Florida Keys Community College

It was a hot afternoon and Cheyenne had had a warm walk already so she was ready to nap in air conditioned comfort. She prefers to sleep on the floor in summer and only uses her bed (or mine) or muscles her way onto the couch in cold weather. She looked up as I gathered my phone and my man purse and resumed her nap as I went downstairs to fire up the Vespa. Last seen looking like this:

My wife had told me she was waiting at the college library so I parked and made my circuitous way toward the library.

I got an Associate in Science degree herein marine engineering oddly enough and I enjoyed my time though I am not an ideal student not least because I hate taking exams. I find the examination process tends to occupy so much of my mind concentrating on that takes away from the pleasure of simply learning.

But I like wandering the campus, enjoying the bright tropical colors and the covered walkways that remind me of public buildings seen in Africa, designed for maximum comfort in the heat. Of course this place has plenty of Sid conditioning but the design of the campus hints at places more exotic. At least it does to me.

The college sits on a spur of land that juts out from the north side of Stock Island, so it is surrounded on three sides by tidal waters. Because the City of Key West annexed the northern half of this island (to facilitate a developer of homes at the golf course), the college is actually in the city of Key West. No surprise then that we find an artistic representation of the famous local Conch shell on a wall:

Conchs have been fished out in the Keys. Any you eat here have come from Carribean countries like Honduras, though they are trying to increase local populations in protected waters.

Ironically the library was closed when I arrived before actual closing time (!) so I had to call my wife on the phone to alert her that I was out here. What did we do before we became surgically attached to pocket phones?

There weren't many people around, least of. All students at dinner time on a weeknight. There are dormitories on campus to encourage out of town students to attend school in this very expensive town, but this is mostly a day school.

William Seeker was the long serving President who molded the school in his own likeness before time forced him to retire. His replacement was a brash yet supremely competent fund raiser of a President who unfortunately upset the sensibilities of critical components of the administrative staff. She was replaced by a smart milquetoast cypher whose name I can barely remember and whose influence in town is not really felt.

Office of the President - Florida Keys Community College, a nice enough dude they say with the money he has set his disposal. It's nice to have a leader not making waves for a change, I suppose. Even so I get the uneasy feeling educators should be in the business of ruffling a few feathers from time to time.

Yes indeed, a part of me does miss the good old days of bring a boat captain and a student all at once. I look back and I seemed so immature.

 

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African Cemetery Passersby

The Florida Keys official Tourism Website has all the information one might need to understand the value of the beautifully decorated piece of beach dedicated to slaves brought by chance to this island in the 19th century. Yet for some peculiar visitors it is merely a playground!

Across the street there is a dog park on land donated by the county but paid for by private subscription to the tune of $16,000. Plans to move Atlantic Boulevard further back from the beach have imperiled much of the dog park, upsetting to those who use it. Indeed, further exploration of the African cemetery has also threatened the dog park but so far nothing here has changed.nthe size of the cemetery plot seems to be fixed at this point.

The African cemetery only came into existence slowly over the course of this century. Three slavers bound for Spanish Havana were intercepted by the U S Navy and brought to Key West in 1860. The refugees were pretty much abandoned on the beach and left in the care of the only US official in the city- the postmaster. That decent fellow lost a great deal of money and was never reimbursed by Uncle Sam for his efforts to keep the 1400 Africans alive.

In the end 295 died here and the eleven hundred remaining got passage back to West Africa though not to their original homes. The dead were forgotten until 2002 when researchers with ground penetrating radar started looking for the human remains. They found a few they say, in this area and those dozen likely graves were the framework got this dedicated piece of land, as much a symbol and a reminder as an actual graveyard.

Indeed some people think the Africans could have been buried all round Higgs Beach. In those days neighboring Rest Beach was where cattle were slaughtered for the population of around 12,000, who all lived in the northwest corner of the island. As a result this modern tourist thoroughfare at the time was a piece of wasteland overseen by the brick Martello tower, whose remains are to the right:

Until a hurricane blew the bodies out of the sand there was also a city cemetery at Higgs Beach but after that episode they moved it to its current location in the middle of the island, at what was then the outskirts of the inhabited town.

And nowadays they come and amble by, in all their glorious diversity and most ignore this piece of history at their feet.

 

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The Bonneville From The Archives

I have been sifting through the archives and it occurred to me I have been around the block a few times since I bought the bike in October 2007. Above I rode an Iron Butt to New York State in 36 hours, then I went to visit Jack Riepe in 2010 recorded in one of my better essays: Key West Diary: Riding With Riepe. I also rode across Florida to a conference and got to spend a long enjoyable day in the saddle exploring the back roads of central Florida.

I used to use Triumph soft saddlebags made of cloth that was neither waterproof nor impervious to being twisted by the wind. After they tore from constant use I replaced them with heavier but solid and waterproof 1430 Pelican cases which I bolted to the soft bag frames. They still work just fine, seen here on a rain-filled ride to Georgia for a family gathering:

The Bonneville continues to run perfectly with almost 80,000 miles on the clock.

Back and forth on Highway One.

In the years between dogs, after Emma died but before I found Cheyenne, I did a lot of lonely Keys exploration by motorcycle. Fishcutters on Summerland became The Wharf:

Garrison Bight:

My preferred parking when going to a movie at the Tropic Cinema.

On my many miles of commuting I have seen fog a couple times:

But this is, in my estimation the perfect motorcycling climate, usually between 65 and 95 degrees year round.

One year I rode my bicycle to the Summerland Key polling station three miles from my home, and the poll workers said I was the first cyclist they had ever seen. As time has passed I have cone to find less and less comfort in voting as money seems to count a lot more than what we the voters have to say, but so far I have not yet found the courage to ignore the process entirely.

Another mainland trip saw me coming home from the Everglades on a Highway 27, my preferred non-freeway route across central Florida. Here at the junction southbound with Krome Avenue:

I also got held up by a massive wreck on Krome Avenue that trip which closed the road and I sat in the grass waiting...just as though it had been the Overseas Highway.

And as I usually prefer Card Sound road to the no-passing restrictions of the 18 mile stretch I found myself getting ready to pay the dollar toll to cross the Card Sound Bridge:

Frank Deford the NPR sports commentator also came to Key West in 2008, typical of the caliber of visitors to the Southernmost City in winter:

Key West Diary: Frank Deford

A day on Cudjoe Key, pre-Cheyenne, saw me riding out to the horses stabled on Asturias, and then visiting the flooded gravel pits on the other side of Blimp Road. Kids liked to drive around there and that of course had to be stopped so now they've blocked off the entrance, on the puritanical principle that fun must not be had. I'm sure it has you do with liability or some other such thing.

I would ride to El Mocho on Stock Island for my favorite Cuban food, truly the place where locals eat:

The Overseas Highway through Stock Island hasn't changed much:

They've taken out a few passing zones when they recently repaved stretches of it (bastards!) but the sun still shines on a Highway One:

The Bonneville is an easy bike to ride, not light at 500 pounds but I find it scooter-like in the ease of the controls, so I enjoy exploring back roads on it, here at Bay Point, Mile Marker 15:

Also at Bay Point Knuckleheads didn't work but it made way for what appears to be a successful eatery called Kaya Island Eats. I ate there last week and it seemed pretty good, much better than my first visit when it opened, but I suppose that was to be expected. Kaya Island Eats

In 2007 I went to my home in Italy for the first time in 25 years and I rented a BMW 650 to ride around Umbria. It was a good bike but rather breathless compared to my easy going Bonneville.

The Summerland runway is still there flanked by homes equipped with airplane garages. The signage is a bit more imposing these days.

But the point remains the same, cars and airplanes shouldn't mix.

Part of the pleasure of the Key West climate is that it rains mostly in summer when it's hot and summer rain is no big deal. Hypothermia is highly unlikely on a commute around here:

And the sunrise can be quite comforting as one rides home from a long night at work.

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Read To Ride, Motorcycle Touring

I like to travel. And if that weren't enough I have traveled throughout my life as much and as often as I was able. I have ridden motorcycles (and scooters) driven cars, ridden railways and sailed. For years I have cursed my itchy feet and my innate desire to see what's over the horizon. But as I age I value the memories, they give me a chance to travel while I am stationary, and they are even more valuable now that I have a place where I do like to live. The itch is abating at last. Which is not to say I don't want to travel, but I do know where home is, as long as I can hang onto my place in these lumps of rock called the Florida Keys.

There are those good people who tell me frequently that they would like travel but...There are so many obstacles to travel, but the biggest is usually in people's heads. When I hear that someone wants to go to England I point out, unhelpfully, that planes leave Miami each afternoon and they get people to London in time for breakfast tomorrow. They shy away, as though I had suggested they commit some unspeakable stupidity and set themselves among bandits in a far foreign land. Grilled tomatoes and greasy fried bread and kippers for breakfast ten hours away frightens one raised to think of potatoes and pancakes as breakfast food. Food is the essence of travel as an explicator of culture, for me. I have eaten camel in the desert, and boiled potatoes in Siberia and some very odd breakfast food on the streets of Yokohama. I remember drinking Guinness alongside the highway in Africa, taking a break from riding in the awful heat and talking about travel with men who lived in mud huts in a part of the world today torn by civil war, Muslims versus Christians inNorthern Nigeria.

But these are other people's stories:

I find it odd that a man who chose to ride a Lambretta 150 from Ontario to Peru did not have the digestion capable of coping with spicy Mexican food. And because he had no Spanish I wondered how much of this alien culture he could absorb on his remarkable scooter ride half a century ago. Give him credit, he does get around! And get this: he asked a woman he had first met six weeks prior to fly down to Mexico City, marry him and carry on riding the Lambretta. I have reached the bit where Tove says "Yes!"

The astonishing thing is this madcap adventure seems to have worked for them as they stayed married until he died a decade ago. She is still alive but the production of this book is a story unto itself, a labor of love by their son. THE SCOOTER DIARIES is a beautifully written manuscript authored by Ron Bowman after the trip yet never published. Thus it was up to his son Gordon to prepare it for us to read. The Canadian journalist on a scooter tells an amazing story of a ride unimaginable to people who expect to be cosseted every minute of every day whether they are on the road or at home. These two had a blast and so will you if you read this delightful travel story. They wore street clothes...no "proper gear!"

The other traveler's tale I throughly enjoyed was also set in Central America by another journalist, an American who went bust, mortgaged his home and bought a BSA to ride to Panama by himself, dressed in coveralls and a cloth cap.

It's obvious there's more to this story than meets the eye, but Two Wheels to Panama is a delightful travel story. Carroll has a tremendous sense of humor and an eye for the ironic so you can rest assured this an easy read.

The Central American roads were a nightmare but William Carroll fights the good fight cheerfully and always within sight of his camera lense. To earn some money he files reports with papers back home about stuff he sees and assignments he's given, which in turn give us eyewitness stories about United Fruit that belong in the history books. The Pan-American Highway in Costa Rica was a series of river crossings that tested the BSA's electrics, and the capacity of his boots to hold water:

This next book, like the first listed has to be ordered from the author, in this case a sensitive New Zealander living in England. His story Overland To Egypt is a ride on a 1952 175cc Bantam overloaded and hard pressed to keep going in the heat of the Middle East. I am a huge fan of vintage Vespas but from reading this story the BSA Bantam was a nightmare to keep on the road. With a top speed of 45mph it's not going anywhere fast but with stops every five miles in the worst of the heat you are amazed by the author's great good will all the time.

This story reminded me of Jupiter's Travels inasmuch as the author just loves people. Again we have a fussy eater and a man with no facility for languages but he travels slowly through countries that have since gone up in smoke and has a whale of a time. In his epilogue he briefly mentions the Arab Spring uprisings and notes that ordinary people in those countries he rode through seemed to be living happy enough lives before War came to the land. I of course wish he had expanded on that theme as I have long held to similar theories from my own travels. But what he gives us is a delight.

This is a travel story of the best sort with an annoyingly incompetent motorcycle which he uses to get him closer to people along the way. He needs help all the time and he gets it proving what we travelers already know: you are never alone on the road.

In closing I found an old book mark in one of my books, from a trip to New Mexico, a postcard of Georgia O'Keefe on the pillion of a motorcycle. For me it expresses joy and freedom and unlikely adventure:

If you really have to travel you will. May it be on two wheels if you can, some other way if you can't. But if you don't want to, or cannot travel, voyage in your armchair with these great stories, not about motorcycles, but about fascinating people.

 

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