Cold Key West

From the National Weather Service a note to cheer us all up:


Special Weather Statement
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE KEY WEST FL
502 AM EST MON DEC 13 2010

FLZ076>078-132200-
MONROE UPPER KEYS-MONROE MIDDLE KEYS-MONROE LOWER KEYS-
INCLUDING THE COMMUNITIES OF...KEY LARGO...MARATHON...KEY WEST
502 AM EST MON DEC 13 2010

...A WIND CHILL ADVISORY MAY BE REQUIRED FOR THE UPPER KEYS
TONIGHT...
...RECORD COLD TEMPERATURES POSSIBLE TONIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY NIGHT...

THE COLDEST WEATHER OF THIS SEASON WILL IMPACT ALL OF THE FLORIDA
KEYS TONIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY NIGHT. ON TUESDAY MORNING...LOW
TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO DROP INTO THE UPPER 30S IN THE UPPER
KEYS. THESE TEMPERATURES COMBINED WITH SUSTAINED NORTH WINDS OF
AROUND NEAR 25 MPH WILL RESULT IN MINIMUM CHILL READINGS IN THE
LOWER 30S. SUBSEQUENTLY...A WIND CHILL ADVISORY WILL LIKELY BE
REQUIRED FOR THE UPPER KEYS. ELSEWHERE...LOW TEMPERATURES TONIGHT
ARE EXPECTED TO RANGE FROM 40 AND 45 DEGREES IN THE MIDDLE KEYS...
TO THE UPPER 40S TO NEAR 50 DEGREES IN THE LOWER KEYS. THESE LOW
TEMPERATURES IN THE LOWER KEYS WOULD CHALLENGE THE DAILY RECORD LOW
TEMPERATURE IN KEY WEST ON DECEMBER 14TH OF 50 DEGREES SET IN 1952.
ON TUESDAY...HIGH TEMPERATURES WILL STRUGGLE TO GET OUT OF THE LOWER
TO MID 50S WHICH WOULD BREAK A DAILY COLD MAXIMUM RECORD IN KEY WEST
ON DECEMBER 14TH OF 57 DEGREES SET IN 1962. ALSO...THE RECORD DAILY
LOW TEMPERATURE OF 53 DEGREES IN KEY WEST ON DECEMBER 15TH SET IN
1962 WILL BE SERIOUSLY CHALLENGED AS TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO
DROP NEAR 50 DEGREES. THEREAFTER...WELL BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES
WILL SLOWLY RECOVER DUE TO VERY COOL GULF AND BAY WATERS.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After I got so much grief for whining about the cold I braved an early evening walk downtown and took some pictures a couple of days ago. This is the Curry Mansion much beloved of Conch Train Drivers who will point out Curry came from the Bahamas, and in a splendid example of American derring-do died as Florida's first millionaire. Stirring stuff.This next shot was a picture of Fogarty's on Duval Street all festive and stuff with the lights. So I know Key West doesn't sound cold at 59 degrees (14 C in case Jack riepe needs to know) but witness how few people were out at dusk:And those that were out braving the wet streets after a pre-cold-front cold shower were all wrapped up like it really was cold:As we close in on the shortest day of the year it is getting dark very close to six o'clock around here, and in the half hour before I went to work picture taking was getting complicated. People just wouldn't stand still for my camera's long exposure times.
Unless they themselves were caught up in a similar pastime.
It's Christmas time of course and Key West isn't immune to the lunacy. Of course if you think about it the original Christmas actually did take place under palms, but it's not what seems culturally appropriate at this time of year:The whole Nordic Christmas thing doesn't play out very well for me. Yule logs, long nights, snow drifts and all that are for people who like snow men and toboggans.It isn't that cold in Key West in absolute terms but this weather made it cold enough a few evenings ago for the Bull to close it's shutters.A night like this is bad for business but great for police dispatchers who end up taking fewer calls from outraged drunks all night. I can't remember where this next fuzzy picture came from. Rick's perhaps? I don't go drinking downtown much. I have been to Captain Tony's once and the Red Garter strip club once but these other loud bars don't do much for me. I have been wanting to get a beer at the Porch in the Porter House but the opportunity hasn't presented itself lately.

I am not fond of noise and even less of crowds which makes me a terrible candidate for an evening of riotous drinking on Lower Duval. Even my motorcycle has feeble factory mufflers unlike more manly cruisers that rumble around making a great deal of noise. Purists siniff when they hear my putting Triumph and compare it to a sewing machine. Let them, I ride 15,000 miles a year (25,000 kms) and if it were as loud as this flashing by object below I'd be deaf. And so would my neighbors..This is the Holy Grail of Key west bars, the one on postcards everywhere. And no, I've never been inside for a drink...

It must seem odd I suppose to live in a town filled with so many bars and to be indifferent. Personally I don't believe Ernest Hemingway would be seen alive drinking in Sloppy's or Captain Tony's today, no matter what the advertising claims. I think he'd be the Chart Room with his friends, a place where I have had a drink once and I figure I can struggle through life without going back. It seemed rather rustic for me. I like walking around downtown especially in summer when it's emptier, or on a cold winter evening...

...but I am useless at the hail fellow well met routine of a noisy bar. I hate sports and I'm not too fond of television so anytime I am in a bar I end up studying the advertising which I find fascinating, but my friends think I am a simpleton or weird and ignore my socially motivated anti-television comments. I was hoping Jack riepe would fly down out of a cloud and direct this lost tourist on her way. Tall: check, blond: check, leggy: check, thin: check. He is so predictable. Brenda is a Conch, born and brought up in Key West and lo these many years patrolling the streets of her city. She was stopped by a red light and we chatted for a while. We share a similar sense of humor and a similar dislike for the cold. The officers have been all bundled up for the winter weather with windproof jackets and gloves and I've even heard talk of long underwear, though I'm not going to share my motorcycle gear with them; my Aerostitch undies saved me on me last Iron Butt ride Up North in October. This si the original Sloppy Joe Russell drinking hole. This is the place when Hemingway helped move the furniture to the place on Duval. That was before most of us were born. Things have changed a bit since then. Read To Have and To Have Not for details and decide if WPA Key West would really have been for you.This incessant cold weather is making me cranky with another freezing cold front due here as I write this essay! Nice gray skies floating above Old City Hall.

Umbrellas for sale on Duval and ponchos too. Not the sort of seasonal shopping one hopes for in Key West.

There doesn't seem to be any end in sight with more temperatures scheduled around 50 degrees (10 C) tomorrow night. I can hardly wait. I brought the car to work the night I took these pictures so I was able to feel even better about my choice of wheels when I saw this Suzuki parked in an icy puddle. I hoped they enjoyed the ride back to the hotel, tough buggers that they must be. I had figured out earlier in the day how to operate the heater in the car and was feeling pretty smug.My wanderings took me past Fairvilla on Front Street, a store devoted to the sale of sex toys and underwear. As far as I know. Let me be clear here and now: If I ever get the urge to wear women's underwear it will never be a subject for this blog. More interesting to me was the empty courtyard alongside Fairvilla, wherein lay an elaborate mural that I don't recall seeing previously.A potted history of Jamaica's Port Royal of all places. And the inevitable skull and crossbones, Disney style. The Hemingway effect on history is everywhere in Key West.Emptiness downtown. I rather liked the effect of shiny warm lights reflected on wet pavement.

I almost felt like shouting out "Ho! Ho! Ho!" but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it.

Sparky's

I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to go check out Sparky's in Key Colony Beach. I finally got there.My wife had mentioned having lunch there together before she went Up North for her conference, but her car break down killed that plan. While she was away I snuck off up the Keys for some out of town dog walking and camera work so I took advantage and dropped off at this restaurant made famous in Trip Adviser. The signs for the restaurant are a bit subtle if you are new around here. Look for the charter boat row alongside Sadowski Causeway, the only road into Key Colony beach off Highway One, and there it is hidden behind a tree.Trip Adviser people tend to be monotonously repetitive in their recommendations, the whole service isn't, in the end, designed to push the adventurous choices and I wondered if this place would come up to billing. Often visitors to the Keys seem to like the atmosphere more than the food and frankly I'd rather eat good food in a crappy ambiance than vice versa. I tried ordering stuff I might not normally eat, being as how I wanted to take risks and the conch chowder was quite excellent.It wasn't salty but it was creamy and filled with pieces of potato and conch. I am not a great fan of mollusks but in a chowder conch done right is better than clam in my opinion, and this was done right, firm but not chewy the conch gave great texture to the soup. The iced tea was also well worth drinking. It was tannic enough without forcing the point and my server did a good job of keeping the glass filled. She also recommended the pasta salad made with oil not mayo to accompany the fish fingers.It was really a simple meal done well and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The pasta was firm, the dressing wasn't greasy and the fish fingers made a decent portion without being overwhelming. The fish was flaky and the fried crust was not the bland stuff I've had elsewhere. It was crunchy and all of it made a great lunch out of simple ingredients. I wondered how good dessert would be but I didn't want to make a pig of myself.I took a table at an angle to the ever irritating TVs but there were lots of seating choices- too cold to sit outside and I didn't want to sit at the bar. There also appeared to be a separate dining room near the front of the building done up in bright colors. I liked the main room, all dark wood and funky decorations. The bar tender/host greeted me cheerfully and Blondie did a bang up job of serving me my lunch.
I paid fifteen bucks plus tip and thought this was a place I am going to bring my wife to on our next outing. In summer I'd love to sit out and overlook the water:I am confident whatever I pick off the board will work out well. They apparently do shrimp by the bucket for happy hour too.
Charterboat Row next door looks just like the one in Key West's Garrison Bight Marina.Cheyenne had just completed her first long walk of the day with more to come as we explored the Middle Keys. The air temperature was 63 so she was enjoying the sun in the back of the car in the strong north winds.Sadowski Causeway, the only road in and out of Key Colony Beach, named for the developer who created the city.For more on Key Colony Beach this is the essay I wrote in 2008 and re-posted earlier this year:
http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2008/03/mouse-that-squeaked.html

Vignettes XL

If this Little Torch Sign means "No Noise After 6pm" that seems a little early in the evening to me, though I appreciate the sentiment overall. It's that time of year when winter visitors are busy telling everyone what to do and how to do it. Cheyenne and I were riding down the street with the boys and their dogs when Cheyenne was showing signs of restlessness so we stopped the car and I let her out. She ran off deep into the bushes across the street and rooted around. The man who lives at that house across the street, a winter resident who appears with his RV in winter and retreats to inflict himself somewhere else in the summer barked at me: "I hope you are going to pick up after it!" ( I live my life with plastic bags in my pocket). Which was an odd sentiment to express so nastily to me as a) Cheyenne was out of sight in the mangroves and b) after he leaves in April I will be free to sling tons of dog shit into his immaculate yard all summer long. I won't of course because I am a nice bourgeois neighbor not really interested in blood feuds. I left those behind when I left my village in Italy. Lucky for him.
A quick shot of sunrise over Ramrod Key taken from the top of the Niles Channel Bridge. While my wife was out of town I commuted by car, dropping Cheyenne off and picking her up after work from Wayne and Chuck's place on Sugarloaf Key.

So I had the camera easily available and for no particular reason that I can recall I took a few pictures. Oil is above $90 a barrel and gas around here is above $3 a gallon. Economists say oil is pricey enough it can stall economic recovery. I wonder which recovery they are talking about? It's Christmas at the end of my street on Ramrod. Witness the Christmas tree sprouting off the power pole. Wayne and Chuck Zuzu and Tootie. Thank God I didn't get a dog from the pound called Tootie. I have lots of gay attributes but walking around in public calling "Tootie Tootie!" would be over the top even for me. Cheyenne always struck me as a rather inappropriate name for a dog assigned to me. It sounds rather Western and butch. But we're stuck with it by now.
Dogs are astonishingly resilient creatures. These two Vizlas were treated, as Chuck puts it, like cattle and yet after a year they are acting like dogs, shy dogs maybe but dogs nonetheless. Cheyenne is apparently a good influence on them though I think sometimes she is just an Alpha bitch. When staying over with the boys she sneaks the girl's rawhide and makes a big play of chewing it in front of them. She needs to get a job with Wells Fargo Bank so she can puts lots of people in their place. She seems to be good at it. We walked for a while on Crane Boulevard. The big experiment here was to see what happened when a Vizsla walked off leash. It would be totally nerve wracking for me to have a dog so skittish she might not come if called. Wayne and Chuck have the patience of saints. There was a Dutch ship moored at the Navy Pier in Key West last week. It must be a tremendous drag waiting for permission to go ashore and taste all that Key West has to offer. Though I hear the Dutch authorities are clamping down on decriminalized drugs thanks to outbreaks of violence. You can rely on people to screw up a good thing. I notice the debate here at home is how to pay to keep millions of people incarcerated. If the pacific Dutch can't handle decriminalized marijuana I wonder how well such an idea might work in the land of out-of-control addiction...This whole line of idle thought was based on my observation of the flag at the stern (back of the boat). It looks Dutch to me. Perhaps it's Latvian or something in which case all the foregoing speculation was even more pointless than it actually was.
There was a flag on a Ford Mustang at Truman Waterfront.Pirates in paradise was another of those events with a minimal grasp on reality but it's a way to amuse the children and get some visitors to part with some cash of a weekend. Pirates had some attributes not frequently considered in the rush to absorb the cinematic versions of history. They elected their leaders which was a rash revolutionary act at a time when the Divine Right of Kings kept everyone subjugated (as Goldman Sachs does today). When their leader screwed up they deposed him and hired another one. Pirates were indifferent to race color or creed and all were welcome. Don't Ask Don't Tell wasn't part of the program.However Key West was not on their itinerary. Key West was the base for anti-pirate activity by the Gummint and when Commodore Porter was blisteringly successful at keeping the Florida Straits free of pirates he was hounded out of town as a spoilsport and a nuisance. Pirates were actually based in Nassau on New Providence Island after they were booted out of Old Providence Island in the Western Caribbean. The Florida Keys were shallow, full of currents, lacked wood and water, and were awkwardly placed to intercept merchant ships. Never mind, the myth lives on, all clean cut and not at all smelly.I hope they got people to part with lots of money, by hook or by crook.

My Day To Whine, Thank You.

December has barely begun and already we are getting frozen in the Florida Keys. I am perfectly aware thank you that this is a sore subject for people who are employing snow shovels and are walking on water, but as far as I am concerned the recent temperatures in the sub tropics have been, to put it bluntly, Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.I awoke two mornings ago with one hand incautiously lying outside the covers and it felt like a block of ice. If this goes on much longer we will fire up the reverse cycle air conditioning, which we ran for four months last winter, which was intolerable. Frankly I don't think it is at all suitable to get into the car to take the dog for a walk and see 56 degrees (13 C) at this hour of the mid morning.Cheyenne loves this weather as one might imagine. Arriving home yesterday morning after a long night of not doing much I just wanted to crawl into bed after stripping off my freezing cold motorcycle gear. Yes indeed, I rode to work Wednesday night knowing full well it was going to be cold. Cheyenne greeted me by prancing around and the standing hopefully by the car door. With as much grace as I could muster I stuffed her in and drove five minutes across the island to the Ramrod Pool, an open space surrounded by sturdy bushes where she can wander at will at 6:30 in the morning and I can hope to discern a few headlines in the paper as daylight arrives in all it's glory.Yesterday morning it was COLD. All right I know that in Minnesota or Finland a chill winter morning is some degree of frost beyond anything I can imagine but the temperatures here are laced with water vapor and even hardened skiers and stuff from Up North admit a 60 degree (15C) day in Key West can give a seasoned person goosebumps.

Besides its all in what you are used to. I remember once I was driving across North Dakota with my fiancee and her family and we stopped for gas outside Bismark. It was a sunny day, bright and fresh after a snowstorm had blown through filling the countryside with drifts of frozen water. My leather jacket clung to me like a sheet of frozen cardboard, my woollen hat sat on my head allowing shafts of piercing cold to drill through the holes in the weave and drive into my skull like ice picks. I tottered out of the Toyota van (a four wheel drive contraption that could plough through any amount of foul weather) and offered to fill up the gas tank. My fellow North Dakotans were standing around in minus 20 degree weather (-29 C) in t-shirts as though it was summer. I could barely operate the fuel pump and my breath felt like razor blades slicing my chest from the inside.Thursday evening I didn't bother to ride the Triumph to work. Rain had fallen while I was sleeping and even though the skies were filled with thick billowy gray clouds their celestial insulation did not help to raise the temperature. I took Cheyenne for a walk on Big Pine and after about 55 minutes the skies opened and rain started spattering through the pine trees. We aimed for the car and started walking fast.I don't usually mind the rain but rain and frigid cold is over the top. It sucks. It's unnatural. It makes me ask myself why I am not living in Charlotte Amalie or Frederiksted, or someplace close by, in the true Caribbean, the true tropics, America's true Paradise Islands- the US Virgins. Probably I'm not a USVI resident because I like road trips, I like a lower crime rate and I enjoy the weather in the Keys 49 weeks out of the year. Well, at least probably 45 weeks. More than 40 weeks out of the year for sure. Especially if you don't count unbearably hot weeks in August and September. It's not clear in this next photograph but my Labrador was looking at me in adoration yesterday morning and her tail was wagging nineteen to the dozen. Her thirty minutes at the pool had made her a happy girl.From Richard Machida's Blog in Fairbanks Alaska (opinions expressed are certainly not those of an institution as august as the University of Alaska and anybody who suggests otherwise is an idiot) I read about the trials and tribulations, minimal really, of refurbishing an elderly BMW motorcycle. I have a vague unformed hankering for an R100RS the first factory faired sport touring motorcycle ever built and I find his blog encouraging. http://blog.machida.us/ However there was a throw away line at the end that gave me palpitations. It seems it's a good time to strip the bike because:

This morning, it was -33°F. The weather is trying to make up for the unseasonably warm temperatures of last week.

Holy crap! -36C, how does one cope? I keep pestering him to detail a day in the life of someone who lives this Ironman life and he shrugs it off as just no big deal. Looking out the window at the black clouds and rain I feel my will to live seeping out through the soles of my feet.There is another blog, http://www.behindbarsmotorcycle.com/ which in his latest essay presents as clearly as anyone ever has the muddled attitude someone like me has to the whole notion of outdoor winter sports.

What stuns most folk below the Mason-Dixon though, is going outdoors in winter - for fun... sledding, snowmobiling and the most admirable, ice fishing. All of which are popular enough to warrant entire industries producing goods to keep them going. Hobbies that require a resistance to frigid cold in addition to a healthy lack of good sense. And, if you don't know what ice fishing is, it involves a truck, a frozen lake, boring a hole, and sitting around all day waiting for lethargic, half-frozen fish to find your hook – And, is also a great way to keep your beer cold without your wife ever knowing you bought it. Not the kind of activity for a people afraid of the cold. Better suited for a people who think, that like climbing Everest, something difficult is something worth doing - something worth striving for.

My wife is one of those, raised in Northern California who has never appreciated the cold. She was armed for bear when I crossed her path at the gas station at the end of our street. I was coming home from the pool, she was on her way to work, to teach the little dears wrapped in wool with Ugg boots on her feet.Her language was not at all ladylike as she pumped regular gas at $3.11/gallon into her car. Her Sebring has heated seats and this time of year they are on all the time. If temperatures drop below 80 degrees (27 C) and she wants the roof down, on comes the heated seat. That's her tolerance level for cold. She has announced at last that the heat is coming on at the homestead, and we are among the lucky ones who actually have central heat through reverse cycle a/c at our house. Lots of people don't.

I remember last year we arrived in Asheville, North Carolina about this time of year to visit her sister's family in the mountains. It was cold, and they always tell us, "It's not normally this cold in Asheville." Or "It hardly ever snows here." And every time we show up the weather turns to shit. Just as it did last year, because when we showed up it was twelve degrees (-11 C) and we were seriously frozen. We staggered into the house where the family was gathered to greet us and instantly they treated us like mental deficients. Of course it's cold, where's your cold weather clothing? Of course we had on every stitch of cold weather clothing we had and when they understood our plight out came the puffy jackets and wool accessories and the sympathy. That's right, we don't actually possess cold weather clothing around here. Last winter people were getting cold and lamenting they had no socks, never mind parkas, in Key West.

There is a saying which I have heard attributed to Norwegians which goes something like this: "There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing." And there is a great deal of truth in that. However in the Keys one doesn't plan one's life around periods of exceptional cold. If last winter's long freeze is emulated this winter we may have to reconsider as climate change or whatever alters our patterns of local weather. Tourists come to the Keys to lounge by the pool, to throw of their clothes and their cares in varying degrees. They don't come to huddle and to try to ignore roiling gray clouds and piercing cold wind. The Keys are sold on the (false) premise that these islands are tropical and that they are a Caribbean Paradise. Much of the time they live up to billing but for a few weeks in the year they don't. And it sucks all round. Partly perhaps because when the weather doesn't suck around here it is absolutely perfect, summer or winter. But when it does suck I shall make a point of whining about it. If you choose to live where there are seasons and there is snow and you do it by choice my hat's off to you. When the weather, the great attribute of my home town, lets me down, I might as well be shovelling snow or wearing electric motorcycle gear. And that's not something I'd do by choice. Not without a lot of whining.