Circling Caroline

I was intrigued by the lateral thinking on this attachment for a hurricane fence on Stump Lane.Then, as I trailed my dog, I noticed similar improvisation at a home apparently not occupied and locked up tight. No Parking where chains and locks protect the empty space. The garage door behind it was also secured with a metal pipe locked and bolted.Further up the lane I spotted a fine pedestal for a modest mailbox. Walking the streets of Key West with a camera (and a dog) has that effect on me. I keep seeing things that tickle my fancy, things that give me pause. And out comes the camera. This next sign in the Cuban Joe's marine hardware store looked like it was addressed to boats rather than cars, after the recent downpours.This is an area prone to flooding along Caroline Street. The ticket machine sign wasn't very accurate as there were two working machines, not 25 yards away across the parking lot. Nowadays the city lot is unstaffed and the barrier is gone. The idea is to park and buy a ticket and run the risk of getting a parking fine if you fail to so do.I noticed this apparent liveaboard boater wheeling his laundry back to the dinghy dock.Romantic notions of living at anchor could be dispelled by the realization that doing laundry in steamy heat and rainy conditions takes quite a bit of effort. or you could just smell the lavender.The Art Bar doesn't look like it's being remodeled. It just looks closed.
The New Market has been around for ever formerly known as Maun's, one more of those inconvenience stores that litter the landscape across Key West. This lot need to brush up on the spelling of medicene. What"all kinds of energy" means I'm not sure I want to know.
The big cement block of the Park and Ride garage at Grinnell looks out of place in Key West.
But it is home to a few geckos.

And what I think was a dead toad. I kicked it away with my foot but not before she had nibbled enough to make her throw up copiously a short while later. I enjoyed scraping that off the sidewalk with a plastic bag, but I did not have the presence of mind to photograph it...

A motorcycle, a banana tree and the open road. Or street at any rate.

Harpoon Harry's on Caroline Street looking toward Duval Street. I used to like the restaurant a lot but televisions hanging on the walls spoiled the place for me.
This venerable place services my water pumps and I am now worrying what will happen when they go. A coin phone.
I wonder how long they will be around.

Bonneville Towed

The question came up during Bike Week: why tow your motorcycle? Well, one reason might be if your wife is in California attending Pete's wedding in Santa Cruz, and Jiri has scheduled your bike for a service how are you going to get your bike to Stock Island from Ramrod Key?You could ride the Bonneville there and take the Lower Keys shuttle back. That would take a while and you'd have to leave Cheyenne at home. Using a trailer gets you, the bike and the dog to Stock Island. Drop off the bike, chat with Jiri, walk the dog, come home, shower, put on your uniform and drive to work ( dropping Cheyenne off at her godparents on the way). Nobody said my life was easy when my wife is away.I try to remember to hitch the trailer before I roll the motorcycle up the ramp. That avoids scratching the back of your newish-to-you Ford Fusion. Oh well. I put the motorcycle in gear and lower the side stand, just in case. I have a handlebar attachment that allows me to strap the bars down without hooking the straps directly to the bars.
I have found the bars tend to slide under pressure and turn down so in the future I will most likely attach the frame to the straps as I have two convenient attachment points on the frame. With the motorbike on the trailer I lay out my straps.
I use a couple of shop rags to prevent chaffing on the straps on the edges of the trailer. I use one bungee to strap the front brake and the other to hold the front wheel to the edge of the trailer.
The bungee is also a useful way to hold the strap in place until I can get proper tension on it.
My utility trailer is four feet wide and six feet long, small enough to park easily under the house. However it was a nice fit for my Vespa GTS and is a tight squeeze for the Bonneville so I need to keep the front wheel tight to the front of the trailer.
And up she goes. Keeping tension on the straps with the bungees the motorcycle is now balanced by it's handlebars.
The front brake is on and clamped...
And the bike is ready to go, thirty minutes after staring the process. Phew!

I check the bike out in the mirror before I set off so that if anything changes as I drive I can pull over and see what's happened. Typically the front wheel may settle and the headlight may turn as the bike bounces into a new position.
A half hour later the motorbike is on the ground at the shop on Stock Island.
I don't like to anticipate my projects for fear of jinxing them but I am hoping to get off on an attempt at an Iron Butt 1500 in early October so the Bonneville is getting not only new tires and tubes, which it needs anyway, but an early oil/filter change, new brake fluid and a caliper check, also a new chain and sprockets which Jiri recommended as the original chain is now 42,000 miles old. "That's twice normal" Jiri protested and he was worried that sustained 80 mile an hour riding could be catastrophic. He is impressed by the effectiveness of my Loobman chain oiler as the original chain and sprockets still look like new. I was impressed by this bumper sticker.
"Are you turning into a Bonneville shop?" I joked with Jiri. I appreciate the SE is a much lower bike but I prefer the slightly more upscale T100 which has better components and nicer styling in my opinion. The SE has a thinner seat, the Thruxton style mufflers, smaller (tubeless alloy) wheels and though it does have a tach it uses the spindly switchgear found on the Scrambler. Not my cup of tea, though I am surprised how the few changes make the two bikes look so....different.
Apparently some Key Wester bought the SE for his wife. I hope she enjoys it as much as I do my old work horse.
Jiri hates having his photo taken, so of course I like to piss off my trusted moto mechanic.
He grew up in the pre-1989 world of Czechoslovakia so he has a special fondness for brands of motorcycles i also remember from my youth.
Here's the cause of the towing trouble. If she could ride the bike and the bus with me we'd never have had to tow the trailer.
I'll see Jiri in a few days and I shan't forget to bring him something around $900 for his trouble. I hope the Iron Butt is worth it!

Old Bahia Honda

It was only when I arrived at the southern end of the old Bahia Honda Bridge that I understood why I had been wanting to come back here and take a walk. There is a particular pleasure in standing up on the top of a cliff, be it ever so small, and looking out across the water.An enduring memory I have of our last trip to Puerto Rico was that of standing on the front lawn of our hotel on the eastern side of the island and looking out across the rolling greenery down to the water. It was a moment that made me appreciate just how flat these islands really are.We live at sea level, and there's nothing wrong with that, given that I will be long dead by the time the sea rises to engulf these islands, but the chance for a view from the top of a thirty-foot hill is something that needs to be enjoyed from time to time. The old Flagler Bridge has been cut off from land at this end but it is possible to walk onto the bridge from the Bahia Honda State Park end and enjoy an elevated view. That is not however, the same as walking among the windblown wild grasses, while looking down at the water below.Cheyenne took a quick look inside the old pump station alongside the original water pipe laid by the Navy in World War Two. Prior to the pipe Key West survived on rain water and probably should return to that method to preserve water supplies. I've lived primarily off my rain water cistern for years.
Just as the walls of Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas are protected by a moat, so was the installation of the old pipe. However the passage of time has eroded the limestone behind the moat and the resulting shapes are quite fantastic.The pump house looks like it belongs somewhere else in a different time. Walking around it puts me in mind of the old abandoned lighthouses in the Far Out Islands of the Bahamas, structures built by Victorian engineers in distant colonies now outmoded and replaced by simple solar panels and electric lights.
One marvels at the work that was done to secure water supplies in war time. Public works and infrastructure were valued in those days.

God and the engineer that installed it only know what that plinth was for among the grasses.
Cheyenne was busy as usual.
Hurricanes in the Atlantic have been creating strong east winds in Florida. However in these shallow reef-strewn waters large waves are hard to whip up any bigger than this.
I never cease to be amazed how pretty this part of the world is. I spent two hours walking here with Cheyenne and a few cars stopped, took a few pictures and disappeared leaving us completely alone.
I read the paper in a shady spot behind a stone wall, out of the wind. Cheyenne took a refreshing salt water bath.
I am very fond of my dog, and we've been together less than a year.
It would be a terrible tease to leave this spot without one decent picture of the famous bridge.
Here we are with a panoramic view back at our proper eye level.
The pump station and all it's graffiti.
Me trying not to look more stupid than usual.
One last look at the Straits of Florida...

...and someone else can have this place to themselves.