Snoozing On Cudjoe Bay

My boat motor is not responding to treatment. In consultation with Robert who is as stubborn as a mule has determined to overcome, and he says the final solution is in sight. If not I know a pro who solved the last intractable problem and the boat motor next goes to his shop. Meanwhile...

An offer of a ride from a neighbor is not to be sniffed at. Dennis is a hunter-gatherer who was going out to seek dinner. I prefer not to kill in our over fed society so I was along for the views. My wife was thinking about another swim.

Our canal makes an excellent swimming pool, deep, clear and maintenance free so boat rides are for fun, to explore, to swim elsewhere when we feel like a boat ride.

Even at ultra low tides.

Tides in the Keys are strange phenomena, as two separate bodies of water meet along the line of the islands. The Atkantic tides to the south are regular and easily predictable, four times a day every six hours, two high, two low.

The Gulf of Mexico has weird irregular tides that follow no rhyme or reason, yet are predicted by science and listed in tables.

And here we are in the middle, able to float small boats on thin waters, where an extra foot of tide makes for ease of transit in places otherwise closed.

Dennis hunts around Cudjoe Bay lining up transits on his favorite spots. A tall bush on a mangrove island to the left a squat pink house to the right...and there it is, his spot.

Looking forward or backward through the sunlight these waters always look thin. The only way to see their depth is to look straight down over the side.

One looks for black spots to mark rocks, brown patches for thin water, and deep dark blue for depths untold.

Be it ever so thin you float on the tide and talk. Dennis used to be a teacher at my wife's school. They talk of students and the middle school where Dennis works today. Key West is a small town and everyone knows what they know about each other and their children.

Florida summers are said to be a purgatory of heat and humidity yet these days rarely rise beyond 90 degrees, though complaints abound in the newspaper about the muredrrous unnatural heat this year. It looks and feels normal to me, down to the scattered and random thunderstorms and tropical downpours.

Dennis went off with a spear, primitive man in pursuit of protein. I tried to read my novel (on my phone, how cool is Kindle), but I got sleepy and stretched out.

I expected my wife the amphibian to get in the water but she was as tired as I from our hour paddling around our canal. A nap was in order.

To my relief the foraging failed and we were faced with no flopping suffocating fish. I have never participated in the casual cruelty of hooking a fish and not killing it. When I fished, eons ago, I killed rather than let the creature die by degrees. I fear that if there is a judgement day not only will dog beaters be judged but I hope people who catch and suffocate fish will get theirs.

But we none of us are guilt free, that's the beauty of eternal judgement. As soon as you figure you are in the clear some other broken regulation, moral code or habit now deemed deficient pops up to restore your humility. Mine came later at Publix looking for cage free eggs. None to be found so I bought eggs produced by birds caged in cruelty. Bugger.

But for now we have summer to ourselves and very nice it is too for those of us free to enjoy it. I hope summer Up North repays in some other manner. I wanted to enjoy New England this summer with greenery, mountains and small towns. And I did, but I was ready to come home after a few too many cold days filled with drizzle. To this I came home after just three weeks of uncertain weather, gray skies and oddly reserved people. Even my gregarious wife found New Englanders reserved.

Luckily Dennis isn't from New England. I'm glad he invited us out for a nap on Cudjoe Bay. Teachers are back at school, students start next Monday, so vacation is over even in the land of endless summer. Cage free isn't only for eggs.

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Webb Chiles in Tonga

Webb Chiles is a remarkable man now busy sailing the Pacific in an entirely unsuitable boat, a Moore 24. He has a history of being unsuitable, sailing an open boat most of the way around the world, trying to commit suicide by sinking his boat and changing his mind -too late! - and thus struggling to survive. Too often these days we find ourselves reading people doing silly things and justifying them as being the best thing anyone could do with their lives. I prefer people who travel for pleasure, for the challenge not as a fundraiser to increase "awareness." I like the unvarnished truth, not jollity in praise of the improbable. If you read my blog you know my Key West is unlike anybody else's, warts and all. Treasure Webb Chiles and his legendary sailing:

self-portrait in the present sea journal: Neaifu, Tonga: pounded: A distressing trend has emerged from my immediate post-passage entries. Instead of reporting how great the sail, I repo...

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North Roosevelt Boulevard

Today is supposed to be the day that the bigwigs come to town and open the Boulevard officially, a couple of weeks past the due date. It's hard to imagine that traffic will be back to normal, whatever that is, after two long years of chaos on the main road into Key West.

The $45 million dollar construction job has been a nightmare for all concerned, principally the business community that has lamented the loss of business as the four lane road has been torn up and rendered into a version of a nightmare ride into the city. For a while the Boulevard was two lanes inbound only rushing traffic past the stores that line the state highway for two long dusty miles. Then the business community protested and they changed the format into one inbound and the other outbound, which seemed a lame idea to me but it actually did okay. Nothing has been great about this street since they started tearing it up but the work did have to get done.

Flooding has been the problem, not climate change induced flooding though higher tides won't help. Heavy rains reduced the road to two lanes, and the weird camber of the old road forced huge lakes to form all along the edges. The renovation has supposedly installed new high powered storm drains to remove the water: we shall see. The bike path/sidewalk has been rebuilt and the state was restrained from ruining the view by not installing the world's ugliest aluminum railings. However the high maintenance coconut palms are back by popular demand. The plans had called for low maintenance, native palmettos and thatch palms but that wouldn't do for the peanut gallery...

The de Moya company that won the contract have been utterly gruesome to our little city. They have much larger contracts on the mainland so after they won this modest bid they tore up the entire road and buggered off leaving the city with a wrecked road for about four months. Finally city officials contacted the state department of Transportation and some ineffectual representative from Tallahassee came to town to lament with the city leaders and eventually the bozos from Up North got back in gear again, not before a few businesses closed their doors.

Lately of course the construction company has made a perfect nuisance of themselves frantically trying to complete the contract in order to win a bonus and i certainly hope they missed that deadline. However knowing how the good old boy network operates I don't doubt they will be rewarded for the chaos they have brought us. What's worse is they tore up the entire road all at once and kept it all torn up all the time. They never finished one piece of it and then moved on to the next bit. The whole thing was a shambles from beginning to end. I hope they never come back to the Keys.

There is also going to be one more set of lights at Searstown, but the engineers told me that if traffic flows at the speed limit the lights will be in sequence. Fat chance, as Key West specializes in wasting time at red lights with no cross traffic.

Honestly, my hope is most traffic will return to The Boulevard next week returning Flagler and South Roosevelt to the bucolic emptiness I remember so fondly.

At night the absence of traffic is a lovely thing, another reason I enjoy working nights ( parking my motorcycle out of the sunlight is another...):

Already the new Boulevard is backing traffic up of course:

And waiting endlessly at traffic lights with no cross traffic is back!

In winter it will get worse of course but I will be happily buzzing down Flagler at speed limit plus five. Everyone else I hope will marvel at the billiard table smoothness if the flood-free North Roosevelt Boulevard, where hardly anyone knows how to use the median lane to make turns without blocking traffic while integrating into the flowing traffic.

Bearing in mind the tourist attractions in Key West are to the left in the picture below, and the sole entrance to the island is the bridge on the right, the importance of North Roosevelt becomes obvious. That it is lined with businesses that are less tourist oriented but vital for locals adds to that sense that this project took too damned long.

But now it's over, they say and everything gets back to normal. That this job worked we'll know after heavy rain with no flooding. Ho hum. We'll see.

 

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From The Archives: To The Lighthouse 2008

Last Thursday was National Lighthouse Day so to mark the day I resurrected this elderly essay from 2008. The Key West Lighthouse  revisited:

Lighthouse

An hour to burn of a Spring afternoon so why not check out the lighthouse on Whitehead Street?
The first thing people remark on about the lighthouse is how far it lies from the beach. There is method to the madness because the original wooden structure was washed off the beach in 1847 so they then decided to build the brick one a little bit inland. And here it is at the corner of Whitehead and Truman in the middle of Old Town. The tower is supposedly somewhere near 90 feet tall and the light inside still works, powered by a solar panel, but it is a tourist attraction these days:Its a ten dollar admission fee (10%off for local ID) and with that you get a chance to go shopping for gee-gaws You get to peer at the old Fresnel lense that sits inside the admissions building looking very glassy and fierce:
The lighthouse museum complex is quite the little compound, a grassy, tree-covered complex of buildings which includes an 1887 lighthouse keeper's house:Its a wooden home with luscious honey colored tongue and groove paneling all round inside:There's the usual audio-visual presentation along with a ton of knick-knacks from the period, including clothing, household items and the like to illustrate the life and times of 19th century residents. The dark interior contrasts nicely with the sunburned exterior:There are 88 steps to the viewing balcony at the top of he lighthouse, and it comes as something of a surprise to me that the place is wide open and anyone can stumble all the way up to the top. There is a sign advising children under 16 need an adult in tow, which isn't a prospect I would relish, what with all those steps winding their way up the tower, keeping up with a youthful bundle of energy:
The copper hose next to the stairway was installed when the light converted from kerosene to acetylene which must have seemed like an improvement to all concerned. I took the steps by storm, and happily didn't meet anyone half way up. There is no room to pass, it would be an intimate affair and these people are tourists so they have no clue how to alleviate social discomfort with small talk in awkward situations...But in the fullness of time one reaches the top and there one finds a fresh breeze and safety wires strung everywhere:

I lucked out on the day I chose to climb the tower as there was a fresh westerly breeze blowing and the air was cool and invigorating. It was on the west side where one can see the lump of La Concha Hotel rising about the little houses of the city. I took a picture of a cute Conch cottage......a church (with La Concha bigger in the background)......and this amusing guesthouse that used to be a gay hang out and when I was a boat Captain I used to recommend families visit the lighthouse forgetting there were scads of naked old men all over this building and its pool. Oh dear, but these days its gone straight so the excitement is gone.
There is a fair bit of greenery all around the city even after the heavy hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 wiped out a number of trees, but there are spots that show a lot less trees:And in the distance always the beautiful blue waters around the city. Back on Earth after a harrowing enough descent even without meeting anyone down below, there was shade to enjoy in the grounds:And a little traffic watching on Whitehead Street:

This week the city is celebrating Conch Republic days, a lighthearted end-of-winter celebration that in some measure remembers the wilder days in Key West when wrecking was a legitimate way to make a fortune. The lighthouses pretty much put paid to that as they helped keep ships off the rocks. As a sailor, I still appreciate the role of lighthouses in helping find one's way at sea though a lot of people think GPS has put paid to the usefulness of lighthouses. And so the world turns.