way from time to time apparently as witnessed by the limb removed:
And so back to the Loop Road all paved and empty in the middle of this wilderness.
Though I should add it wasn't always so. A reader Keith Krensberger sent me these pictures from an automobile rally on Loop Road from 1974, and delightful period pieces they are too:
I look forward to hearing more about it at dinner next week.
I was riding home as usual, enjoying another warm summer morning, just as the sun was starting to clear the eastern sky, when I took a spill. One minute I was cruising along at 45 miles per hour, the next the handlebars took an almighty waggle and I was in an attitude of prayer with the Bonneville on its side underneath me in the middle of the Overseas Highway.
The phone call to my wife was a bit fraught as these kinds of calls tend to be, but I managed to reassure her I was fine (adrenaline is a wonderful thing!) and we made plans for her to come and pick me up so I could trailer the Bonneville home later.
I'll have to see what Pure Triumph thinks but barring a few scuffs, and if the forks are okay I could get out of this with a war damaged motorcycle without having to go out and look for another Bonneville. The front mudguard got a little torn:
The right saddle bag died in the line of duty ($250):
And I'll need a new jacket and gloves. It's funny because I had been looking into getting a pair of Tourmaster Flex pants and they would have saved me scraping my knees (again! after my right knee healed from my walking acccident!) and my jacket did a nice job of protecting me...
...as did my leather gloves and my boots. No doubt I will be sore for a while though...I bruise more easily now than in my youth.
My poor old Bonneville will bear a few more scars from doing battle on the highway but I have no doubt we will be riding again together soon. 
I was incidentally, wearing an open face helmet which apparently never touched the ground. All in all an expensive start to the day. And I hope Toppino's fuckwits figure out how to label the roadworks in Big Coppitt a little more clearly in the future because we will be back before too long I hope. Now, where are the keys to the Nissan?
On the Windsor Lane end the spelling is GalvAston Lane, so geeks can spend many happy hours wandering back and forth enjoying the confusion. Which is a very pleasant thing to do as it turns out, as there some interesting old houses and lots of greenery:
It always surprises me when I come across vast spacious empty lots in this town. You'd think every square inch (centimeter) of this very expensive island would be built up, but that's not the case. According to J Wills Burke's book Streets of Key West, the Lane is named for the coastal city in Texas which was served by Stephen Mallory's steamship line. So I am going to stick with calling it GalvEston Lane. 
I would have to be Cirque du Soleil agile, or equipped with a ladder, or eight feet tall to violate this well protected space:
This one is protected by a row of conch shells:
This yard is protected by screening shrubbery:
I read with interest a recent entry in the Swiss daily photo blog by the person known only as Z, in my blog list, where he pushed the camera over a wall and photographed an elephant statue in a neighbor's yard. 
It seemed a risque move for a place as staid as Switzerland, though the result was decidedly worth it; check out his blog it's full of surprises. Would that were so in Key West. All I got was a picture of a deteriorating window frame from a similar exploration:
Though looking up I saw a rather nice pair of blue shutters thrown wide open, which surprised me as the weather has been rather humid and close lately, with overcast skies adding to the sense of oppressive heat. I would rather have my loft closed tight and well air conditioned:
Across the lane next to the park there was a trailer, quite picturesque with its attendant greenery in the faint rays of a setting sun:
Underfoot I spotted some wildlife:
Overhead some large brown fruit. I never tire of pointing out that I am neither ornithologist nor botanist so in this case I can safely admit I have only the faintest clue what it might be. It was hanging twenty feet in the air and it looked for all the world like breadfruit, but I have never been offered local breadfruit in Key West. Which is a shame because I am quite fond of starchy vegetables and breadfruit with curried goat is a delicious dish on the menu in the British West Indies (as were). Or perhaps it is a giant guava? Who knows...but there it was:
This I happen to know is a poinciana, frequently given the prefix of "royal," why I know not. In the West Indies it's known as a "flamboyant," while elsewhere in the tropics they call it "flame tree" for obvious reasons. It is a flamboyant flowering specimen and these bright orange flowers brighten up Key West during the early summer. I also found out the origin of the musical term maracas, which are apparently the dried seed pods of the flamboyant used as percussion instruments:
This large spreading flame tree oversees Bill Butler Park, offering plenty of shadefor dog walkers who find a supply of plastic bags next to the trash cans. I hope they use them:
Further along Galveston Lane breaks out into good old bougainvillea, which in case you read badly researched books, doesn't actually give off any scent at all ("bougainvillea scented tropical nights" is literary crap) but I think it looks good:
And there, past the corner Galveston makes a bee line towards Windsor Lane in the distance:
"Sublime, chust sublime," to quote the seafaring Scotsman Para Handy.
This motorcycle is supposed to fill the gap between the 865cc cruisers based on the Bonneville engine and the massive 2300cc Rocket, and considering Triumph's marketing so far, the bike will probably do well even in a recessionary economy. What was more interesting to me when I visited the dealer was the new Bonneville known as the SE. Supposedly the bike is aimed at younger riders and women and as far as I am concerned they are welcome to it. Not that its horrid, but the changes they have made to modernize the bike don't appeal to me. Which, as I'm neither a new rider nor a woman (though I do have short legs) indicates I am not the target audience.
The engines of all the Bonnevilles remain the same old 865cc air cooled twins with double overhead cams and four valves per cylinder. However the new SE is distinguished by smaller wheels to lower the overall height of the bike and now they are no longer spoked like mine. 
The smaller, alloy wheel rims supposedly make the SE more modern by making the handling "lighter" than the more ponderous larger wheels my Bonneville comes with. For me the big advantage of the new wheels is that they take tubeless tires which deflate slower, and are easier to patch, when they get a flat. However the new wheels give the SE a rather small look, suprisingly dwarfish compared to the T100 alongside.
Also the "pea shooter" traditional looking exhaust mufflers are gone, and the full fenders are cut back on the SE to make the bike look more modern, they say:
So far I'd be buying a T100, but then one takes a look at the seat and that has been cut down to reduce the 31 inch seat height on my Bonneville, which keeps me on tiptoe if I have both feet down at once, but the traditional looking seat now has a step and the front portion looks awfully thin to my jaundiced eye. Nice for short women riders perhaps if they have iron butts:
Those then are the changes and this is now the approximately $8,000 Triumph Bonneville SE (plus dealer fees which add around $2000 I think). The T100 costs a couple of grand more while the Thruxton Cafe Racer and the Scrambler remain essentially unchanged in the line up. For my money the T100 is a smarter ride but I'm an old fart so there it is, Triumph marketing triumphs once again!
And I must be a geezer because I don't like the decal that says Triumph in place of the chrome badge my Bonneville came with. A screw-on badge no less, so Triumph could sell lots of different types of badges as after-market accessories. 
Pure Triumph also has Black SE Bonnevilles on display and one rather dashing old style Black Bonneville in matt, harking back to that other Triumph marketing tool: the late Steve McQueen:
Given that I like carburettors and larger diameter wheels and pea shooter mufflers and big fenders I guess I would be out looking for a 2007 Bonneville if I were forced to replace my own machine. Pure Triumph had one in silver which isn't as pretty as my Goodwood Green Bonnie, but it has about 22,000 fewer miles at around 4,000 and the price tag was somewhere around $6,000 at the dealers if I remember correctly:
It's a satisfying feeling knowing you still have the right model for your taste.