Heading North To Asheville

Oh crap, this must be a road trip...and they make it sound
like the meeting might be a bad thing:


When I get to meet The Almighty I'm going to have a big old bitchfest. So God, how about your downer friends? See, it's not so bad meeting You.


We left our home in the capable hands of the house sitter who promised not to kill the plants and we got on the road.


It was a funny day Sunday with the weather veering between summer rain storms and bursts of bright crisp sunshine. We stopped for coffee in Key Largo and Cheyenne did her best to avoid the rain.


I spotted a bizarre logo on a construction truck and laughed a little to myself. Who dreams these slogans up?


Building intelligence? A boss with delusions of grandeur I take it. On the other hand cheap houses are for sale as the mortgage banking crisis strangles the economy:


While NASCAR came to Homestead with the First Lady to watch the last race of the season with three points separating the leaders. Southbound cars on Florida's Turnpike backed up for miles, we rolled just fine well beyond the speed limit.


By lunchtime we were in Boynton Beach for Jewish food at Flakowitz, a staple of our road trips.


A full on Jewish deli for lunch involves a potato knish, stuffed cabbage leaf and matzo ball soup.


Stuffed we set off on the Turnpike once again, passing the nearly dead of Fort Worth and the Magic Mouse Kingdom and on to Interstate 75 toward Georgia. More rain.


I did envy this sport bike riders for a minute but a man does need his family from time to time. The house sitter doesn't get to use the Bonneville in my absence.


Stupid bastard riding the turnpike at 80 miles an hour taking his helmet for a ride on the hook...Oh, and if you need a cow for dinner this is the place to stop to pick one up on your way home:


God showed up again in that part of Florida known as Georgia South. Weird how the Almighty is a White Guy in a beard. Perhaps I'm related?


Skies cleared ready for an early winter sunset. Not as lovely as sunset over the Florida Keys, nowhere near as lovely.


Cheyenne had her dinner in a rest area. A woman from somewhere up North asked from across the lot if my dog was on leash? No I yelled back. Does she need to be, the idiot called? Huh? My attack Labrador ravaging a bowl of kibble. No one got out alive.


Then came the bad news. We wanted beer to accompany the roast chicken dinner transported from Flakowitz but we were in Eastern Georgia. The workers at the supermarket 60 miles south of Columbus, our destination, told us no alcohol for sale on Sunday. Columbus, a progressive University town does allow alcohol sales in restaurants only on Sundays, no take out. We risked damnation and opened a bottle of wine bound for my wife's sister in Asheville and drank it in the room like bootleggers in a speakeasy. Stupid stuff. I don't often desire alcohol but when it is banned it becomes the Elixir of Life itself.


Piggly Wiggly was so named by the founder of the chain who created uneven aisles to force customers to check out everything as they navigated this new style of shopping. Nowadays it's just another supermarket here competing with the ubiquitous Publix chain from Florida.


My wife's iPhone went nuts and sent us to the torture School of the Americas presumably confused by the military radio waves and electrons but we called the hotel and the clerk said Huh? when asked for directions. No one knows anything anymore.
Cheyenne was glad to get out of the Fusion after 14 hours and 750 miles. So was I.



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Sembert Sings at TSKW

Sometimes I feel like a troglodyte but I can't help it, I like quiet evenings at home with my wife and walks with my dog. But then Cathy Sembert opens The Studios At Key West cabaret series and a reticent dude like myself shows up at 8pm prompt on White Street.


Cathy strutted her stuff in two 45 minute sets all recorded by her daughter Kate home from Orlando to do the deed.


Cathy was having fun singing and strutting to a full house.


She told of her husband Phil a shy piano player who was busy earning a living elsewhere that night.


She went through a dress change to much applause,


And came back to sing a bit more and tell of the trials of child rearing, to much guilty laughter from daughter Kate in the audience.


Oh, and don't forget the ten gallon Stetson. Bayyy-bee!


Then Julia Childs made her appearance to discuss the cooking of the chicken French style. Pianist Michael Thomas usually seen tickling the ivories at the Beachside Hotel, did a brilliant impersonation of the French chef.


With the Diva stepping in a Rachel Ray with her bottle of EVOO.


And a bottle of claret to lubricate the sketch.


One final costume change into a backless gown,


A few more songs to wide acclaim,


And we repaired to the Beachside for pizza and wine and conversation. It can be difficult to remain a recluse in Key West.

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Frances And Ashe At Night

I started out with a color setting on the camera and that was okay.


But I have really come to enjoy photographing Key West by night, in the sepia setting on my Canon SX100.


Cheyenne was off leash wandering the empty sidewalk and I was trying not to freak out as my love was free to step into (non existent) traffic. The pineapple, even when stylized on a fence, is a symbol of welcome in the Florida Keys.


The former Haïtian Art Gallery has found a new home in some other place in town, on Simonton as I recall, and the old building has become an upscale furniture store.


I adored the sign in the window. "closed till the 22nd..." it read and then just to make sure any and all customers know they are dim bulbs in the high voltage world of home furnishings, the note goes on to say, with a straight face, that they will re-open on the 23rd. What other option did they have? Closed till the 22nd, and opening on the 24th?


Walk a block and see something new. A mysterious garage door for instance.


That's the nature of Key West old buildings and funky skylines. Walking at night is especially rewarding.


I stumbled across a cardboard box on the sidewalk with the all enticing word "Free" stenciled across the side in magic marker. It wasn't interesting, that I knew as Cheyenne ignored it completely. I couldn't see so I fired up the odious, but useful flash.


Fashion magazines? Really? How dreary. Sometimes the unexpected is just a waste of space, truly. Hence the price tag.




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Old Town Key West

Chuck on Fleming has been keeping a blog about life on Guam much illustrated with pictures and so forth and upon his return to Key West has decided to fire up a new blog about life in Old Town. And in his words "there's nothing wrong with that," -old town living I mean. I am not an Old Town dweller preferring my backwater life canal side in the Lower Keys. In terms of one of my favorite books The Wind in the Willows Chuck plays Mr Toad while I shuffle around more like Ratty wishing I were Badger. Check out:

http://oldtownkeywest.wordpress.com/

for boundless enthusiasm and large pictures of a brightly colored life in Old Town Key West. Where I am detached with irony Chuck is wide eyed with joy, living the dream as my colleague puts it when we meet at work (with barely masked irony). He will be a refreshing change from the handful of blogs that try to capture life in Key West.

Clouds

After days without a cloud in the sky we have finally seen some moisture that has put the cotton wool back where it belongs; overhead.


Not heavy clouds but wispy white things in the middle of the day.


Shuffling across the sky as though in a hurry to get elsewhere.

Blue skies, white clouds and green mangroves.







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Gray And Pink

The morning walk at 6:30 started out gray and dark.

Cheyenne immediately got busy in the undergrowth chasing down the smells of dogs who had been walking there the day before.

I contented myself with enjoying the sunrise which gave rise to that Pale Lemon Yellow Sky of which John D Macdonald used to write in his Travis McGee detective novels.

Cheyenne took off down the road and I ambled after her reading the paper as I went. One advantage to the time change is that mornings are once again light enough I can read the Citizen as I walk Cheyenne before breakfast.

The sun turned the clouds pink as it rose above the horizon.

I was reading how the City Commission in Key West folded like a pack of cards when threatned with a lawsuit over proposals to create a pedestrian zone in the middle section of Duval weekend nights. The experiment was stopped before it was started under the mere threat of a lawsuit by merchants on Upper Duval. They promised a lawsuit if the experiment was tried, arguing the pedestrian zone would create "unfair competition" in attracting locals to Duval Street.

What lunacy we read in our paper! You'd think the lawsuit merchants might get a clue and watch the experiment and if works apply it to their own stretch of Duval. Nah- might as well threatne legal mayhem because the city Commission, instead of sticking to considering this excellent idea, simply caved to the threat of lawyers. Of course there were other issues that needed to be ironed out in any event.

Perhaps the most vexing problem facing the foiled pedestrian plan wa show to deal with beggars and street performers. However that problem was solved by the lawsuit threat so change is off the table. Too bad, I was looking forward to dining al fresco on Duval.

And slowly as the sun rose the pink gave way to orange and the birds took to the skies with the start of the day.

A powerful searchlight through the darkness.

And by the time we got home around 7:15 the sun was starting to illuminate the palms around my house.

When I wake up around lunch time the first thing I do is peer out of the bedroom window and see if its blue skies and sunshine and it usually is. Something like this only more so with the sun higher in the sky. I'll leave the snow drifts to hardier souls.

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