A Cenotaph

This is a typical section of recently paved roadway at Mile Marker 38, on the Overseas Highway. What makes this spot stand out are the wreaths:Familiarity breeds indifference and we have all seen the roadside markers, as we blow on by, where some poor unfortunate met their Maker. I was enjoying my day enough that I figured it was time I should stop and take notice for a change.
I vaguely recall this wreck, an incident that must have profoundly altered quite a few people's lives, as several lost theirs here. My overriding memory was relief that I wasn't on this section of road that day because the investigation closed the highway for a while. Which, as one looks at the crash marks, reveals itself as a rather shallow thought.What prompted such a catastrophe, one has to ask, and there are no answers on the roadway to the untrained eye. Perhaps a moment's inattention, a mechanical failure, an animal in the road, a simple human mistake. Whatever it was I seem to recall three youngsters died and one other was flown out for treatment in Miami. I seem to remember it involved two cars colliding, which seems inconceivable on this stretch of road. Perhaps it was a failed attempt to pass that brought them together?

And there, in the blink of an eye everything changed. I remember going down on my Bonneville last June 1st and as the motorcycle leapt from under me and flopped to the left I had time to think about the aggravation of the damage I was going to cause to my machine. I got bumped and scratched, but completed my commute that morning thanks to a couple of passing men who lifted my motorcycle back on it's wheels for me. I suffered the bumps and bruises for a few weeks, I paid a thousand bucks to get my pretty motorcycle back to where it was before the wreck, worn but not worn out, and that was that. These folks weren't so lucky:It is an inexplicable fate that plucks these people from Life's path and leaves the rest of us to soldier on.It is very likely they took life for granted, as do we who are still here, enjoying the day, but not necessarily expecting the end. Certainly in our culture, one that has the greatest difficulty acknowledging any of Life's little truths, the inescapable fact of Death isn't something we are encouraged to ponder.Clearly they left some people behind who weren't ready to see them go.There is that constant search for confirmation of immortality after our lives here are finished. It's existence can never be proved so it is always devoutly hoped for and firmly believed in. It is said, more to the point, that we live on in the memories of those left behind, a statement it's hard to argue with when you see these tributes:I feel rather guilty looking at their pictures and flowers. I'm turning 52 in a few days and I've made more than my share of rider errors in my life and here I am anyway. These young'uns got to make one choice that one day- they chose to take a drive- and ended up here.My mother died when I was a teenager and I think I can accurately say that not a day goes by that I don't think about my mortality. I doubt there is anything more after death than the same great blankness we came from, before we were born, but whether my idle speculation is right or wrong it can't hurt to try to remember to redouble our efforts to live each day as though it were our last- for one day we are sure to be right.

Some Goombay People

I like Goombay, it's one of my favorite street festivals in the year. And though it is supposed to be a festival of the Bahamas and the Caribbean the food has rather more broad cultural roots:I don't care for the arts and crafts so much but I do enjoy strolling Petronia Street from Duval to Emma and just checking out the scene:There's music:Key West's finest make their presence known but remember we are in small town America and this is community policing:Dogs are welcome:Bandannas are okay also, and pineapples and kebabs are definitely right for the time and place:
Arepas are delicious Colombian sandwiches made of corn meal, shaped into a circle, fried and covered in cheese and a second slice of fried corn meal. If you see an arepa offered and don't eat one you failing to live life to the fullest:I would call it "cheese" but the sweet corn and savory cheese patty looks like this. When my wife and I sailed to Colombia a decade ago I used to walk the dogs each morning along the beach on the island of San Andres and I would buy a breakfast of an arepa and a classic weak cup of Colombian coffee from a vendor's cart on the waterfront. For some reason Colombians like their coffee sweet and weak (rather like me). Their arepas are sturdy and filling:And after you've looked at the crafts and eaten some food you end up watching the ebb and flow of people on Petronia Street:

And there's another cop being helpful. Wait a minute that's Donie Lee, also known as the Chief, just being out and about and meeting the citizens and walking the beat.Last year Bill from Buffalo (NY) waylaid me on the street. He had read the blog for a while and expected to find me at Goombay last year. That he did shocked me but this year we made it easier by meeting ahead of time. I had to go to work so I watched him order beer and he said it tasted good. Good enough that with one in each hand he didn't feel self-conscious about standing around holding his wife's handbag:There may have been more humans than usual at Baptist Lane and Petronia Street but that was no cause for alarm among the permanent inhabitants:

I got a shock when Bill suggested we order some alligator meat from the Louisiana food stand. My wife and I opted immediately for some crawdad puffs (spicy Conch fritters essentially) while Bill and Diana went straight for the fried alligator kebabs.

Oh well, I thought, it's time I tried alligator. This is an actual picture of me wrastling alligator meat into my digestive system for the first time ever.
The texture of the meat was actually very like chicken (which was a relief, I was afraid it might feel slippery like shark which I find disagreeable) and the batter was delicious. It made me feel odd, eating dinosaur even though it was quite tasty. But I soon got to take my mind off it with some more people watching:
Oh, and guess what, there were some street closures downtown for the festival which continues today.
And this time next week it will be the final night of Fantasy Fest but I'd much rather be at Goombay.

Veterans Park

It was too cool to consider going swimming. I am embarrassed to mention temperatures were hovering in the mid 70s but the northeast breeze was cool and wintry and dry and it didn't feel like a day to immerse oneself in ocean water. So I didn't, I stood on the shore and took pictures instead. This is Veterans Memorial Park at about Mile Marker 39 at the south end of the Seven Mile Bridge.Veterans is a good place to bring a picnic and enjoy the view. Like most parks in this small islands, Veterans isn't what you might call expansive but it has all needed appurtenances for a day at the beach. And rules too, including No Nothing Overnight:And there is a magnificent toilet building for your pleasure, which is worth knowing if you are caught short while traveling:You can stroll the beach and take pictures:You can bring a pal on your motorcycle and take a quick turn in the parking lot. These reprobates would probably get loud raspberries from the quaking all-the-gear-crowd Up North who are alternating envious glances at the sunny Keys afternoon on their computer screens, with the gray overcast precipitous day outside their windows, in that delightful time of year known as the all-important "change of season." These guys hitched up their shorts just to give you an extra taste of their summery pleasure:I don't give a fig for changing leaf colors or drooping apple boughs or frosty hedgerows with panting robin red breasts in them. I can't wait for temperatures to get back to normal, the winds to die down a little and give me another week or three of swimming weather before the next cold front puts the final seal on summer.

The waters off Veterans Memorial Park are not too terribly deep and you can wade out on a sandy path between the sea grasses for a good long way before the water covers your knees, so I generally prefer to go to Bahia Honda State Park for swimming.Veterans is nicely set up for families to come out and enjoy the waterfront, with chickee huts, picnic tables and trash cans everywhere, a service of Monroe County Public Works, and very civilized it is too.

The problem with living in the Keys is that you get acclimated to the weather and winter suddenly feels cool and dry when most visitors find the sun balmy and warm compared to what they go through at home. This hermaphroditic metrosexual looked decidedly European to me for some reason. But as effete as he appeared to my sturdy eye he was doing alright for himself, as it turned out.I wondered if perhaps she might not have been his sister, but he took some pictures of her posing in a style that was decidedly odd if they were blood relatives.I hope they enjoyed their visit to the Keys and spent vast sums of money. They certainly seemed to enjoy lounging on the beach as I busied myself taking my pictures. I had a dinner date with my wife and I was buying dinner at the Winn Dixie grocery in Big Pine before she got home so I had to pull my finger out. Here are some more happy memories of the Keys being recorded at the water's edge. You really owe it to yourself to get down here and do the same. Just ignore my moaning about the cold fronts and frosty conditions, because I happen to prefer summer's heat.

It's been a lot hot summer, extra hot in fact, and I've heard from my neighbors who have been longing for relief from the heat. I plan to switch modes too, and as swimming ends cycling begins and walks in the back country become bearable in winter.
I'll come back to Veterans to sit out and perhaps watch a sunset, or, if I get ambitious and can drag myself out of bed early on my days off perhaps I could photograph even a sunrise or two.The great pleasure I do get from this modest change of seasons is that one doesn't have to waste time dreading winter. It's a change, a modest one, but outdoor living is in some ways enhanced, rather in the way people in horrid climates take advantage of snow by skiing and riving snowmobiles and they make the cold their friend. So I do different things in winter when it's cooler than i do in the blast of summer's heat.On the colder snaps in winter I start grumbling about how we need to move further south, Puerto Rico is largely immune to cold fronts as are the US Virgin Islands, but the truth is cold is relative and it doesn't last long in the Keys. On Sunday we were treated to a night time low of 67, by Tuesday the sun was firmly out and the high broke 80 degrees. Now we are in a rough pattern of 78 by night for a low and 85 by day for a high. Delicious.Veterans Memorial park is easy to miss. It's on the south side of the Highway and flashes by like this:Flashes may be a rather inappropriate word because tourists have just come off the Seven Mile bridge at this point so they tend to be rather slow, taking it all in as they rumble slowly by:And there in the distance, to the south, is Ohio Key and it's RV Park overshadowed by a giant Stars and Stripes and the rather less aesthetically appealing rectangular blob that is the useful electronic highway information billboard.A book, a loaf of bread, and a jug of ice cold filtered rain water. And Veterans Memorial Park. Date anyone?