Pedaling Key West

Cycling is a common pursuit in Key West, often advertised as the best way to get around the Southernmost City.

They pedal here and they pedal there, on machines not necessarily expensive or hip.

Baskets are important when your bike is your station wagon.

My problem with cycling is that riding a bicycle actually puts you on a vehicle in the traffic stream.

Even on something bizarre you are a vehicle, even when you are on the phone...

When walking you are a mere pedestrian, traveling slowly, on the sidewalk, able to stop at random, look around, take a picture...

A bicycle is a very smart conveyance and solves a lot of transportation problems, especially in a small flat over crowded town with too little parking for too many cars.

And they can look pretty:

But to see Key West, too look around,

I prefer to walk.

Sometimes when walking is too difficult you may be tempted to load up your crutches and ride. No argument there, even in the harrowing traffic of narrow Truman Avenue.

You might ride too fast to notice the assets at Bare Assets...

Or you might just ride to mind your own business while avoiding cars...

Sometimes you will spot something really weird as you whiz by, like a large yellow dog resting in a puddle by the sidewalk. That could be enough to distract your attention from your velocipede.

And some riders gently wend their homeward way on three wheels, easy does it.

 

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Conchscooter On Dawn Patrol

It has been a glorious weekend, three nights off in a row for the first time in probably nine months of endless continuous overtime. Mostly I slept. I spent Saturday and Sunday getting up and going to bed with a little light eating and dog walking inbetween. And then I slept some more.

Which also meant Cheyenne, now fully recovered from what appeared to be a snake bite, decided it was time for a pre-dawn walk. The Labrador commands and I obey.

Sometimes the  evocative nature of Key West streets  by night  gets over ridden by the weird decorating styles I come across. I am not certain why this Festivus pole was illuminated, or even why it was planted next to the leafy tree, but it was and it was brightly illuminated. 

Cheyenne's impatience with my photographic meandering also leads occasionally to some light and motion studies. It was cool and breezy and the elderly,  and the formerly almost deceased Labrador pulled a Lazarus on me and was dragging my by  the leash such was her hurry.

Aside from the occasional car  shooting past the intersections there was no sign of human activity anywhere. Someone asked on Facebook recently on one of those re-post things  what would you do upon discovering you were the last human left on Earth.

Breathe a sigh of relief and walk the last domesticated dogs in the silence, I replied. I do my best to recreate  those circumstances any  pre-dawn walk, with more or less success.

The first sign of life was the beach clean-up machine, the closest local kids will get to seeing an agricultural tractor in action. It tows a  trailer with a rake arrangement and sweeps up the dead seaweed and human trash and leaves the sand ribbed like a Japanese ornamental garden.

Higgs Beach parking lot collects  debris rather in the manner in which the beach collects dead seaweed, only this lot are van residents, and car campers who drift in to the city from a night spent who knows where and they sit in their cars like hermit crabs in their shells and stare at the beach through their windshields as though afraid of getting too close to Nature.

I imitate them by observing nature through the lense of my Android camera.

As the sun rises dogs appear and if you want to know how to avoid conversing with your fellow humans, try walking a dog. People are utterly terrified of letting their dogs get anywhere close to your dog. Some look mournfully at my dog and ask if she is friendly, to which I reply not really, at which they recoil before I manage to explain that Cheyenne is indifferent to canine contact for the most part. Not friendly, not aggressive, just uncaring. By then the worry warts are long gone.

Sometimes I say actually Cheyenne is a Navy reject military dog. They were training her alongside dolphin to kill and maim large swathes of people, and they laugh with me at my carefully disguised attack Lab, mooning around sniffing sidewalks and tree trunks.

Someone had a day off and decided to spend it putting coconuts in a large peace symbol on the beach. If pressed I dare say I'd have no idea how to spend my time more fruitfully. Walking around with a metal detector is not on my list of preferred hobbies. Besides I think to be good at that you'd want to go off the beaten path and seek out something more interesting than lost dentures and stray bottle caps in the sand. 

And here, in front of the fine Salute Restaurant we have a combination of birds, locals in white stepping with dignity and in silence. The two black incomers tear up dirt and spread it everywhere, they make noise and shout aggressively. 

I know which insect mauling birds I'd rather have poking around my front yard:

Done, finished and ready for breakfast.

The attack Lab in stealth mode, waiting for her prey, preferably baked fried or grilled.

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Conchscooter Is Grumpy

I woke up yesterday morning at 5:30 and all I could hear, over the loud rhythmic rumblings from my sleeping dog was the sound of heavy rain on the tin roof. By the time we got to town three hours later the sun was out, it's true but so were the people. And the mercantile offers were on display. Water at this Greene Street convenience store really was on offer at a bargain price where drinking is sold for twice as much or more. Cheyenne took the free offer, preferring draft to bottled.

Further along the old Red Fish Blue Fish restaurant appears, mercifully! to have closed forever. I do not remember their conch fritters fondly, and what precisely possessed me to eat there years ago I cannot recall. However this is the apex of the triangle of tourist assault on Key West's attractions, the invisible thread between Sloppy Joe's and Mallory Square and far to the south, the Hemingway House on Whitehead Street...so I suppose whatever comes next won't be aimed at a recurring clientele, any more than the previous occupant.

So, there I was grumping along, as you do, trailing my dog and wondering in what other manner Key West is to be defaced when some cheerful man came up and introduced himself. Hi I'm John he said and I read your blog everyday and I know you don't like to meet people. Well bugger, did I say that? And so I feel like an asshole and I am going to do better. I get muddled up trying to remember small talk but not talking too much and then I feel awkward because I don't know what crazy thing I said that he might have noticed and all this is going round in my head like a disturbed hornet's nest.

So here's the thing, by all means say hello and I will do my best. I promise I won't ask for money or cigarettes which is about the level of most street conversations around here as long as you don't talk about the weather. In 2015 I am hoping to practice small talk so I need your help. Thank you.

Meanwhile I determined not to allow the prospect of a full week of 60 degree night time temperatures to make me grumpy. Key a West is still lovely, just to walk and look at:

Cheyenne isn't dying anymore, indeed she is as stubborn and unsentimental as ever, but I am not going to be annoyed at her when she turns her back on me and refuses to cuddle ( which is almost always).

I am not going to wonder what the hell these peculiar signs mean. I am just going to enjoy them. See? I'm cheerfull, very approachable, just like my dog.

Okay, this one is not on my list of things to be cheerful about. Garbo's Grill was rated best Key West restaurant a while ago, which seemed odd. I liked Garbo's well enough but the best seemed to pitch things a bit rich. However in my new guise as a cheerful man about town rating a lower Duval tourist trap as "excellent" seems simply marvelous.

Of course Key West recycles. And pays attention to the very small print. Pretty soon we'll overtake Seattle in our collective commitment to the environment. (Grumpy Conchscooter says fat chance but he's now officially suppressed).

Grumpy me says apostrophes have become instruments of the devil. Surely the artists of the fabled Studios know the difference and will apply the correct spelling very, very soon. Says I smiling broadly.

I stopped in Key Plaza to buy stuff at the new Publix, no longer wondering what arse decided Key West needed two Publix supermarkets next to each other in this small town. It makes taking 911 calls more complicated than necessary as not everyone knows which is the "new" versus the "old" Publix when they are stressed out and in trouble.

Parking with no consideration? No problem, take all the spaces you need, I'm sure you are working on improving your driving skills as you can find the energy. Who me, grumpy? Never in life. Come one come all, park badly write illiterate signage and rate mediocre as excellent. I am very approachable you will find.

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Little Hamaca City Park Photos

It was another glorious crisp sunny day.

 So I decided it might be time to drain the colors from the pictures

The park boardwalk is getting new ugly metal handrails...

 ...to replace the more attractive wooden rails from an earlier time:

 

The city park hasn't changed much in the grand scheme of things.

 Cheyenne was in the mood for some urban forest exploration.

 She is my alibi in a place where men are known to cruise  for sex. Odd that, in a town where being gay doesn't raise an eyebrow but I suppose there are lots of reasons to stay in the unhappy closet, not all of them political but personal.

 Here too we find weird ditches, dug to house mosquito fighting fish in the good old days of endemic yellow fever.

 "Him and his camera!"

 And nearby the airport, momentarily caught in monochrome.

 There, that's better!

 Delta hauling people away. I like watching them go, knowing I am where I want to be.

 A girl needs a pause between walks.

 Snowbird relaxation:

 My colleague Nick was learning to fly in this plane which recently fell out of the sky while on a charter. No one was seriously hurt but Nick has decided perhaps his flying career is closed, perhaps prematurely but while he is still in one piece.

 I keep telling him: motorcycles are much safer.

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