Another Day Another Crash

There was another accident on Highway One last night and as I came over the rise just past the Sugarloaf Lodge there they were a long line of  stop lights. Well, bugger. I called my wife while I was stopped and she did some investigating and there was no road closure but there had been an accident in Big Coppitt six miles up the road. 

It was stop and go for an hour on the Bonneville which got quite hot, as I had to quit turning the engine off and on as the starter motor started to make odd grinding noises - either because the battery was getting low (I hope) or because the heat was getting to it (say it ain't so). By the time we got to the accident scene all that was left in the roadway was some sand and some chalk marks but the traffic was crawling by as though mesmerized by the sight of nothing at all. I got to work thirty minutes late. Thanks looky loos!

It's easy to get vexed but really it wasn't that bad. Traffic never is in the Keys, unless the Highway is completely closed as it was a couple of weeks ago. I get vexed when it's bumper to bumper and stop and go. I actually prefer being in the car for these events as my air cooled motorcycle doesn't like being stuck in stop and go traffic. Neither do I as I can't listen to the radio or turn the air conditioning up.  

Compared to real traffic problems such as I used to enjoy in Silicon Valley around here that hardly ever happens. So I'm spoiled. However traffic gets thicker in the winter every year so one does get a tendency to blame visitors for every slow down between December and May which is unfair. 

I saw these trash cans lined up in scooter parking which must have been a mistake or a coincidence or something. But people do get worked up about parking in Key West and neighbors hate neighbors for reserving spots with trash cans or garden furniture. They get even more worked up than I do about bad driving. Parking spaces become the backdrop for tribal warfare. 

I was cursing up a storm as we inches forward in the traffic but really there's not much to complain about especially lately with mild temperatures, cool breezes and blue skies. And occasional sudden rain as though it were a summer squall which is unusual in winter.

Rusty and I have been getting out and about quite a bit enjoying the mosquito free woods early in the morning. He is living the good life but he deserves it as he is very easy to live with, no fretting no barking no chewing. He sunbathes on the deck, wanders back into the house and says hello as he passes by and takes a nap. Compared to the bundle of nerves he was a year ago he has grown into a  confident happy dog. Which makes me happy.

Overhead Flights

I am allergic to noise. The idea of living within range of the military jets that circle Boca Chica Navy Base endlessly practicing maneuvers is more than I could bear. One of my issues with living in Key West is noise. I have long maintained that Americans aren't trained to live next door to each other with no offsets as tightly as Key West requires. Consequently the streets are littered with signs demanding good behavior ("No Parking!" "Keep Off!" "No Dogs!" "No Trespassing!") and the newspaper's Citizen's Voice column is littered with anonymous complaints about every kind of behavior under the sun.

The airport in Key West is a case in point. There are quite a few flights in and out during the day and the single runway which points more or less East and West means aircraft tend to fly directly over Old Town on their approach. Departures climb into the sky over Stock Island and turn north.

They aren't so bad as they come into land but they are noticeable and their presence overhead reminds you how small this town is.  

The newspaper had a front page story announcing direct flights to Chicago starting this month which will change some people's travel plans no doubt. Key West describes itself as an "international" airport but the time they tried to fly to Nassau in the Bahamas the flights were unsustainable. Chicago is as international as it gets. Along with Tampa Miami Atlanta and I think Orlando. 

I rarely fly to or from Key West preferring to drive to Fort Lauderdale (or Miami if I have to) and thus saving a huge bill and the possibility of missed connections on the way home. There's nothing worse than arriving late in Fort Lauderdale and missing the connection because then you are scrambling to get a rental car to make the unexpected four hour drive home...I prefer to have it planned and there is lots of good airport parking available.

The airport lies on the Southeast corner of Ky West separated by salt ponds and fences. I took this picture from Government Road in Little Hamaca City Park alongside the runway:

 Airports to me are mysterious places though I can see the attraction of flying your own plane to and from the Keys, fast and efficient if you have to go back and forth all the time.

 The airport's general aviation also accommodates other business flights including the seaplanes to the Dry Tortugas, a  flight I want to make before too long.

And there is enough room to leave this old hijacked Cuban airliner rotting in the back lot. A Cuban living in Miami won a rather peculiar lawsuit against the Cuban government and was awarded the plane as damage compensation for the monies ostensibly owed by the embargoed Cuban government. It seemed  like a violation of international law which requires hijacked planes to be returned but the ruling did no one any good and here it sits years later:

Flying has changed the way we live and travel. However I prefer to keep my feet on the ground as much as I can.

And the noise all that flying make still bugs me. It just does. 

Inauguration Blues

I find myself glad I live in Key West the closer we get to the swearing in of the new President. I have tried to give as much benefit of the doubt to Donald Trump as I feel I can.Yet he is turning into a figure that wavers between being extraordinarily inconsiderate of the  tremendous responsibilities of office and being amazingly unaware of what being President involves. Living in the Keys gives me the opportunity to side slip the reality of the kleptocracy to come. My job, my benefits, my employer (the city) which makes a fine living off the extraordinary economy that powers this town, all this means I am on the sidelines when it comes to the wholesale destruction of the safety net that appears to be just over the horizon for those Americans who voted for Trump to restore their quality of life.

I had hoped Trump might have taken his mission to revamp Washington seriously and I wondered if he might hire bright technocrats to run the government, people with knowledge, above party politics, but we seem to find ourselves led by a mixture of rank opportunism and breath taking lack of awareness. I am retreating deeper into the things I like, looking around at his town filled with color and life; vibrant in winter in ways not many North American towns can be. Architecture, plant life and my camera fill kmost of my thoughts. 

I look back over Key West's history of much suffering and hardship since 1828 mixed with good times and ebullience, and I feel as though we are coming off the good times and entering a phase of deep uncertainty. I like to think I can ride political uncertainty out here, surrounded by people who just don't give a damn, who play music and argue passionately about nonsense and who fish, and drink Cuban coffee and speak Spanglish and don't care who knows it. Having a President allegedly pay to have prostitutes pee on a bed once occupied by a political rival may seem profoundly unnerving in most of North America but it's the sort of oddity that I like to think doesn't merit the label "perversion" in Key West. No on was hurt by it and maybe Trump, if he did it, felt better afterwards. 

The deeper we burrow into the madness of a Trump presidency the less certainty there is on our reporting. Fake news! is the watchword if you prefer not to believe something. Everything now is unknowable. Russian blackmail? Ties to the KKK? Murder? Lies? Truth?  Who knows. we seem to be slipping onto a vortex of no certainty at all. I find that more scary than a Trump presidency. Even if one is tied to the other, I no longer know who or what source to trust. 

I think there will be a lot of repairing to do in the years ahead. At some level I am disappointed I am headed toward extinction by way of retirement before the full import of the next few years of social upheaval will be righted. Perhaps this is a good thing as the last presidency of the Baby Boom generation seems likely to pave the way for a Gen X presidency led by a human who understands the technology of the world we live in. No more will we live through presidents unable to control their e-mail...I shall watch from the sidelines.

If Paul Ryan wrecks my retirement I shall soldier on in the most pleasant of towns to work in. I can go on answering 911 for as long as I have to to make up for the fractured promises of a government that needs to eliminate social security to pay for tax cuts. Key West will be compensation enough, Cuban coffee, extraordinary light, strange people, turquoise seas and a camera. 

In a week we will know more. Bumpy rides ahead I fear for those of us not members of the lucky sperm club. Our inheritance may be the burden of failed promises.

Dog Encounters

I was not pleased to be reminded that it's visitor season when I pulled up in the dog walk of the day. Each morning after work I leave home with Rusty and we take a stroll in one of several different places around the Lower Keys where I live. Rusty likes the bushes around the Old Bahia Honda checking iguana holes with his tail wagging like a flag in a stiff breeze.

The sun was having a  hard time breaking through the cloud cover but I had a good time trying to capture the curtain effect of the display. 

 Rusty was enjoying himself in his own way.

Usually the traffic that stops to admire the Old Bahia Honda Bridge pulls into a rough parking area right off the highway. A short hike along the ridge and they can snag their pictures of the crumbling bridge, get back in their cars and leave. The lower parking area, seen below, attracts a few anglers and some few adventurous types who figure the rather obscure access road.  In the summer months it's ours.

It looked like an RV lot and while I accept that some people will look for discreet ways to wild camp while visiting the expensive Keys this seemed rather over the top. A few weeks ago I wandered into the mangroves to find a full bore campsite set up where Rusty likes to hunt. I just try to ignore them and give my dig his opportunity to be a dog. 

Me with the camera and them with their impedimenta, tables chairs, stoves breakfast implements and all the detritus of a well heeled modern North American tourist spreading out in the wilderness. Then one dude appears with two leaping snarling pit bulls on short leashes. "Leash your dog!" he called. Why? I wondered as Rusty came and sat beside me as I called to him. What a well behaved dog the woman I subsequently discovered was his wife said to me as she looked at Rusty, leash-free sitting beside me watching the pit bulls gone wild.  

He came over later and talked about his dogs newly rescued and predictably not trained after a life spent barking hopelessly in a back yard. He was eager to talk so I listened to his story of making enough money to retire by working out an oilfield gizmo that made him a millionaire he said from royalties. His plans encompassed travels in their truck camper across the US with the dogs and his wife and eventually a run south so we talked about dogs and travel. He looked to be about 40, thin and white for he wore no shirt and his tattooed skin was white like alabaster in the Florida sun.

He was planning a visit to a pit bull rescue in New Orleans that I had, oddly enough, heard about. Trapped in a motel room one night I had come across a TV show featuring dog rescues by Villalobos Rescue Center where they help people out of prison rehab through dog love. It was actually cool enough I remembered it. His problem was one of his dogs wasn't adapting to a  decent life on the road and he was afraid he might need to find her a  settled home. He was working hard to repair the rescued dogs and I liked him for that. Me the middle class nerd and he the skinny meth addict who actually wasn't and had his life better organized than I did. Books and covers came to mind.

I wished Rusty could have played with the dogs but he burned off enough energy anyway he took a rawhide and settled on the deck to reflect on his morning's exercise. I did the same. 

It will be interesting I hope when we take to the back roads in a van in a few years. I see glimmers of interesting lives being lived between the RV parks and interstates.

Snowbirds

We have been lucky, cold weather Up North came late this winter and the flocks of people coming south to escape it stayed away, mostly, until now. 

It's no easy thing to explain why temporary residents grate the nerves so much but they do and they do a great job of being annoying. I think about how that happens every year at about this time and the answers never materialize very clearly. The relationship between the working residents and the part timers is mostly defined by the fact that there is no relationship. 

I have a couple of examples that I cam across yesterday. One was my morning walk with Rusty. I went out into the mangroves before seen o'clock when there is no one around, as I like it, and found a viewing spot that I visit about once a week or so. I try to give Rusty as much variety in his walks as I would like myself if I were in his place. Anyway I came to the end of the trail overlooking the water and I found an old garden chair sitting in front of a couple of burned logs in a pile of ashes. I liked to see that not because I am a rebel but because one of my neighbors is. There always used to be a fire ring here but after a snowbird complained to the county this sign went up banning such outrgaeous practices:

That's the sort of behavior that gets my goat. Why do you have to complain? People enjoy their fires while looking at the stars and drinking beer and some killjoy comes along and decides they wouldn't allow this "at home" so banned it will be here too. 

In a similar vein Rusty and I were out walking yesterday afternoon, me looking for opportunity with my camera and him with his nose. I came around a corner and met two snowbirds, she on a bicycle and he on foot carrying a massive stick. I overheard her muttering something about a leash. "I thought he was a wild dog," she said looking at me severely. I wanted to reply, do you suppose they have a wild dog grooming parlor out here you dimwit? but I figure she couldn't recognize the difference between a fearful cowering stray and a confident cheerful dog minding his own business. I did say You're not Up North, relax and enjoy the Keys. Rusty paid them no attention at all and neither did I. I assume they went back to their trailer park and had a big discussion about free spirits and the dangers of the mangroves etc etc. And I keep asking yself why do people want to own a slice of the Keys and then kill what it is they like because it doesn't conform to their corseted view of life?

In Key West it's the same attitude. They come and suddenly the complaints in the paper are all about parking and noise and trash and on and on and on. I've lived here a long time and I am happy to call a couple of Conchs my friends with several more acquaintances. One reason I like living here is because I feel at home. Like any home I'd like to see things improve, recycling, pedestrian zones, bicycle paths and stuff like that and they'd get my vote if anyone asked. But I do not want homogenization or the continuous shoving into exile of the marginalized, the artists and outcasts who are being replaced by these noisome gentrifiers who lack taste good manners or an appreciation of the outré.

I am feeling touchy about this I suppose as a friend has left town for a few years to see what's going on out there as she starts her retirement. She has every intention of returning to her rented home in a few years but it feels as though a connection has been cut. Another friend got back after a  six month all expenses paid Grand Tour of Europe with a man who landed in Key West built a home and plucked her rather arrognatly from her circle of friends and reserved her for himself. I went to inner a couple fo times with him and attended a party at his house and found him to be distant and clearly bored by us little people and I wrote him off. As did everyone else I knew. He exemplifies the qualities that I deplore in people who want to live among Bohemians but demand the free spirits grow up and knuckle down.

The snowbirds get upset saying they bring money to Key West which is undoubtedly true but when your contribution to the party is cash everyone knows it doesn't come without strings and the people I like in Key West aren't the people who doff their caps and are felxible enough to assume a subservient attitude. For my part I wouldn't mind at all if we all had to rely on purely tourist income, and could kiss the part time residents good bye. When we got to plays my wife and I joke that we are the token working class in the audience, the ones without a trust fund given seats to prove how generous the one percent are. Generally we are also the youngest member of the audience!

Also yesterday I was in an incident that reminded me not everyone lives by the code of the temporary resident. I got cut off on Flagler Avenue by a car that sped alongside me froma  traffic light and cut into my lane before turning right. I held up my hands off the handlebars palms up in a "WTF?" gesture and the driver gave me the middle finger back. Screw it I said this person needs aocnversation. He stopped half way up the first block of 12th Street and I pulled alongside. What was hat for I said. You had plenty of room to pull in behind me to make the turn. He stared at me, a young beared man a mirror image of me in my twenties. You're an ashole I said. He looked anooyed and then said I'm sorry it was tupoid but don't call em an asshole. I said, okay you did an asshole thing, I;ve done them too from time to time. Hey bubba he said, I'm sorry. Nor problem I said and we shook hands and went our separate ways.

I stereotyped him because he was driving his Mom's Lincoln MkZ, an old fogey car  and a brand new one too, so I was an asshole and I was already feeling peeved about those people judging me for walking Rusty in the mangroves. Instead he was, as I usually find, a nice young Conch man ready to acknowledge his fault and not make a big deal out of it. Which leaves me hoping that some day soon I can find some sign of tolerance and easy going appreciation for what we have in these islands. And in that spirit I think I have to take my own advice and shut up and enjoy. 

The Edges Of The Cemetery

Its hard to argue with the prohibition on dogs in the cemetery considering how inconsiderate too many dog owners are with their animals, however its a prohibition that does keep me out.

Which is a shame because the cemetery is an extraordinary repository of Key West history and it is filled with some very interesting tombs. They have to be above ground as the water table is quite high and does not permit in-ground burials. Consequently there are all manner of tombs in plain sight much more like a European cemetery than anything found in the US outside Louisiana.  

The cemetery these days finds itself in the middle of the city of Key West though it was not planned that way. In the 19th century a major storm dug up the coffins buried on the south shore of the island (and it was an actual island in those days, not a glorified peninsula as it is today) so the residents felt obliged to move the cemetery to a more secure inland location.

The spot they chose may seem eccentric today but at the time this area of Key West was open grazing land for farming, mostly dairy cows. Truman Avenue a block south of the cemetery was called Division as it separated the city from the open land.

Then as the city grew and expanded it gradually came to surround the cemetery that use to lie on the edge of the city.

It's a struggle to keep the place tidy and organized as the burial marks are well worn. They put up a solid fence around it but people still occasionally climb it at night to wander the cemetery which is a shame because as you can see it is still very much in use and family members come here frequently. LIke dogs, those vandals and thoughtless trespassers looking for a cheap thrill need to be kept out because not all know how to behave.

From 2013 LINK