Dey Street

I never noticed the back of that large white lump on Caroline Street, until they opened up the space that was Jabours Trailer Park. I wonder how tall that building is? Viewed from Dey Street at Elizabeth.It's been a while since I heard the joke about the sailor sick of the sea who takes off marching inland with an oar over his shoulder. "What's that for?" asks his buddy as they make their good-byes. "I'm going to carry it inland until I meet someone who asks me what it is. That's where I'm going to settle down," replies the sailor. The oar pictured below didn't travel far from tidal waters, about one and a half blocks.I've noticed a few elderly VWs around town this week and here is another one, roof down chugging happily along. For one brief fleeting moment I rather thought that looked good enough to be desirable.There are some really lovely homes in Key West and I'm glad they are preserved for posterity.I read a comment in the Citizen's Voice this week, part of the ongoing rabble rousing about "low quality" tourism in Key West. One indignant comment came from a visitor who said they liked to come to Key West not for the music the drinking or the stuff to do, but simply to ride around on bicycles and look at the beauty. From time to time one gets to remember the value of doing just that.

Not So Hurricane Season

The news from states across the South is uniformly appalling. Dozens are reported dead thanks to tornadoes across several states most notably Alabama. Tuscaloosa has suffered major damage and the tornadoes don't seem to be appeased.I find it astonishing that last night severe tornado watch remained in effect across Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia. It is inconceivable to me that so many people have died and so much destruction has taken place. The descriptions of these storms is apocalyptic with reports of huge thunderous black clouds obliterating the horizon even as they spawn deadly twisters. It's all the language of excess, hundreds injured etc... and yet words seem inadequate. It is appalling.We keep following reports of drought or foul weather, rain and floods, slides and forest fires (every county in Texas had a wild fire at one point) and it all seems too much to simply prove a point. We were talking at work last night about the weirdness of living in Key West, a place outsiders automatically associate with hurricanes - "You live in Key West? How do you deal with hurricanes?" is always how the conversation starts out- and yet it is worth noting that in 2004 and 2005, both terrible years for storms, not one person died in the Lower Keys thanks to the weather. Not one.
It is hugely ironic methinks that people like to dismiss the Keys as a secure place to live because of hurricane season, which starts in June and ends in November, even as the rest of the country suffers one natural misfortune after another. Tornadoes may be ripping Alabama apart but down here the weather is lovely. And not only that but the Key West Songwriter's festival is underway through this weekend at assorted venues around town. http://www.kwswf.com/ I get tired of a lot of the events dreamed up to keep tourism alive, but this one, were I not working, I would like. If in town it's worth checking out. In that vein the Conch Republic Independence celebrations are lumbering on this week with a parade on Duval tonight and the famous sea battle tomorrow and the drinking good cheer and other stuff through the weekend. Much better to be here in good company than Up North getting the crap beaten out of you by that nasty unpredictable weather. What a paradox.

Tornado Images from Huffington Post.

Moths And Rust

I admire a man out on the street in his topee keeping up with the maintenance. This climate has a pretty deleterious effect on wood and paint and pretty much anything left outdoors.The sun burns stuff up, the salt air rusts anything and everything, especially during summer's humid months, and mold grows anywhere and everywhere. Some people say that not using air conditioning allows mold to grow inside a house during the summer an d that may be true. Personally I have found, living on a boat without air conditioning, that the trick is not to crowd your stuff. Books or clothes packed tight allow humidity to develop and there's nothing quite so delicious as musty smelling clothes or books with little black spores on the pages.The good part about the sub tropical climate is that the flora is pretty interesting even to a dunderhead like me who can barely recognize a pink hibiscus. I saw this couple sitting on a bench just off Duval, and I loved how they each had a dog, a mirror image almost of each other.For me the heat and humidity right now is excellent and entirely tolerable. For visitors it frequently gets to be too much. heat exhaustion can be a real problem in Key West for people not used to it. The slow speed limits can be difficult for people visiting from the land of Freeways Up North. Apparently my colleagues in the Traffic Division have been busy.The speed limit, the sign also noted, is 30 miles per hour on Eaton Street. That should be enough for anyone streaming to Duval Street to buy a beer and a filthy t-shirt. Or to listen to some music if they have higher aspirations, now that the Songwriter's Festival is underway.

Escape From The City

I pulled up to the Key Haven Shell on my wife's 150cc ET4 Vespa and lifted the seat to fill the tank with $4.30 premium. "That thing moves," said an off duty UPS employee who pulled up alongside to fill his silver VW Golf. "I was thinking of passing back there and you blew by." He looked at the diminutive cream colored "moped" and added that he was doing 60 miles per hour at the time. Yup, I replied and it gets 70 miles per gallon, as I finished loading one and a half gallons into the tank. "Good for a hundred miles," I said as I pulled out of the gas station.

Asking my wife to drive us home in her convertible was my way of putting the cap on an evening that had not gone exactly as planned. I brought the Vespa to her workplace for her to ride around town and we had talked of having dinner out and going to see Win Win at the Tropic. Paul Giamatti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Giamatti ) plays a sleazy small town lawyer surrounded by adult losers who pin their hopes of validation on a young wrestler new to town. Great good fun. Dinner however went all wrong. How is it possible I ask myself, that every single sodding restaurant is closed on a Monday? Is it a Bittburger conspiracy? Do the restaurateurs gather on a Monday night in someone's living room and have a giant bitch fest about the past week's most annoying customer? We stuffed a meter with coin on Virginia Street (oh Bonneville I miss you and free motorcycle parking) and walked to Sweet Tea, my wife's new favorite. It may be a new venture of the local arch capitalist Chris Belland, man of the people in the Key West Citizen, but it isn't open on Mondays apparently. Nor is my favorite Badboy Burrito on Simonton http://badboyburrito.com/ , nor is Banana Café (La Poivree, a burger with cream peppercorn sauce in a crepe) so we ended up wasting the quarters in the meter and moved the Sebring to park it for free at the courthouse and from there walked to a dinner of Stella Artois and popcorn at the movie theater. It could have been worse. It was fun being the passenger for once in the car putting the camera above the windshield and playing with the settings. My wife puts the roof down at every opportunity, prompting me to wonder why people pay more to buy or rent convertibles and then they never seem to convert them. Myself, I am not much of a fan of convertibles preferring the cool shady quiet of an enclosed car with strong air conditioning and a dead German composer in the music box. Even the Lime Tree Food Store on Flagler Avenue managed to look alluring in the dark warm evening. But my wife wanted to get home and I did too so we didn't stop. As part of my job I get to ride along with officers from time to time and I've seen the inside of the Stock Island Hilton (hint: it's not a hotel, it's a jail) and I prefer sleeping in my own bed so drinking and driving is always out of the question.. Highway One, closing in on Sugarloaf School. Fifteen minutes from home at wife warp speed, ten minutes by Bonneville hyper drive. There to uncork the Black Strap Molasses Rum and reflect on the meaning of life and value of sleep.

Black Strap Rum

When I was in Marathon I went by this place to get some booze.It is pretty big, and carries a wide variety of liquors, sandwiches and sandwich materials, on three aisles.I was aiming from Guatemalan Zacapa on my buddy Keith's recommendation but my wife set a price limit and for $40 I got one of these ($20) and a 375 ml bottle of flavored Pyrat rum from Guyana. Two new ones to taste. Excellent.Josh it was that told me I needed to try some Cruzan Black Strap Rum. So I did when we got home. "How is it?" he said after pouring me an excessively large measure into a brandy snifter. I took a sip and reeled. This stuff is strong, very strong.It had long long legs around the glass, thanks to the sugary molasses which give it a delicious smokey flavor. The alcohol seems to sit on top of the tarry black molasses like an evil spirit and hits you up the nostrils as you sniff the snifter. It was delicious but a little goes a long way. Keith said I should try it with some ginger beer to make a proper Dark and Stormy (usually made with Bermuda's Gosling dark rum). Cruzan (pronounced with the emphasis on the "...an.") is made in the United States' true Caribbean islands, the US Virgin Island of St Croix and I think they get some tax relief which helps keep the price down, as an added incentive.

I keep a bottle of Flor de Cana ("flower of the sugar cane") from Nicaragua in my drinks cabinet and I recently tried some Appleton's from Jamaica which has a tremendous reputation but I found it a little spicier and less smooth than my favorite......which is still Barbancourt from Haiti. The eight year old is okay but when I've finished this one I'm going back to the 15 year old which costs around $45 a bottle. It's worth it.Meanwhile Ive got an orange flavored Pyrat to try. It was offered at $12, a 30% discount which may be 30% of nothing if i don't much like it. I'm not a fan of flavored or spiced rums but I'm adventurous so we shall see. Check this adult only (!) website if you have a hankering to learn more about the home of US Caribbean rum.
http://cruzanrum.com/

The Goat, The Cabbage, And The Wolf

The stars aligned and it was time to launch the boat for a summer of swimming fun. Launching the boat at the community launch ramp (cost to residents for unlimited use is $10 per annum) is a bit like the game of carrying the cabbage the goat and the wolf across the river. http://www.mathcats.com/explore/river/crossing.html The problem is that, by myself I have to get the boat on the trailer to the launch ramp about one mile from my house. So, I drive the car to the ramp. Put the boat in the canal, come home with the boat down the canal. Which is filled with grasses such that I had to paddle through the roughage as the outboard couldn't manage it.Then I had to walk back to the launch ramp to pick up the car and trailer. I used to ride my bike and put that on the trailer to bring it home. These days I walk Cheyenne instead of cycling so the bicycle is buried in the shed with flat tires, a lot of work to pull out for one trip up the street.Anyway, thought I, this would make an excellent opportunity to kill two birds with one stone as its a fine dog walk to the launch ramp. Sometimes Cheyenne and I do it after dark when I get back from an overtime shift in the cool of the night. A street with no lights at three in the morning is quite the star studded spectacle. Which is as may be but my dog was not having any of it at one in the afternoon.Cheyenne stood under the house at the limit of the shade and looked at me standing in the bright hot sun. No way, no how she said, and went and sat on the cool dark cement. I took off by myself trudging up Indies Road by myself, my dog leash unused in my pocket, hoping against hope that she would suddenly trot out to join me. She never did and I retrieved the trailer (the wolf in the picture game) by myself. Just see if she gets to take a ride in the boat this summer.