Summer Thunder

I have no idea where it came from but yesterday I awoke to a giant black thunderhead centered over the Lower Keys. My only thought as I drove Rusty to his morning walk was that we might see an end to the oppressive mugginess that has plagued the Keys leading up to this giant downpour.

I could see the rain coming south but I figured Rusty needed his exercise and I had an umbrella so we might as well go walking while the going was good. Local mosquitoes on Ramrod Key saw me as a last chance to stock up on fresh blood before hunkering down for the weather so I strode and slapped as I went (I keep repellent in the car and forget to apply it 60% of the time before Rusty walks).

It rained a bit, Rusty didn't care and I had the umbrella but we were alone on the streets which was nice. because I'm a misanthrope. It looks like they need more houses on Ramrod Key so they are clearing a lot below and they have a clear lot, after a fashion above: 

The cause of all the trouble, the reason I was walking under an umbrella instead of lying in bed listening to the raindrops on the tin roof:

When I first got Rusty in February he hated being out in the rain, perhaps thanks to his many months on the streets of Homestead. Nowadays he seems to be much more casual about getting wet and he was ready to walk yesterday morning, so walk we did.

It was a good walk in the end as we timed it right and got back to the car before the heavens opened. I had to go meet my wife in Marathon later that morning and Rusty, though reluctant decided he wanted to come too. It was absurdly dark under the cloud.

I find the Overseas Highway very easy to drive in the rain. It's mostly straight, the road markings are very clear, there are lots of reflectors and very little puddling. But put a little rain down on the road and terrified drivers seem to lose their common sense. I leave lots of room and turn up the radio.

As you can see there was quite the cloud cover over the Seven Mile Bridge so it didn't look like it does in the propaganda pictures under cloudless skies. I like summer rain in the Keys, not least because its the hot season and a typical storm brings temperatures down to 75 from 90 degrees so it's never really cold. The rain usually passes quickly and in fact by yesterday evening the sun was back out, my plants were watered and all was well with the world.

Summer thunderstorms bring drama: noise, lightning strikes, strong winds and thrashing palm fronds and its really nice to sit out on the porch and watch the scene. Its okay to be in the car with your dog:

My wife got to work at the height of the storm's fury so she parked her sea bean right up against the back door to minimize exposure. Standing around in wet clothes in a classroom is a pain: 

We had lunch at Keys Fisheries and I tested Rusty tied on his leash. He did well and declined to chew through it - at last! For our road trip next month we have the harness he came with a brand new six foot leash made of metal so he can't chew through it and get lost somewhere in the wilds of Quebec.

We went for a walk and the post storm waters looked so astonishingly serene away from the winds.

I remember living on my sailboat hunkered out of the rain. That was not a great memory as part of the pleasure of living on the water is the open air lifestyle. Not on a day like yesterday.

It's May so the poinciana trees are in bloom and this one in front of my wife's work provides a nice splash of color on which to end this dreary dank tale.

Caroline Street Construction

There was the road work that tore up North Roosevelt Boulevard for what seemed forever but was actually two very long years.  Now there is Caroline Street, outstanding for it's wrecked surface if not for it's occasional flooding and there is no end in sight, supposedly in a  few more months. Rusty and I started our walk on bucolic James Street just around the corner and you'd never know what a mess awaited us on Caroline Street:

The road work will be goof when it's done I'm sure. The Boulevard (North Roosevelt) is brilliant, with no more flooding and traffic lights that respond to traffic and allow a steady flow, except at the triangle where one finds oneself frequently sitting, idling waiting fr a green light. Caroline Street will be smooth, with proper sidewalks and landscaping. There's Rusty nervously inspecting a downed bicycle, poised to leap back at the least sign of danger:

 Lots of stuff but no signs of energetic action:

 Perhaps it was the lunch break?

 Just as it was on the Boulevard, the construction here is hardest on business:

Flagler Station is looking for new tenants, but this location always seems to be turning over new occupants.

The street closure ("Local Traffic Only") seems as random and as indecipherable as the sidewalk closures are too. Lots of barrels and  weedy yellow tape flapping in the breeze like Himalyan prayer flags and about as effective. It's every car pedestrian and cyclist for themselves on Caroline these days.

Toppino is the name of the family of immigrants who got the winning bid to help build the Overseas Railway and they never left after that. Google: "colorful key west toppino family" to get a full review of all sides of this prolific family. Their red and white trucks are on scene at most public works construction.

The day got a bit too hot even for my Carolina Dog. Rusty started ducking into shady doorways and bushes to avoid the heat.

 Time to go home.

Time for the Fort Myers Beach ferry to disgorge clots of tourists who fan out from the ferry terminal like leafcutter ants, lots of maps, lots of excited chatter, lots of getting lost (unlike the ants who make their own freeways).

The car, bowl of water, air conditioning. The construction stayed behind and continues to grind on.

Exhausting Rusty

I am getting withdrawal symptoms from not going downtown much these days but my time is spent working and walking the damned dog and luckily or unluckily Rusty enjoys the country air. Luckily because I simply don't have the energy to haul him into town for a three hour drive/walk. Though there are things I want to look at and photograph so pretty soon this will have to happen. 

There are several construction projects underway that I want to check on and Caroline Street and Truman Waterfront are being transformed and there is progress to photograph, hopefully forward progress.  The City Commission, in its continuing drive to keep Key West firmly in the 20th century is looking at building more parking while making no effort to encourage cycling or walking. And traffic is amazingly bad. Endless traffic jams are by-products of the housing crisis and no one talks about it...

But I am out in the boonies walking my dog ignoring all these things, missing out on Conch Republic Days and all that stuff, I haven't been to a live stage performance in weeks and there were a couple of concerts I wanted to attend at St Paul's. It's a long list of stuff I am aggravated about but Rusty and these beautiful serene mornings in the Lower Keys are not among them.

In the pixellated photo above obviously a telephoto lense would have been good but that is one area where the iPhone does not meet requirements. I wonder if I would haul around a "proper" heavy single lense reflex digital camera for the opportunity to take macro shots or fish eyed shots or telephoto pictures...and I expect I would if I had an easy path to download those pictures to my blog. I took a moment to get a picture of the gray camouflaged mangrove snapper swimming but slippery mud conspired to almost launch me and the phone in the water and Rusty got tired of waiting for me to compose the shot. So I compromised my artistic vision and took a crap picture then hurried after my rapidly disappearing dog.

Rusty is a rapid mover, he trots at speed kicking his hind legs out to the side as he skips along far ahead of me and he rarely cooperates in having his portrait taken so a telephoto would be useful for him too.

The thing is it hasn't been as hot lately as you might expect, there is a cool breeze in the mornings to keep the heat and humidity at bay. My young colleagues at work look at me rather strangely when I point this out but they are thirty year old weaklings and they don't take their dogs for extended morning walks, they go to bed after night shift.

The BBC has been reporting that the past five months have broken heat records for the planet so it seems inevitable change is on the way. They keep talking about 2050 and 2060 being thresholds for untold human misery. I figure I'll be lucky to alive in 2037 when I will b 80 so I'm hoping I will be dead before catastrophe strikes. It's a rather feeble act of self defense in the face of appalling news but like most people climate change leaves me wondering what precisely to do.

Summer is sweeping across the northern hemisphere and I got a taste of it in Raleigh last week, that best time of year when everything is a brilliant green and the air is still fresh and snow is forgotten. Down here it's hot enough Rusty is plopping himself in water courses to cool off, but he does run a lot to raise his body temperature. Spot him if you can:

He is accepting his inevitable baths with a lot more grace too, these days and he knows when he gets covered in mud or seaweed or salt water his going to meet  freshwater and soap at home. Early on he used to run and hide like it was  a punishment, nowadays he goes to his couch and expects to get a chicken strip for heroic behavior in the face of the hose.

Such a bucolic life, you'd be astonished to hear all the drama I hear at  night on 911- a different world.

Ramrod Yacht Club

What an odd sign to see at the Ramrod Pool. Some great effort went into painting this sign creating a mythical yacht  club...that doesn't negotiate with terr...tourists.  I let Rusty do his thing around the edges of the pool, sniffing here and there as he went, but the Yacht Club was closed.

I quite like the pool even though sitting around drinking isn't my idea of fun necessarily, I find the people who come out here to drink and talk (loudly) are always very pleasant. Ramrod Pool attracts cars who line up after work and their occupants talk about this and that. Everyone I've ever met here has been entirely jovial and pleasant. Which to my way of thinking is a sound basis for a club.

The morning as still and flat and I rattled off a few pictures, just because I could.

A  year or two back some visitor filed complaints about people lighting a fire in a large fire ring here in the middle of the seawater drenched mangroves, and the county promptly sent out a task force to destroy the fire ring and put up signs forbidding any such fun. I remember feelings were running rather high against snowbirds at the time, and it's interference like this that gets part time people a bad name.

The fire was no kind of danger, it gave the spot a campfire feel (I liked to warm myself by the embers in the morning on cool winter days) but some body body got it banned.

Monroe County is now reviewing plans for one more gated community for the Lower Keys, an "upscale development" its backers call it, slated for the Dolphin Marina that currently serves swanky Little Palm Island. The idea is to close the marina and public launch ramp, give  a few crumbs of comfort in the form of some few cottages as low income housing "in perpetuity" (ie: until everyone's forgotten the deal) and in exchange we get more people who think they know exactly what will be good for the Keys on first acquaintance, like NO fire rings.

For now we have this lovely, undeveloped park, limestone salt water and mangroves. Rusty needs nothing more...

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An Afternoon In Raleigh

I completed my Shark Tank audition by noon and found myself in an unknown city's downtown on a muggy overcast Friday afternoon. I checked my invaluable phone and I found an old time diner which looked like my kind of place. I did manage to get lost once following the arrows on the screen, but that's nothing for this world girdling globe trotter. I sorted it out. 

It was dark and cool inside and I took a spot at the counter. My neighbor had a plate of spaghetti bolognese straight out of a 1950s cookbook, white pasta with a sauce more closely resembling chili, so I figured simple and straightforward was the way  to go. So I ordered friend trout "fresh from the ocean" which I pondered for a bit. Maybe they brought trout from the sea to this inland location. Fish on one side, fried eggplant on the other, mac and cheese in between for nine bucks. 

I was alone on this trip so I was a devil and had blueberry cobbler with ice cream which went with the decor and ambiance of this place. I expected Sam Spade to climb out of one of the booths behind me, or hear a debate between Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

I sometimes hear from people tat they don't need a smartphone and i guess  they don't if they don't leave home. I find mine invaluable and it has changed my life for the better. I love how I can look for whatever I need with a  click of the map icon.  Need lunch? Click, study the choices and get directions. Easy. I could read a book during lunch, or check the front page of the Citizen, find out the history of the Mecca...The short version being a couple of Greek immigrants opened the place in 1930 and it has flourished ever since.

 If I have this right the lady staffing the old fashioned till and helping out at the counter is the wife of the eldest son of the founders and her name would be Floye. I can't begin to imagine her dedication and though she scared me a bit she was actually really cheerful and charming, concerned mostly by the fact the day was Friday 13th. I'd have gone back to the Mecca for dinner, except I had a plane to catch.

With the phone in hand I got myself to the North Carolina Museum of Art which is a rather fabulous place free to all and worth far more than the hour I dedicated to it. I got to see pictures by Damian Stamer shown here in front of one the exhibits (from the Internet, he wasn't actually there):

I wanted to see  more of his pictures of distressed  old buildings but the exhibit had more abstracts than I wanted to see. Also on display was the work of Burk Uzzle a noted North Carolina photographer famous for his picture of a couple under a blanket at Woodstock:

But whose work I appreciated through this picture on display> I stared at it for a very long time, Jesus and a Camo Truck:

 Making pictures of ordinary America they said, a theme that appeals to me, I guess it's what I try to do on this page. So after digesting that lot (and lunch) I decided I had time enough for a short walk before catching the plane. Walking in the Umstead Park halfway to the airport made me realize how badly I have cabin fever in the Keys.

I didn't have long, perhaps half an hour, but I made the most of it under a canopy of startling green leaves.

I wished Rusty were here but he will be Up North soon enough when we take off in the car for three weeks, so I enjoyed my solitude.

It wasn't particularly cold, rather warmer perhaps than I expected and still muggy despite the sunshine that had burned off the threat of thunder and rain from dark clouds overhead.

 Local wildlife:

I followed the copious blue markers  through the woods though there was never any doubt about the location of the well worn trail through the trees:

I met a party of militaristic characters in black and camouflage clothing and was passed by a couple of joggers.

 I got one quick black and white picture before the airport beckoned and the joke was that the flight, I discovered on arrival was an hour late.

Wandering the vast hall on the way to finding a beer I spotted a couple of oddities. One was a guidebook to Cuba which was a first and on the wall in back an advertisement for Key West author Judy Blume, who is apparently much enjoyed by young people who know more of her than I do as I grew up in a different childhood world.

The flight is less than two hours but I sympathized with the young person in the seat in front who seemed to be trying to make a break for it, luckily without success.

A three hour drive through the dark and a small brown dog was waiting up to greet me with much enthusiasm. Our first separation was over 36 hours after it started.

PS I got through North Carolina without falling afoul of House Bill 2 that requires people to be gender identified before pissing or something like that. I used the family toilet at the museum and snuck into the men's loo at the airport when no one was watching. Risque  stuff.

I hope the Feds bring common sense to these poor deluded fools.