Puddle Search Across Key West

It's called The Pines, a clump of Australian pines with picnic tables and usually a few aimless clods spending their entire winter day here next to the airport. I saw no "campers" so I stopped to start my cunning plan to wear Cheyenne out for the day. Chickens run wild and they showed no apprehension when I loosed my fearsome hound amongst them. She prefers her prey dead and smelly.

The plan was to spend a few hours in Key West exposing my eager dog to the smells and excitement of the big city. I enjoy watching her pass out at home worn out by the surfeit of activity and emotion. She tends to exhibit temporary heat exhaustion by plunking herself down wherever she can find refreshment.

This prime spot was at the north end of Duval exactly where one might prefer to drink one's bah water. Cheyenne is a martyr to summer's heat and humidity. In winter she'll stump along for three hours without pause but in June it's the start of her slow period. Which gives me a chance to stand around and admire the peculiarities of the latest in cycle fashions. Tires this big put one in mind of snowshoes. In Key West.

Tour buses have reserved parking at Clinton Square along Whitehead Street and it's here one can admire their sheer bulk towering alongside the little houses.

From my position they seemed to block the view worse than the cruise ship tied up at the Westin Pier. A person could get to feeling wedged in around here...

Passing the courthouse with my dog I saw an apparent Vespa theft in progress. I thought my P200 was supposed to be undergoing renovation in Allentown..? I got a message on Modern Vespa from some dude who apparently has a white P200 in town. Modern Vespa : Scooters Originali

The photo he posted didn't show a rack and top case like this one. Perhaps now here's a third vintage Vespa in town?

Cheyenne wanted to keep going Soith on Whitehead Street but I put a stop to that. I lime t give her her head when we're out walking but sometimes she likes to overdo it so we turned east on Fleming. I liked the new parking ticket metering in front of Fausto's Food Palace. Faustos Key West | Home. I've never really noticed the street sign explaining the lane separation so who needs it?

I dragged my hound due north on Simonton and she came willingly so I guess she was figuring it was time to cut the exploration short. The Methodist church does a nice job of providing shade for the living and the dead. Check out this blog for daily pictures around the Keys with my irritating commentary replaced by smiley faces, exclamation marks and endless effortless good cheer. Key West’s LONE Roadside Grave | Shoestring Weekends Blog.

I read Dale Carnegie's book years ago and enjoyed the central premise of pretending to be interested in people to make it easy to sell them shit they neither need nor wanted until you showed up on scene. That and Death of A Salesman by Marilyn Monroe's husband along with Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman convinced me I had no place in my life for a salesman's patter. Cheyenne couldn't find a puddle here in the shade so she took a dust bath instead. Clearly I was going to have to get the shampoo out once I got home.

I had called it right by heading back to the car before Cheyenne thought she was ready. Three blocks beyond the church the we were again, in pause mode.

Here I had the joy of reading this bit of arrant nonsense. What in the name of all that's holy is an "Impactful Presentation?" I might have a better sense of these "core values" posted for all to read if they made any mention of their workers ( 'team members' or 'associates' in the modern meaningless jargon of mindless middle management), those would be the poor sods actually entrusted with EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS... Barf.

Now this I liked: fiberglass resin holding a metal car fender in place. My wife and I after years spent traveling by sail boat discovered that when things get repaired, said repairs never tend to last. Everything is repaired "for now" against the day they will break again. We also have learned to enjoy cruising solutions to various breakages. Bailing wire duct tape and fiberglass resin make the best cruising solutions to repair stuff "for now." This repair is the perfect cruising bodge and I love it.

I've photographed this bodge previously. Why even the most drunk of visitors would imagine that a gas tank, even one likely no longer in use, is a garbage can. Oh but they do and the stuff crap into instead of walking a further fifty feet to a city garbage can on the street corner.

Oops! Heat stroke imminent...but by now the car was just a few steps away and Cheyenne was actually just trying to stretch out the walk for as long as she possibly could.

By the time we reached the end of the street Cheyenne realised there was the puddle to end all puddles and she lumbered in.

Standing there i noticed a small group of men looking serious and waving their arms around and pondering a future that looked like change might be in the air. That there was a passed out residentially challenged citizen right in front of them summed up the challenges facing tourist development in Key West.

The good bit about Key West was out there in the harbor steaming by. Tourists having another great day on the water in Key West.

An exhausted dog was just a bonus for the rest of the day at home.

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Summerland Seascape

A lovely moment wishing I could get my boat in the water. It's so bloody human isn't it. The moment was perfect, the heat not unbearable the water flat and smooth and there I was wishing for more...

Cheyenne doesn't care. She lives in the moment and judging by the difficulties of her early life it's a trick she has perfected.

I love summer in the Keys. The population thins out, bird watching grandparents are gone, spandexed active people are vacationing in Europe or running on the beach in Bali, instead of taking their winter exercise on these silent backroads. Besides it's not even that hot down here, maybe 93 with a fresh breeze while Kansas City is ...93. Hmm. So remind me again why people think its too hot here to send a summer by this tranquil ocean?

I know, there's more to summer than sunshine. There's rolling green fields studded with copses, hiking through dappled woodlands and cool summer mornings before the sun comes up at some ungodly hour, as happens in high latitudes. Down here it's mangroves and flatness.

We're off to North Carolina for a week soon so I'll get a sample of all that stuff of which I spoke. My sister in law said to me once that she couldn't believe she lived there one evening when we were standing on a ridge under Mount Mitchell watching the haze of a heated day turn to purple blackness in the valley below. I like Asheville but summer is too short and winters are long wet and cold.

Around here it doesn't change much, a bit warmer and a bit damper or a bit cooler and drier. Someone cut the little clump of mangroves in front of the launch ramp, managing to ruin their looks while not clearing what little they impeded. I used to worry about nature encroaching but these days I figure a nature has more right to encroach than we have to fight it off. if nature lease my house alone Ill do my best not to mess with nature's house.

It's the dog's way too. Cheyenne makes a great teacher. Even as she naps using Niles Road as a pillow.

What I have is enough. Indeed it's a banquet.

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Toxic Triangle

Our computer aided dispatch system at work has the name of every business in town listed in its search function. You call 911 and say you're in front of say, a convenience store and we know exactly where you re. Clever, huh? Of course you could just give the street and number or the intersection but for tourists in particular the feature is literally a life saver. It's common in emergency centers everywhere, of course. You could tell me you are at the ferry terminal, 100 Grinnell Street or the Buquebus (boo-kay-bus), which was the name of the Argentine company that first ran ferries to Fort Myers from here. The boat shown below takes people to the Dry Tortugas, but anyway...It's the ferry terminal.

Then there are the weird places, and I find out they are weird when I tell a Trainee "It's at The Ramp," and the Trainee looks quizzical. That's when I know some people don't remember the old boat launch ramp at the corner of Bertha and South Roosevelt on the south side of the city. They don't usually know what the Buquebus is either. I love the mysteries of CAD.

Looking at two pigeons (not chickens at least!) chasing food particles invisible to the naked eye I became aware, slowly, that this spot is in CAD and is most likely not known of a lot of people as The Toxic Triangle. The electrical generating tation on her side of Trumbo Road used to spew left over nasty stuff into the waters here. Ooh, look! An old pipe...

The Steam Plant is now a bunch of unsellable luxury condos. They were offered initially for more than three million. They have six left according to the sign out front and one and a quarter million will get you one if you want. Plus taxes I guess if people like that bother with piddly details like the glue that keeps the community together.

The seawall at the Toxic Triangle used to be a free home to a motley crew of boats, homes floating in a peculiar sludge that was supposed to be seawater. I visited my friend's boat but never swam in the water. nowadays the water looks great and smells like ocean. And the US Coastguard lives across the water from the seawall that is now devoid of water rats eyeing out a living. This smart dude seen below was heading for the base half an hour before they broadcast the recorded national anthem over a tinny speaker to start the day. A proper military band would be much cooler, but everything is a victim of technology and budgets these days.

I enjoy Trumbo Road, a slightly shambolic street untrimmed and very useful as it gives access to e school district headquarters and the landing craft that ferry supplies to Sunset Key the true home of one percenters in Key West.

I like this side of the harbor rather than sterile Sunset Key. Had I the millions I'd buy an apartment here rather than over there. Here it's lively, chaotic from time to time, messy and yet no longer toxic. Who says there is no progress?

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My Life With Aspergers Syndrome

I was amused to read recently that the American Psychiatric Association has declared that Asperger's Syndrome no longer exists, which is unfortunate for those among us who function passably well with what is now known as high functioning autism. Asperger's was diagnosed by an Austrian doctor at the end of World War Two, not the most auspicious time to be trying to figure out how people's heads got messed up, yet the autism spectrum diagnosis has gained currency and has spread like an oil slick in a time when we are told most people have got mental issues. Consider how we are expected to live, in a world of restrictive standards of attractiveness, declining financial expectations, centralized wealth and manufactured fear and uncertainty spread about on TV by our avaricious and narcissistic leaders...Little wonder is it then that we see people going crazy. Autism? ADD, ADHD and on and on and on. But not Asperger's they say, not anymore.

I was just getting used to the idea that I have Asperger's when the medics pulled the rug from under my diagnosis. I am not at all sure I want to have high functioning autism thanks, not in a world where I think of people with autism as lacking communication skills and struggling to cope with the tasks and irritants of daily life in ways we stereotype but that we feel sure we don't share. People with autism are stereotyped and shunned in our world, the world that reveres youth and social gaiety. People with autism don't function they want to believe, in a society that demands conformity. That's not me, I'm not "autistic" I insist, but unfortunately Asperger's is me, and it makes meeting people and dealing with every day social encounters a high stress affair. Asperger's Syndrome Symptoms in Children, Teens, Adults I can talk, I can communicate, I don't usually flap my hands in public, I trained myself to stop avoiding cracks in the sidewalk. I see patterns where others don't care and I talk too much and too long. I dread meeting people. I have Asperger's Syndrome.

All the more credit to GarytheTourist for being persistent and pulling me out of my shell to sit down to lunch with him on Greene Street. The food at Solo was an attractant I grant you...short rib beef tacos and fries covered I was told with sugar and salt. Little wonder America is addicted to freedom fries.

Gary had a seafood flatbread, a form of thin crust pizza minus tomato sauce... And over food we talked. Gary lives in Nashville and has had a fascination with Key West for decades. This is where he comes for vacation with his family who makes the most of the seaside, the turquoise waters and life in a small town freed from the stress of normal daily life. As a result he is fascinated by the travails of life in Key West when it is daily life.

I find Gary's life breathtaking in its complexity, his job is to keep people alive yet asleep while they are having their insides reorganized by surgeons, a responsibility that makes me queasy at the mere thought, and on top of that he manages the lives of a family in the throes of maturity not yet attained. For someone like me living in Key West is a piece of cake compared to juggling so many responsibilities at once. If you can do all that, saving lives dealing with college, surviving occasional snow falls, being married and all, why then, living in Key West is nothing. How can he find the interest to follow my meager life in the Southernmost City? Odd that, and he decidedly doesn't have Aspergers.

I offered to have lunch on Monday but Gary couldn't and as he was leaving soon my back up was Tuesday and I had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned. Of course I started checking the time carefully as the moment approached for us to leave. Being late causes anxiety in most people with high functioning autism. Gary took one spoon of Key Lime pie and left me the rest as we dawdled over coffee. I wanted two more hours instead of having to get on the Vespa and riding across town. That I am Gary's portal to Key West the rest of he year while he is at home freaks me out a bit. He shares none of my political views but he never reproaches me for them. He must be a terrific Dad.

I don't mind the dentist. My logical mind knows that dealing with teeth is better on my terms than on the tooth's terms so I enjoy getting them cleaned and inspected. I have been going to the same office for years and I have no clue what my tooth cleaner's name is. I have learned over the years to pay attention when people tell me their names and I try to create a word/image in my mind to associate the name with the face, and if I remember to do that I am safe. I know a woman called Marion whom I hardly ever meet. I thought of Robin Hood when she introduced herself and her name has stuck. Bloody uselessly, but there we are. This important woman in the dentist's office is one instance where I forgot to do the mind/image trick and now twice a year I let this charming mother and wife and all round cheerful chatty sweet dental hygienist into my mouth anonymously. Lots of people do that but I obsess about my incompetence and shrugging social failures off is hard for me to do. It is a struggle to stop the self defeating tape from playing over and over in my head. My blog rarely features people because they are so hard for me to read and in the end places are easier to deal with. Hence an empty South Roosevelt Boulevard:

I'm lucky, more than I realised for a long time. My wife understands and puts up with these shortcomings. My work is ideally suited to me, my desire for routine, my pleasure in paying attention to details and despite working in a room with two others the demands of the job give me the ability to be alone, to enjoy solitude in the middle of the work shift. I get to work aloneon my screens while also oddly enough being part of the team. I am half the ideal employee, I hate being late, and I take my commitments seriously. Yet my boss knows I will melt down when critiqued and she has taken the time to learn to handle me, which is the most amazing good fortune. I keep asking her if she is thinking of leaving because I know life at work will get tough if she "moves on." She loves a man far away and I dread the day she decides to move.

I started this blog with no real idea of what I was doing or why. I got to hate public internet forums where logic and facts took a back seat to emotion and insults and I wanted my own quiet space that I controlled. so I started a web page of my own with no ulterior motive to sell things or push a point of view. I never imagined I would be feeding the compulsive need of the National Security Agency to immorally monitor my every move. I wish them joy of it and I wish my fellow Americans were more outraged, even slightly outraged that the government behaves this way. My Asperger's mind calculates that three people were killed by the Chechen nutters in the Boston bombing. Four thousand people die every year on motorcycles in this country. 600,000 Americans have died since 9/11 in cars on our roads. Yet we have to be monitored everywhere in violation of the Fourth Amendment for our "safety?" Makes no sense to me, but neurotypicals and their reasoning never make much sense to me. And when I find out how we are being watched not just by corporations but by our elected leaders I figure, what the hell - what do you want to know? Here I am. This is my silly little web page. Enjoy the pictures. Smathers Beach covered in dead seaweed:

I was asked once would I do this blog if no one read it? I guess the answer is yes. The compulsion that makes me post every day as close to the same time as I can make it (midnight Eastern) is the same compulsion that makes me wash up the dishes as soon as the meal is done. I do it because it helps me make sense of things. I see old essays and old pictures and like Maid Marian they trigger memories for me, where I was, what I was doing though not necessarily what I was feeling as those memories tend to make me uncomfortable. It is a diary for me. From time to time I look at Key West Lou's page and I find the constant pursuit of people and stimulation and excitement utterly exhausting just to read. Never mind for me to try to live that life. Key West as seen by a sensible neurotypical: Key West Lou | My Life in Key West the absence of prepositions and pronouns gives me hives but at this stage in my life I know lazy grammar is my issue and my problem. Weird sentence structure and odd word usage are characteristics of Asperger's too, though in the pursuit of accuracy we sometimes come off as stilted and portentous (see what I mean?). Check out my home grown pineapple:

I guess I wrote this essay, uncharacteristically personal, by way of apology. Meeting Gary reminded me that having lunch is a normal activity, and it can be pleasant, enjoyable even. I would never make the first move but if you want to get in touch by all means try. I shall try to overcome my hesitation. I warn you, people with Asperger's Syndrome tend to talk to much, don't understand social cues and don't use appropriate facial expressions. All of which is fine for a 911 operator but makes meeting people hellishly difficult. People usually end up getting pissed off at me, which is a huge encouragement to keep myself to myself, and to write my blog. Neurotypicals don't like to acknowledge Asperger's, most people I know shrug me off as exaggerating or making a big deal out of nothing, or of being trendy (me!) so in my real life I only bring it up to people I care about. They aren't many, to the rest I just shrug it off as a party piece or a joke if it happens to come up when my wife is laughing off my inappropriateness. The worst is when people say I use Aspergers as an excuse to cover that inappropriate behavior. Luckily I have reached a point where isolation actually suits me. My wife jokes that if I were sentenced to prison time I would beg for solitary confinement. She's not wrong either.

I was surprised by some misconceptions Gary had about my life as we talked over lunch. It surprised me as I feel so naked and transparent when I meet people, especially people I've met before. I've met Gary but he mostly knows me via the Web. Partly because I can't read social cues, and partly because I don't know what to say I get far too inward looking. I got a lot out of a two hour face to face lunch. This essay is an effort to pass it on. If you meet some inept human who can't make eye contact the chances are they aren't a serial killer or a child molester. They are just lost and need a little help getting to the other side of the street. In a world dominated by the electronic generation of fearfulness and "terror" that simple human lesson is worth remembering. I wish the NSA were listening. They too could find better ways of doing their job than violating the constitution and spying on their inept little neighbors. At some level we are more likely to have a little Aspergers not terrorism in our DNA.

Asperger's Resources:
http://www.aspergers.com/index.html

http://www.johnrobison.com/purchase-books.php

http://www.wrongplanet.net/

http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

I dislike abbreviations, they tend to infantilize, so I don't use the term "Aspie" which is popular. I think of myself as someone with Aspergers, but other people don't approve of that as they feel it puts one in a ghetto. As you wish.

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The Open Road

It was a lovely day. I stood there while Cheyenne sniffed around. I took pictures and cropped them and I realized they told a story, or several stories. Two wheeled travel, by bike scooter and motorbike. One picture is a duplicate, cropped differently. The first picture was me driving Cheyenne home, about to embark on the forty foot tall Niles Channel Bridge and marveling at how unusually empty the highway was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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State Road 939A Closed

I haven't been down this road recently principally owing to the fact that Cheyenne isn't particularly fond of it. Wasn't I surprised to see these signs closing the road.

This will be no more Key West Diary: Paved Road Ends . Well, bugger.

Cheyenne is pretty clear about what she wants and what she does not want. When she is tired or bored she stops and we turn around. It's her walk, her time so she calls the shots. And she called an end to this walk almost as soon as we started. Thus proving my earlier point that she is not fond of walking this old state road.

Which makes me wonder how and why they, whoever they are decided to close this state road, a public roadway, to traffic. People liked to drive it so I guess that was reason enough to close it. It was easy enough to share with cars as speeds are slow giving walkers and cyclists plenty of time to get out of the way. A little driving adventure had to be shut down. What a boring sanitized world is closing in on us. I like walking but not everyone does. Too bad for them.

There are plenty of low flying bugs around here too, and forgetting the chemicals is a capital offense. Death by insect injection.

I remembered to apply my own before I got out the car. Fat load of good it did! The bugs seek out the tiny strips of skin not actually sprayed. I saw one trying to probe under my fingernail...

There's a big old compound at the end of paved section of the street, past the KOA camp ground. A multi million dollar mosquito breeding ground, poor buggers. Mind you they likely only use this vast spacious residence for a few weeks in winter so that solves that for the most part.

Cheyenne is a tough old bird and she gets more annoyed at me for brushing insects off her nose than she does at the mosquitoes for landing there.

It turned out to be not much of a walk. Cheyenne ate some grass then went and stood by the car door. I got the hint.

We stopped at the junction with the Overseas Highway, across from Mangrove Mama's Restaurant and we took off on a second attempt at a walk. This one I knew she'd like, looking for bait fish left on the old Flagler footbridge. To get there we had to walk through the construction where they are digging to install sewer pipes covered with a new bike path.

It was muddy and hot and mosquito free. Cheyenne was happy and that dissipated some of my grumpiness about the road closure.

 

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