The Weather When It was Cold

From November 24th 2007, only weeks into the life of this blog, this meditation on the weather of the Keys. In those days, when my Bonneville was new and shiny winter meant a few days every now and again of cold crisp air, brisk breezes which seemed appropriate now that we have a very mild January cold front striking the Keys with daytime lows very near 70 degrees (locally considered to be sort of zero). I don't like the cold but the absence of any weather even approaching the 50s for years now has me wondering what's going on.

To Snow Or Not

There was a question, perhaps rhetorical, about the possibility of familiarity breeding contempt when it comes to the bright colors bathed in constant sunshine that is the lot of a Florida Keys resident. The short answer is, no it never gets boring, and no, I never take it for granted. Every day is a fresh reminder of one of the chief pleasures of living at 24 degrees north latitude.Yesterday I was training a new dispatcher in the arcane science of the police intranet system that connects law enforcement agencies across the country. We spoke briefly to Nome PD where daylight is down to 9 hours a day, ("It's not that dark, we are below the Arctic Circle," their dispatcher told us slightly defensively), and I'm not sure if my trainee was more impressed by the secure law enforcement network or the notion of policing snowdrifts.
Its getting to be that time of year when it starts freezing Up North and so we have to start policing bad parking, bad public drinking and bad bums begging for money at the tops of their voices on street corners in the Southernmost City. The trick to enjoying life in the Keys is to leave behind as much baggage as you can, and to learn as fast as you can to take things as they are. especially if you come from some button down community Up North where skittles are lined up, i-s are dotted and t-s are crossed. In Key West things just don't work that way. The confrontation brews when people who are used to order and cleanliness come up against chaos and small town clubbiness.
So snowbirds flutter into town each Fall and discover that things haven't changed since last year. Andthey sure as hell haven't changed either, so disorganized parking, public displays of begging (beggars like warm winters too!) and apparent municipal indifference set them off. What to do? Why, call the police!

Its hard to explain to well dressed people why its okay for smelly people to occupy city parks during the day, but the Supreme Court has outlawed discrimination on the basis of hygiene so its hard to get police officers to arrest people for being dressed in cerements. Impossible in fact, and this state of affairs hasn't changed since the last time the snowbirds were cluttering up the streets and restaurants. The Citizens' Voice Column in the paper is filling up again with quality of life complaints which are rather dull compared to the throat clutching verbal wrestling that locals indulge in while the more strait jacketed winter residents are away.

These unrelated photographs illustrate the beauty of Winter in the Keys, sunlight takes on a crisp white light, and the brisk cold fronts sweep away the dusty summer particles rendering colors that much sharper. My Bonneville is running equally crisply and is a joy to point down the highway. I've passed the 25-hundred mile mark since October 10th and I'm starting to find my way with more instinct and habit than previously. The Vespa is soon to go back on the "for sale" circuit now that we have those lovely wealthy snowbirds in town, and curiously, I find myself missing the Vespa less and less. The Bonneville is proving to be an easy fun ride in the flatlands of the Keys. In some ways it takes less skill to ride the Bonneville, as the twin cylinder takes anything in its stride, head winds, moonstruck tourists, lumberingheffalumps (SUVs) and juvenile testosterone cases. And snowbirds.
Staring at the Straits of Florida south of Sugarloaf Key has its compensations, on a golden winter evening, but there are occasions when a visit to the movies makes sense too. Last Monday it was the turn of Into The Wild an adventure film about a young man taking things to extremes until they get completely out of hand. Only then does he figure out the meaning of life; when its too late. This young man, according to the movie, made a solo kayak trip down the Colorado river, through the Grand Canyon all the way to the Sea of Cortez. He hitch hiked, made friends, disappeared, regrouped, worked and lazed away sunny desert days. But he did just have to go to Alaska, the borne from which some travelers fail to return.It was a fine movie, absorbing, demanding attention and posing difficult questions about age, impetuosity and the meaning of being alive. I couldn't get over the notion that the true test of one's mettle has to be found in the snowdrifts of the frozen north. One sun's oneself in a pansy hammock under coconut palms in the tropics while heroes forge themselves in blizzards and drizzle and cold slippery roads Up North.

By those restricted standards I am glad to be a pansy. I lived for a great deal too many years in the cold confines of Northern California to enjoy the notion of rain and cold. I just don't like it, and no amount of hairpins or mountains or spectacular views across death defying valleys compensates me for the cold in my fingers, the slush on my boots, and the depressing need to take the car on exceptionally horrendous winter days. Sitting by the fire sucks when compared to stretching out on the deck under the illusory cold embrace of a winter full moon.So, no, the winter landscapes never dull or fade or crumble into rust. The moon last night was round and red as it sank into the Gulf of Mexico on my early ride in to work. Today it was cold and steely and threw out shards of ice across the ruffled lagoons in the Saddlebunch Keys. Tomorrow I hope for more crisp and clear and sun, but if not it makes no matter because sooner rather than later sub tropical nature will reassert itself and the sun will shine.

That's what all those visitors and snowbirds come here for after all, not to mention the twittering year round residents, who came for the weather and stay for it too, no matter how unwilling they may be to admit they revere it. The Weather.

Riding High

My recent foray (link) into the roads around Orlando on a rented Indian Chief have not quite had the intended effect of damping my desire for a longer motorcycle ride. It's a desire I have been suppressing for a while as I have been getting involved in more longer term projects, and the banked fires of traveling are finding their way out from under the ashes piled up around them.

The three day trip to AIMExpo last Fall was excellent and I got some good riding in, darkness through the South Florida sugar cane fields was fun, flying through the warm Florida night...Twisting up Highway 17, a surprisingly fun motorcycle highway through the orange groves, getting up in the morning to a motorcycle not a car in the hotel parking lot all added up to "a trip."

These reminiscences were dredged up by a photo I found in my files from May 2008, my year-old Bonneville on a side road near Alva, Florida on my meandering way home from a conference trip to Clearwater north of Tampa. I like central Florida, a land of small towns, long straight roads unfortunately, but also woods, fields and unlikely back roads. It's a place that gives you space to think. 

Besides. it's nice to come home to the Keys and water and sky and familiar curves and passing zones and bridges and views and mangroves and even if it is a commute it is a good place to ride if you have done a lot of twisted mountain riding in your life.

An 80 degree evening in January in the Northern Hemisphere is not to be sniffed at if you dislike the cold. The road goes straight forward and straight back. Long may the road go, and long may I be on it.

I have been gearing up for the post-holiday busyness of being busy and Key West is busy. Lots of cars and people and sunshine shortly to be replaced by a couple of cool nights. I passed  a Tennessee- tagged SUV filled with eager faces looking forward to a  tropical vacation...and I hoped they felt a 63 degree night might qualify.  

It has been a long time since the Lower Keys say a 50 degree day,a very long time indeed. I actually wouldn't mind a cold snap if only to remind me how much I enjoy the heat. I might sing a different tune if it got so cold I couldn't enjoy the ride.

Starting A New Year

The whole New Year-old year thing doesn't really do much for me but this year, continuing my streak of bad bio rhythms I spent  New Year's Eve under the covers battling a fever. I missed out, not on a party, but a substantial overtime check for working overtime on a  city holiday. My shift was to start at eleven so I had the evening to have dinner at home with my wife and then I had a chance to make a fat check after she went to bed... Instead I had her waiting on me and my friends at work getting through a tough night without my help. Bugger.

But now I am well and truly recovered, my Bonneville is running nicely and on my way into work last night I got to stop for a moment and see part of a rather feeble sunset at Smathers Beach.

It was great to be out in the cool evening air, cool by local standards that is, lacking humidity even if it was around 80 degrees. The traffic on Highway One wasn't awful and I made good enough time to be able to stop for a couple of minutes before plunging into training with my new Trainee. For only the second time in eleven years that I have worked at police dispatch we have no openings...11 dispatchers, three trainees and one administrator. We are full! Hooray, and I hope it lasts.

My wife and I were talking about the new year and we have decided we need to make some changes. 2015 was filled with work and no play which makes for dull people. I am seriously missing my walks with my dog, but after she suffered so badly on the trip to Orlando I am now convinced she is happy with her routines at home. We figure that she's good as far north as Fort Lauderdale or Fort Myers, four or five hours in the car ona  direct trip, but no further. Her world is closing in, but she remains happy if not terribly mobile and for that I am grateful. A pain free old age is fine thing for her even if she can't walk with me anymore.

The first step to enjoying daily life more is to take time on my commute to pause and sniff the salt air. Very good it was too.

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Happy New Year

2015 was a stark mixture of hope and frustration for me. 2016 will no doubt present its challenges. For now I am in bed with a fever of 102 wondering why I forgot to get a flu shot this year. Frankly I am glad the holidays are over and the daily routine can resume. Onwards and upwards!

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Indian Rental And A Tornado

The plan was to take up Eaglerider Orlando's offer of a rental made at the AIMExpo motorcycle show last fall, so off the three of us went last weekend to enjoy a relaxing few days away from work, the app and all business related stuff. I have to work Christmas and New Year's so my time off came in between. On Monday morning I picked up this eight hundred pound brute:

I headed south for breakfast at the curiously named Wawa on my way out of town. It turns out Wawa is the Pennsylvania town where the convenience store was founded and where in this case I found not bad food even though I didn't stand in line for the popular hot breakfast attractions. I stood by the Indian Chief Vintage in the parking lot and ate my delayed breakfast in the sun, after scaring off an admirer of the chrome and black beast in the parking lot. He slunk back to his mere car and glanced at me as though with envy. Well he might and I'm sorry if I scared him though why he didn't talk to me I'm not sure. Perhaps I had absorbed the piratical air of one who rides large American cruisers with loud exhausts.

The Indian Chief cuts quite a figure even in the crowded multi-lane traffic of the Orlando suburbs. The factory mufflers are LOUD and bark at the least provocation while the acres of chrome glinted in the sun. The leather saddlebags attracted one motorist's  attention at a traffic light and  a middle aged woman, a horse enthusiast apparently told me in no uncertain terms the saddle bags would benefit from saddle soap. I don't doubt they would but neither they nor the leather seat are my concern. I am a fan of hard lockable saddle bags and  of waterproof vinyl seats. The leather saddle took up the heat of the 90 degree day and reflected it faithfully onto my buttocks. It looked like a hell of a ride, fringes and all when viewed from alongside, from the riding position it was like driving a boat with a tiller:

I have never been much of a fan of the feet forwards riding style of cruiser motorcycles and despite the appearance of comfort by the end of the 300-mile day my shoulders ached from holding the widespread handlebars and my backside was as sore as you might expect from being wedged in one spot on the single seat. The foot controls were quite far forward for my short legs and my trouser legs rode up to my knees in the breeze when I stretched my feet out forward. As much as I liked the looks the Chief was not, to me, as comfortable as my sit-up-and-beg style with the Triumph Bonneville I ride daily.

The Chief is a beautiful bike, rich with clever styling details, acres of luscious paint and lots of chrome. However the mirror stalks were at 1000 miles starting to show slight signs of rust so for an all weather rider the Vintage is an iffy proposition- chrome to clean and leather to soap and none of it benefiting from getting wet! The tires on this model have tubes so getting a flat requires calling a tow to get a puncture repaired.

The 1800cc  engine is air cooled and mechanically noisy but it has hydraulic valves that require no maintenance and the primary drive, unlike Harleys is by gears but to me they sounded straight-cut and there was a fair bit of mechanical whine at lower speeds. The gearbox has six speeds though God knows why. I found myself cruising happily at 75 miles per hour in fourth not noticing I had two gears to spare! I had a very pleasant ride to the north shore of Lake Okeechobee:

I had found a Vietnamese restaurant hidden away in a strip mall near the Lake so after taking a  few pictures I took some time out in the air conditioning to drink some soup. The motorcycle as always made me feel rather inadequate with its rumbling exhaust and vast shiny presence, I felt like a rather inadequate flea on a very flamboyant elephant everywhere I went.

The pho wasn't terrible but it was mostly broth and noodles and less meat and vegetables but it did the job and it wasn't  fried  so it worked for me. This was when the day started to go wrong, just as I was feeling all was well with the world. I wasn't missing gear shifts while riding the beast and I had got no speeding tickets despite testing sixth gear to an easily attained 95 mph. The speedometer checked against my phone GPS was dead accurate up to 60 mph, as fast as I was willing to ride one handed with a GPS on my mind.

A call from my wife in tears revealed the news that our Texas rental home in a Dallas suburb was one of 1600 homes trashed after Christmas by a series of killer tornadoes. Our tenants were  safe which was good but the house was wrecked and so far pending an engineer's report will require demolition.

The house in Rowlett was our plan B if we needed a bolt hole somewhere away from floods and earthquakes- ha who thought of tornadoes in Dallas? We had been turned on to a first rate rental company in that city and the rent had been paying for the house for almost twenty years. Dallas isn't our idea of a first rate living with neither mountains nor ocean but it has a strong economy normally decent weather for people who don't mind heat, and it had seemed  a secure bolt hole or an inexpensive base for retirement travels should we have needed it instead of monthly income. Man proposes, God disposes as the saying goes:

Just this summer we had spent a bundle upgrading tired facilities in the home and now all was wrecked:

My wife insisted I continue the ride as she would feel worse were I to cut it short and return to her hotel room where she had planned a day of leisure. Actually it turned out the La Quinta where we were staying was undergoing renovation and the outdoor pool wasn't heated - no swimming. There was no gym, boo hiss and the room itself was more like a dungeon with purple paint, no carpet and a rather strait jacket  layout, narrow and dark. My wife was making do but Cheyenne was peculiarly restless and unhappy in the room. The weekend break was not quite going to plan and plans were going to be wrecked even more if that were possible.

I decided to set the tornado news aside as there was nothing I could do and so instead I amused myself passing trucks in sixth gear rolling the gas on from 55mph. The motorcycle accelerated without a care in the world and cruised at 75mph in top gear at 2700 rpm. Wide sweeping curves were a delight with no wobbles at all,  and the weight of the bike is down low so when I amused myself by pulling a u-turn it was the easiest thing in the world to lock the bars and flop around in a tight circle without putting my foot down. 

Riding alone ( two suggestions to meet for lunch were rejected, it being the holidays by two moto bloggers) I could stop as I pleased to look around. So I did. It was a delightful day, not a tornado or even a rain cloud in sight.

The oil filter was easily accessible ( I check stuff like that when I think about owning a bike) below the oil cooler, and this one was changed I'm guessing at 512 miles. With belt drive and gear primary drive, changing the five quarts of oil every five thousand miles is about the only maintenance chore. I find that  very attractive combined with the low stress nature of the low revving engine.

You can read elsewhere about the history of Indian founded in 1901 in Springfield Massachusetts, as Polaris has done a masterful job since buying the company in 2011 of building heritage motorcycles in Iowa. The Indian name is proudly displayed all over the motorcycle.

 I was having a good time rolling along Highway 98 north full of Vietnamese food, and enjoying the crazy noisy rumbling engine. You've heard people say that "loud pipes save lives" well because I ride with quiet factory mufflers I have never had proof one way or the other. Riding the Chief Vintage I got proof positive they don't- three different ways. I had the classic turn left to cross my path attempt by one driver, another changed lanes suddenly to exit the multi-lane street across my path and on a country highway the pick up didn't see notice or hear me approaching from behind when he took a sudden turn to the left to exit the road as I was planning  a pass. None of the suicide drivers used signals or mirrors or anything decadent like that. Powerful ABS brakes and an alert brain saved my ass each time. 

I love central Florida, the rolling countryside, more pronounced hills to the north and wide open cowboy spaces to the south with smooth roads, a bit too straight frankly offering miles of peaceful touring through varied countryside. Arcadia is known as the Cowboy Capital of Florida but Okeechobee has its own rodeo ground and fleet of citywide pick up trucks.

Crossing the bridge into Highlands County was a reminder of the hilly nature of the countryside west of Orlando. There are lakes woods and rising and dipping ridges of hills in the area, the highest point in the peninsula is almost 350 feet high near Clermont. Not much by Colorado standards but plenty in the Sunshine State where two days after Christmas I was enjoying low humidity, a light cool breeze and 90 degree temperatures which I found perfect.

Hot enough for the cows to seek refreshment in the puddles. And it was after I took this picture that my motorcycle troubles began. The starter wouldn't start. I checked the side stand, I checked the kill button which I normally never touch, I fiddled with the starting procedure, I looked for the radio activated fob to make sure I still had it. But the bastard wouldn't start. I called the rental  company and as though by magic the call got the thing going. Great thought I...

The Chief is a gas guzzler. Granted I was riding a brand new bike that hit 1,000 miles on my three hundred mile jaunt and I'd like to think the Beast would get better mileage with premium with the addition of a few thousand miles...but in town riding hard I got less than 30 miles to the US gallon. The 5.5 US gallon tank started to look empty in the gauge after a hundred miles though probably I could have gone another thirty without panicking. However not knowing the machine and not wanting to act the rental prat with an empty tank I made sure I got gas promptly every 100 miles and added three gallons each time. Gulp!

 Naturally when I stopped for gas and a phone call to check on my still tearful wife the engine refused to start. To start this bike you keep the fob near the bike ( I carried it in my man purse in the saddlebag) and you press the big black button on the tank. That sets ion motion to fuel injection and the starting procedure. When you are ready to set the machine rumbling you press the starter button on the handlebar. However something seemed to have gone wrong with the security feature as the black button lit up red and the starter didn't start. I kicked the side stand, and when it did start the horn started beeping (LOUDLY) as I tried to ride off, making me look like a thief. Great!

Suddenly it all settled down of its own accord and spared me a second embarrassing call to Eaglerider. Off I rode until I stopped on Highway 27 to answer my phone and check my map on my way to the hallowed Yalala Bakery near Clermont. And that was when Eaglerider promised to send a mechanic out with a spare bike as this non starting had left me stranded again. I walked to Bob Evans for soup and a pee and waited for the mechanic and trailer as the sun hit the horizon.

 I put my riding jacket on the side walk and decided to read my Kindle, thank heavens for the iPhone, and wait in patience for deliverance. Idly I tried to re-start the bastard and wouldn't you know it, it fired up promptly, leading me to think the diagnosis of a dead battery in the electronic fob was not correct. If the battery were dead it should stay dead. Yet here it seemed to work at random.  I called the mechanic and cancelled him, put away my stuff in the saddlebags (including some Bob Evans cookies for my long suffering wife) and set off into the gathering darkness. That was when the bugger died again after giving off several loud horn farts as I rode down Highway 27. I coasted into a turn lane in the dark where the bugger fired right up again and I lurched off homewards on old highway 50, what turned out to be a delightfully twisted wooded road toward Orlando. It would have been great had I not been riding with my heart in my mouth waiting for the horn to start beeping madly before cutting the engine off.

It was a wild ride through Winter Garden and Windermere stopping to check my map on my blessed phone hoping the engine wouldn't cut out and I started to have fun, feeling like I was 20 years old again riding the crazily unreliable used motorcycles of my youth, all failed wiring and uncertain return times. There was no drama, just an hour long ride I'd like to replicate in daylight on a motorcycle I trust... and after a few missed turns I was back in the dungeon with my grateful wife who feared for my life on the stop and go Indian, and my dog  who was finally exhausted, sleeping and still hating the sparsely furnished  hotel room and life. It took Cheyenne a night at home before she would talk to me so I think her traveling and exploring days are over. I got the hint from my elderly Lab.

Eaglerider were great. I got the bike started in the morning and therefore naturally got lost on my way to the shop but when I arrived with a full tank (did not turn the bike off at the pumps) they refunded the money for the rental in full, and gave me a credit for a free rental in the next year. There are roads I want to ride around Orlando, next time I think on a Harley Davidson. I enjoy riding different motorcycles on rentals and had I the time and money I would spend a lot more of both around the country with Eaglerider. 

I took this picture of Cheyenne at home, happy on her bed and eager to forget her Orlando vacation. I don't think she can take the car further north than Ft Lauderdale or Ft Myers anymore and at the age of fifteen she is happy to spend her days pottering around the house sleeping and eating and watching my every move. It's taken me a while to accept that she is happiest being left at home but it seems now I am convinced that for the rest of her life our travels will be circumscribed by her needs.

She has been a good dog and I would do no less for her. I'm just glad she's forgiven me for putting her through a  stupid weekend to indulge my riding habit. Oh not to mention my wife and the ghastly hotel room and the tornado and the calls to the insurance company and FEMA and the mortgage people and the rental company and on and on. What a weekend.

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Continuing Weirdness

I rented a motorcycle for a short break from all the work we've been doing.  My wife planned to spend my ride in the hotel relaxing. Things went pear shaped. Details to follow when I get a moment. 

It was a hell of a ride around central Florida on an 800 pound Indian Chief Vintage. That the starter had an issue on a brand new bike is a story for later.