We dropped Cheyenne off with her godparents last Friday morning and drove up to Miami. My wife had to see her Doctor and I noticed that there are quite a few people who don't know how to park in Miami. And this isn't even the dreaded parallel parking...
For the next few days every time I laughed I coughed. I was getting over my sinusitis- my wife was not getting over her rheumatoid arthritis. As she gave blood one more time my wife grinned at me as I cringed. I always say it's lucky she got the RA, because if it was me I would be unbearable to be around. 
Fast forward 24 long hours and we woke up in this regal bed in a beautiful house overlooking foggy rainy Santa Cruz, California. You know how people say "How was your flight?" Six and a half hours direct from Fort Lauderdale by JetBlue for $370. And worth every penny of pain boredom and overheated cabin air, I say. 
I'd have given a King's Ransom for a bubble of that overheated cabin air here in Santa Cruz. The temperature outside the glass was 40 degrees. Imagine how happy that made me, as I pulled on my jeans and socks and fleece jacket.
"Been like this for a month," the stoic locals, my former neighbors shrugged off the flooding, sinkholes and drowned streets. I cowered under the overhang of the front door and wondered why I was so pissed off after just a few hours of this shit falling out of the sky.
Our absent host, my dear friend Ty was on his boat in the Caribbean, where I should have been.
I mean, do you think he looks miserable on the deck of his Fontaine Pajot catamaran? 
Outside the front door of his house the world looked like this: 
Santa Cruz home to the eponymous University of California campus used to be a hippy town, but not everyone wants to be known as green, or ecological, or pro peace or anything weird like that: 
I didn't see many cops around my former home town. The police chief is apparently not big on community policing unlike my boss here in Key West. But this poor guy pulled the short straw on Soquel Drive last Saturday morning. 
They needed him on the street and out of the snug police station.
Morrissey Boulevard was drowning too. 
This was our friend's front yard. Marty was thinking about converting it to a pool, but it was too cold even for locals to go swimming.
I kind of figured we had to take a left onto Market Street at this point. 
The day before we arrived they had hurricane force winds, trees down, power out, a trailer park in Capitola sank into a sink hole and on and on and on. "How 'bout them 'canes in South Florida?" I'll take a hurricane in 90 degrees any time over a rain storm in 40 degrees anytime. My wife had to admit she could see her breath in this weather, something she was reluctant to admit.
The bumper sticker seems like a non sequitur, but there was a big fight at Lighthouse Field State Park to keep allowing dogs off leash in the 20 acre, oceanfront wilderness. The dogs lost of course. California is a very uptight place. Santa Cruz has a large population of year round bums too, and sometimes it's hard to tell them apart from the poor and unemployed and generally downtrodden.
I learned to sail in the Pacific Ocean and the Key West waters are a piece of cake by comparison. 
This is the sort of 55 degree ocean you look at rather than swim in. There is a reason Jack O'Neill invented the wet suit here.
Jack Zajac I've known for thirty years. A world renowned sculptor, former UC professor and a part time resident of my village in Italy.
He's lived on the ocean front for decades and loves it.
Layne and Jack and I had a great chat. His wife had sinusitis just like mine and she was knocked out. Bummer.
Jack is important to me because he has seen both parts of my life, in Italy and the US and his serene overview of my life reaffirms my life choices. "You did the right thing," he says to me talking about my decision to emigrate, and his affirmation comes as a relief.
"Lunch at Pescadero" my wife declared as we left Jack to minister to his sick wife, cheered by an enjoyable chat. We have learned over the years that visits to Santa Cruz get busier and busier as the days go by so if we have a hankering to do something it's better to do it sooner than later. Besides we were flying home Monday night so time was precious.Davenport is a little artsy village eleven miles north of Santa Cruz on "the other" Highway One.
Riding in the back of a car around Santa Cruz with Layne and I would be intensely boring. We are always reminiscing and our conversations start with: "Remember when..." and this roadhouse used to be the Davenport Cash Store. I broke down with my horrid VW Westphalia van years ago right here. The distributor broke that time.
This is the coast road to San Francisco, "The City" to locals. If you live in California you never refer to your home state as "Cali." Those same out of state rubes refer to San Francisco as "Frisco."
The coast road is relatively undeveloped because of the California Coastal Commission's stewardship. I watch the agricultural fields roll by, the crappy farmworker housing and the miles of empty rolling hills and think about the coast of Florida massacred with condos and neon and parking lots.
Imagine what this would look like of the developers had had their way.
Tourists flock here and take pictures. Makes you miss capitalist maximum return on investment doesn't it?
This needs a nice fast food place perched on the cliffs.
How about THE WORLD'S BIGGEST SOMETHING right here preceded by miles of lurid billboards.
Great ride in 70 degrees, a real trial by frost in this weather.
Waterfront accommodations.
Pigeon Point lighthouse, a hostel frequently enjoyed by bicycle tourists and other random passersby. Look them up on the web if you'd like a night in this socialist under developed paradise of California's Central Coast.
The road washes out from time to time. 
It really is lovely to look at.
The Santa Cruz Mountains. On the other side is the frenzy of Silicon Valley.
We stopped to photograph this sign. It seemed oddly relevant. 
Ah! Lunch at last...
...oops. There's only one road in to Duarte's Tavern and their special artichoke and green chile soup.
Marty's Subaru wasn't going to make it through that and it seemed bad karma to test their kind loaner.
We turned back, lunchless. California rain is something you have to experience before you can claim to really know the Golden State. Little wonder I got sick of the California weather isn't it? It took me twenty years to tear myself away from Santa Cruz. There was a reason I stayed so long and I met a lot of them at Bernice's memorial service Saturday afternoon.
For the next few days every time I laughed I coughed. I was getting over my sinusitis- my wife was not getting over her rheumatoid arthritis. As she gave blood one more time my wife grinned at me as I cringed. I always say it's lucky she got the RA, because if it was me I would be unbearable to be around. 
Fast forward 24 long hours and we woke up in this regal bed in a beautiful house overlooking foggy rainy Santa Cruz, California. You know how people say "How was your flight?" Six and a half hours direct from Fort Lauderdale by JetBlue for $370. And worth every penny of pain boredom and overheated cabin air, I say. 
I'd have given a King's Ransom for a bubble of that overheated cabin air here in Santa Cruz. The temperature outside the glass was 40 degrees. Imagine how happy that made me, as I pulled on my jeans and socks and fleece jacket.
"Been like this for a month," the stoic locals, my former neighbors shrugged off the flooding, sinkholes and drowned streets. I cowered under the overhang of the front door and wondered why I was so pissed off after just a few hours of this shit falling out of the sky.
Our absent host, my dear friend Ty was on his boat in the Caribbean, where I should have been.I mean, do you think he looks miserable on the deck of his Fontaine Pajot catamaran? Outside the front door of his house the world looked like this: Santa Cruz home to the eponymous University of California campus used to be a hippy town, but not everyone wants to be known as green, or ecological, or pro peace or anything weird like that: I didn't see many cops around my former home town. The police chief is apparently not big on community policing unlike my boss here in Key West. But this poor guy pulled the short straw on Soquel Drive last Saturday morning. They needed him on the street and out of the snug police station.Morrissey Boulevard was drowning too. This was our friend's front yard. Marty was thinking about converting it to a pool, but it was too cold even for locals to go swimming.I kind of figured we had to take a left onto Market Street at this point. The day before we arrived they had hurricane force winds, trees down, power out, a trailer park in Capitola sank into a sink hole and on and on and on. "How 'bout them 'canes in South Florida?" I'll take a hurricane in 90 degrees any time over a rain storm in 40 degrees anytime. My wife had to admit she could see her breath in this weather, something she was reluctant to admit.The bumper sticker seems like a non sequitur, but there was a big fight at Lighthouse Field State Park to keep allowing dogs off leash in the 20 acre, oceanfront wilderness. The dogs lost of course. California is a very uptight place. Santa Cruz has a large population of year round bums too, and sometimes it's hard to tell them apart from the poor and unemployed and generally downtrodden.I learned to sail in the Pacific Ocean and the Key West waters are a piece of cake by comparison. This is the sort of 55 degree ocean you look at rather than swim in. There is a reason Jack O'Neill invented the wet suit here.
Jack Zajac I've known for thirty years. A world renowned sculptor, former UC professor and a part time resident of my village in Italy.
He's lived on the ocean front for decades and loves it.
Layne and Jack and I had a great chat. His wife had sinusitis just like mine and she was knocked out. Bummer.
Jack is important to me because he has seen both parts of my life, in Italy and the US and his serene overview of my life reaffirms my life choices. "You did the right thing," he says to me talking about my decision to emigrate, and his affirmation comes as a relief.
"Lunch at Pescadero" my wife declared as we left Jack to minister to his sick wife, cheered by an enjoyable chat. We have learned over the years that visits to Santa Cruz get busier and busier as the days go by so if we have a hankering to do something it's better to do it sooner than later. Besides we were flying home Monday night so time was precious.Davenport is a little artsy village eleven miles north of Santa Cruz on "the other" Highway One.
Riding in the back of a car around Santa Cruz with Layne and I would be intensely boring. We are always reminiscing and our conversations start with: "Remember when..." and this roadhouse used to be the Davenport Cash Store. I broke down with my horrid VW Westphalia van years ago right here. The distributor broke that time.
This is the coast road to San Francisco, "The City" to locals. If you live in California you never refer to your home state as "Cali." Those same out of state rubes refer to San Francisco as "Frisco."
The coast road is relatively undeveloped because of the California Coastal Commission's stewardship. I watch the agricultural fields roll by, the crappy farmworker housing and the miles of empty rolling hills and think about the coast of Florida massacred with condos and neon and parking lots.
Imagine what this would look like of the developers had had their way.
Tourists flock here and take pictures. Makes you miss capitalist maximum return on investment doesn't it?This needs a nice fast food place perched on the cliffs.
How about THE WORLD'S BIGGEST SOMETHING right here preceded by miles of lurid billboards.
Great ride in 70 degrees, a real trial by frost in this weather.
Waterfront accommodations.
Pigeon Point lighthouse, a hostel frequently enjoyed by bicycle tourists and other random passersby. Look them up on the web if you'd like a night in this socialist under developed paradise of California's Central Coast.
The road washes out from time to time. 
It really is lovely to look at.
The Santa Cruz Mountains. On the other side is the frenzy of Silicon Valley.
We stopped to photograph this sign. It seemed oddly relevant. 
Ah! Lunch at last...
...oops. There's only one road in to Duarte's Tavern and their special artichoke and green chile soup.
Marty's Subaru wasn't going to make it through that and it seemed bad karma to test their kind loaner.
We turned back, lunchless. California rain is something you have to experience before you can claim to really know the Golden State. Little wonder I got sick of the California weather isn't it? It took me twenty years to tear myself away from Santa Cruz. There was a reason I stayed so long and I met a lot of them at Bernice's memorial service Saturday afternoon.
It was nice to see it on the street and in use.
A more stylish way to get around would be hard to imagine (Chuck's BSA caff racer might be a candidate...).
The beauty of simplicity. This next sign cheered me up. I was tempted to loiter as long as they would let me and then get into a semantic debate about "excessive,"
but I rather think it is aimed at undesirable residentially challenged persons. Not here for instance, I'm sure she could loiter to her heart's content.
I have to admit a certain prejudice in that small dogs not only bark excessively but they are not very....manly? I think less of myself for thinking this but I have yet to find a small dog support group that helps men like me with this attitude problem. I love it when I walk by and 85 pound Cheyenne ignores the yapping ankle biters. 
Which begs the question: why do some hotels allow only small dogs? The noisy ones? 
Key West businesses like to put put dog bowls and to my surprise Cheyenne dug in. She usually prefers foul gutter water. Breaking all dress codes here we have a Harley rider wearing a helmet (and clogs):
I wish I could remember the point she was making but it was most emphatic and it sounded urgent and serious too. 
More Harleys trundling up Fleming Street. It must get exhausting having to decorate in the orange and black official colors of the Motor Company. 
A beach cruiser she was not. He was:
The open space where Jabours Trailer Park was; and it remains open and unused though not protected by silly signs. Schooner Wharf bar in the background. Under the development plans that came to naught, some feared noise (aka music) from the bar would annoy the new upscale neighbors and lead to it's closing. Not so far! 
A Yamaha XS100, the super bike of my youth seen here in ghastly cruiser garb. I saw lots more older bikes around Key West this past winter. I hope rising gas prices bring more old machines onto the streets. See Chuck on Fleming if you have a free wreck ready for restoration.
It must get annoying living on a street where visitors feel compelled to steal the street sign. Here Cheyenne stands next to a home made sign that reads "Donkey Milk Lane" according to The Streets of Key West this was a place where the owner of a donkey sold milk supposedly. 
Tourists feel compelled to steal the sign to take back home to their blandly named streets Up North. Sucks to be you I guess if you have to steal interesting street names to spiff up your life.
I thought I did an essay on Donkey Milk but I can't find one searching my blog so I guess one will appear soon enough. Doing laundry seems tough enough at a public laundry but to have a busy child in tow makes it much worse. She did not seem the least bit phased.
Nice checkered underwear too. One gets the feeling sometimes that Prohibition was not a completely bad idea. In this next picture what you have is a pedestrian caught in the act of crossing Eaton Street against the light and getting caught by a car that had to slam it's brakes on. Do you see the resentment in his eyes? Better perhaps he should have got knocked over to learn the lesson. 
Key West continues to see an influx of visitors. I hope next year will be just as good, when we read that Detroit has lost about half of it's population. Not all municipalities do as well as the Southernmost City.
Instead of like this:
Too hard to read they say in the Citizen's Voice column. Dear oh dear, so cranky over so little. Be glad you aren't the object of bombing raids and food deprivation I say. 
Life continues at the usual pace in Key West though I have heard a lot of complaints about how crowded the town has been this winter.
Now it's a gifte shoppe called Pelican Poope. Like I said, no dignity in commerce.