Road Test

I looked out the window of the motel room forgetting it was summer time and thus still pitch black. I checked my phone which told me it was six in the morning and 45 degrees outside. I decided the whole thing wasn't worth it so I went back to bed. I had 400 miles to ride to so I had plenty of time to get home in time for dinner.

When my sister-in-law called and said she wanted us to show up for her son's graduation my wife pointed out she had a job to do but the ceremony fell on the Wednesday of my short work week so with a little shift switching I was available to show up at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick Georgia to see the deed get done. And the use of only four hours of my annual leave for a week off meant I was going to go by myself to support the swearing in of a new National Parks Service Law Enforcement Ranger.

All that separated me was five hundred and fifty miles of freeway across Flatistan in March. When I saw my journey coincided with a cold front gathering strength over the middle of the state I admit I vacillated slightly and did consider taking the car what with it's heater and satellite radio (thank you Sirius for the six dollar introductory offer) but in the end I said bollocks to comfort and decided I needed to ride.

I wanted to check out the bike after the recent valve job and even though this wasn't a trip across those always enjoyable Appalachian mountains it was a chance to go for a ride with time to meditate on the meaning of riding and life and everything. It should be relaxing I figured as I got up at three in the morning and stared at my machine in the dark of night. My dog and wife were asleep upstairs as I should have been. Instead I was expected in Brunswick for dinner. Better get on with it, I said to myself.

By the time it got light I could see black clouds ahead exactly as predicted by the numerous weather astrologers I had consulted prior to the start of this journey. Black clouds led to rain as the National Weather Service had promised against all my hopes of predictive failure, and I was less than halfway up the peninsula when I stopped under a bridge to get wrapped up in my Frogg Togg waterproofs.

It rained and rained and rained for what seemed like hours but ninety minutes later I was in Daytona Beach and the rain had eased up a bit and I was still pretty dry and quite warm much to my astonishment. My gear would never do in Alaska or some other truly harsh clime but for almost sub tropical Florida it seems to be quite adequate. Not attractive but functional.

I had thought I might stop in Daytona Beach to check out the Bike Week extravaganza but the drizzle did not entice me to stand under an awning at the side of the road and watch water drip on chrome with a bunch of vacationing leather clad accountants and their wimmin. I stopped in a park to think and plan (and use the facilities) and I looked around as the wind whipped the rain away and brought a fresh chill to the neatly landscaped park facing the Intracoastal Waterway.

This, I thought to myself, is what Truman Waterfront will end up looking like if they get their way and turn it into landscaped mediocrity. You'll have to excuse me being grumpy but I am allergic to gray skies and drizzle.

Daytona Bike Week plays up a short loop of extra pretty road with curves that is supposed to be one of the attraction of the motorcycle gathering. I figured I might as well check it out as I was there and I might save the downtown gathering for my return trip in two days. Daytona Beach Bike Week Loop Daytona Beach Loop

As usual they play it up as God's greatest gift since the Ark and honestly it's a nice little ride but not exactly a dream loop. I guess if you are down from the snowfields of Montana for a week of sunshine it probably looks nice and tropical but under a gray sky in the middle of a long ride across the Flatlands it was barely a little break. Mind you the weather was iffy enough that there were hardly any other motorcycles to be seen. Cowards!

There were lots of For Sale signs and who can blame the residents for getting tired of all those open exhausts rumbling by. My beast of burden sounded anaemic by comparison with its factory mufflers but I don't do well with noise. I'd rather eat ground glass than live along The Loop however nice the homes.

Then it was back to droning the freeway with only 200 miles to go and it wasn't yet noon. I realized I was likely to arrive before the rest of the family who was driving from Asheville in a proper car with a roof and heater and everything. When I'm riding I enjoy not having to answer the phone and all I have to listen to are the thoughts rolling through my head as I can't be bothered with helmet radios and blue teeth and all that other gadgetry. Freeway riding is not the greatest way to use a motorcycle but you do get to have lunch standing up in a greasy gas station parking lot wearing creased lumpy armored clothing. Pretty cool huh?

And on it went. The weather, always an important feature when one is miles from anywhere completely exposed to the elements, was starting to think about promising to offer a few minor rays of sunshine through the thick carpet of gray overhead. After I crossed into Georgia I got off the freeway and headed towards a small town called Woodbine. It was time to remove a few layers and imagine my surprise when I pulled off Highway 17 in the woods and found myself parked next to a lurking Sheriff who might have been waiting to issue a few speeding tickets. I'd like to think my pantomime struggles to get out of my clothing and repack my motorcycle might have distracted him for a few minutes and spared a few people from getting done as they speeded into the depressed town of Woodbine.

It turns out south coastal Georgia is is either very economically depressed or actually not depressed at all and filled with lovely homes, golf courses and lots of banks and upscale little shops. Both communities are surrounded by flat marshes and muddy rivers and long straight roads. It was like I hadn't left Flatistan at all and after twelve hours of riding the interstate I was not in Brunswick at all (depressed) but Saint Simon's (undepressed).

The Bonneville was perfectly behaved all the way with its new valve guides and all. And best of all sunshine was promised for the next day as the cold front was supposedly buggering off to inflict snow and misery elsewhere. Graduation day turned out to be the same day the College of Cardinals chose a new bishop of Rome. Golly what a lot of excitement for one day.

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Night Key West

I am not cut out to open a business, to be a shopkeeper, to rely on the interest of passers by to sustain my life. I always have been and like to be what is known as a wage slave. I like knowing my schedule, getting paid vacations and a pension plan. Naturally I don't rely on corporate America for such 20th century largesse, but I expect I will be working (for the government) at least until I'm seventy.

I suppose owning a bar or a restaurant in Key West can be a ticket to wealth, but the work doesn't interest me and the idea of slaving away at a job of no interest seems appalling. Wich makes me glad someone likes running gay bingo and tea parties and all that other stuff that makes La Te Da something of a Duval Street institution. I'm glad I've taken the time and money to travel and see the world and not try to be an entrepreneur.

Wandering Key West in the hours before dawn can lead to all sorts of strange thoughts. How does one make a living selling stuff that defies categorization like Besame Mucho ("Kiss Me A Lot")? It's an interfering window display but someone needs to buy that stuff...

On the other hand the whole notion of making a living in Key West comes as a bit of a surprise to me, considering I landed the best job of my life here. I never figured myself as a police dispatcher but here I am closing in on my first decade, the longest I have held a job -ever.

In the same way I am surprised by the businesses that hang in and make a go of it over the years. Rents are monstrous, tourist traffic seems unreliable and locals are temperamental. Not to mention the difficulty hiring reliable people to woe for sub optimal wages in a town where the cost of living is astronomical.

It is pretty though, even before the sun has come up. Petronia Street:

Cheyenne loves the cool of the morning, especially as February has felt more like June than normal. Days full of sunshine and temperatures above 80 degrees are hard on a furry Labrador so a walk in darkness in town is a doubke treat for my dog. Sometimes she looks more like Eeyore than Winnie The Pooh:

Cheyenne is a terrible shopper, stumping past the gift store attached to Blue Heaven, another of those successful Key West eateries. Successful enough I can't handle their prices, especially as one is expected to enjoy their excellent cooking with chickens wandering between tables.

 

"Celebrate Diversity" and how pray, do we do that? Unfortunately the bumper sticker wisdom had nothing further to say on the subject.

One intriguing aspect of walking Key West at night is seeing little glimpses of life lived after hours. In summer especially people like to keep their doors open at night to get whatever breeze may be blowing and you will see the glimmer of TV screens or figures hunched under lights studying a book.

For me it's a trove of images and sounds, for Cheyenne it's smells and scraps.

Then I tried fiddling with my phone camera and succeeded in accidentally making a ghostlike picture of an otherwise ordinary Conch cottage.

Key West at night is its own world which must be why I like working overnight.

 

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Commuter Glory

I have been enjoying the switch to summertime with the longer evenings and darker mornings. I appreciate that for people living life in the throes of a real winter the false dawn promising a new and easier season can be a highly anticipated change. In the Keys where the equator is only twenty four degrees away, the length of daylight doesn't vary much between winter and summer, perhaps an hour by Nature now aided by an additional hour of Government Time.

I took these pictures last week when it occurred to me I would not be seeing the dawn again on my commute for some weeks to come, as the days slowly get longer between now and June. I was riding my wife's Vespa for a change. My own antique P200 refuses to run right so I am inline at a vintage shop to get it properly overhauled before I press it into service as an almost daily rider.

It has been fairly cool by local standards when I leave work at six in he morning so I have bundled myself up in my padded winter riding jacket to face sixty degree temperatures. It's also Spring Break so work has been as stressful as one might expect when the city is filled with drunken lust filled student debtors. Police officers work many star shifts this time of year to keep order on Duval Street while still keeping a presence in the rest of the city.

Dispatching means taking more calls than usual from people either drunk or harmed by drunks who expect an instant response and we have to find officers available to respond, even when they are all busy. That makes for a stressful night, however satisfying it is to work the impossible. However thirty minutes in the fresh morning air is enough to revive me at least long enough to walk Cheyenne before I retreat to sleep.

From here on out, at least for a while the ride home will be in the dark which I also enjoy even though it is a good deal less photogenic! I find that my life at Mile Marker 27 gives me an opportunity to see the world outside the city. There are many good reasons to live in Key West, the mobility of life spent in a small circle requires a lot less of oneself. However I work about 16 nights a month and each ride is a chance to see the natural world at work, sunrise, sunset, rain, shine, cloud or star light. You should see the shimmering waters on either side of the highway on a full moon!

Because we work twelve hour shifts, and because the city doesn't like built-in overtime we work three twelves and make up our weekly hours with one four hour shift each. Thus it is that unless I am working overtime each Tuesday I am likely to be riding the highway in the middle of the night for my alternating four hour shifts. I have come to know the highway well but my Tuesday flight through the night is special.

Pictures don't do the dawn justice, but it's all I can do. It's like riding into the white light we are told meets us when we die, perhaps riding into the jaws of Hell, who knows? But on those mornings all I can think is how lucky I am to be there witnessing the endless night become glorious day.

It's not for everyone this sea level ride where heat and humidity are a byword. I've been riding it for eight years now and I still enjoy it.

 

 

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Asturias Road

I wasn't going to take any pictures of one of my favorite subdivisions to walk on Cudjoe Key, then I came across this sign which tickled my curiosity. Something is private though what is not clear and whoever posted this irritatingly incomplete notice of great import doesn't care that the message has been cut off at the knees. "Private No Hugging" perhaps?

Then I came across a headless dog - again.

It's a nice quiet criss cross of gravel roads in a rural setting rare for the Lower Keys.

They even have horses out there. In summer Cheyenne doesn't much enjoy this walk for some reason known only to her but in winter it seems she will come out here and enjoy herself. She was worn out after an hour of chasing her nose.

She only reluctantly strutted down Blimp Road back to the car.

In the background a last glimpse of Fat Albert supposedly set to disappear in a few days to be replaced by who knows what electronic surveillance. Currently we are told the Department of Homeland Security is talking to the Air Force about taking over operating the surveillance blimp.

I'm pretty sure this is meant to be Asturias Road, seeing as how it's part of the Spain Boulevard complex of streets. I don't think there is an Iberian region called Asturius except in the Lower Keys.

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Frances Street By Night

As absurd as it sounds I have become quite fond of my utility vehicle, a mundane and unremarkable Ford Fusion. It takes night photography to make this 32 mile per gallon dog transporter look minimally flashy. I generally only drive the car when I can't use the motorcycle so I tend not to get too involved in the car ownership thing. I like sedans because they handle better and four doors are helpful when a Labrador is involved.

As much as I like motorcycles I have little or no interest in cars. Perhaps because they always seemed expensive to own and run especially compared to motorcycles that went a lot faster and used a lot less gas. Winter was a problem but a clunker got me through the critical snow filled months, so I don't have much of a history of owning interesting cars. A heater, windshield wipers and decent tires work for me.

We had had a splendid dinner at my wife's second favorite restaurant in Old Town so in an effort dissipate the effects of Key Lime Pie and Grouper and a surprisingly full bodied Tuscan white wine we went for a stroll in darkness from Café Sole on Southard Street.

Key West manages to look excellent in black and white and my phone camera does a brilliant job of capturing the monochrome images.

In a town with abundant greenery and Conch cottages every picture ends up looking atmospheric.

Even though It is winter and supposedly high visitor season the streets were pretty quiet around seven o'clock at night.

I could sent ours staring at palm fronds reflecting the light or stylized pineapples decorating fences.

But it was time to go home and my wife had indulged me long enough, me and my phone camera. I was a little wistful pondering the lives lived behind illuminated curtains but we had to get home to finish our plonk.

We got the best to go box for my wife's left over tuna, all wrapped swan-like in foil which was a lovely touch,

And there was plenty of San Gimignano white left over for a second tasting at home. As plonk goes it wasn't all bad.

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