On The Road, In The Air

In flight somewhere over Northern Canada five miles up in the sky, you have to wonder what an extraordinary world some of us are privileged to occupy.  Living in the Keys seems like fortune enough,  driving the Overseas Highway: 

And then of course in a Saturday afternoon cold reality strikes as traffic backs up remorselessly in Islamorada. After we drove through to Miami a major wreck closed the 18 mile stretch to Homestead. We just saw slow speeds as we took the only road out:

We took Card Sound Road passing for the last time through the manual toll collection booth. By the time we return in early August the toll takers will be gone and an automated system should be in place, taking Sunpass tolls, by February. 

We didn't have long to wait. A hamburger and a moment to pause and they were boarding Turkish Airlines flight 78 to Istanbul. Squished over heated and upright for 11 hours across the Atlantic. 

We ate dinner, I surfed the web and posted a picture to my Instagram account. This blog post may be a little ambitious for the feeble in-flight internet service. I chose pasta for dinner over chicken. It did the job in unspectacular fashion. 

And so, to bed. Trying not to think about Rusty safe and cared for among kindly strangers who I trust. Meanwhile this little tube flies me fast away at 600 miles per hour. 

Away For A While

It has been three years since I last went to Europe and a family visit is in order.

 The plan is to board a plane to Istanbul this evening and wake up over the Mediterranean before landing in Turkey in time for dinner.

 Two days later we arrive in Rome and spend some time with my family and friends.

 At the beginning of August we will undertake the same trek in reverse. I trust the memories will be good; they usually are.

 I will be leaving behind people and places of value. The blog I will take with me along with my Instagram account as AT&T has a rather generous simple plan for world wide telephone use. Ten dollars a day for the same no limit use as I enjoy at home. 

Photos of places other than the Keys will appear as I process them. 

Rusty unfortunately will have no idea I will be back to embrace him August 2nd. He will be in reliable hands until then and I shall miss him horribly.

My little man. The sacrifice of being away from him better be worth it.

Truman Waterfront

The new 33 acre park is sort of taking shape slowly at Truman Waterfront. The new entrance to Fort Zachary Taylor state park is up and running as seen below. The footbridge above connects the Navy Base with the Navy's property at the Navy docks  known as "The Outer Mole" on the other side of the huge wide road leading to the park.

The thing that struck me about this new park is how much of it will be paved over. Showing these pictures to friends they said it doesn't look like Key West, "...more like Orlando." And it's hard to disagree. Check out the vast roundabout below:

I think traffic circles are a great way to keep traffic moving instead of lights or stop signs but that one is a waste of space. The amphitheater which is a huge bone of contention in the city is getting built, much closer to the waterfront thank I realized. There is much concern over parking, traffic and noise levels from a concert venue all the way out to the waterfront:

 The pavement theme continues, with one pedestrian sidewalk, two broad bike paths and a huge swath of travel lane for cars. It's a Roman road:

The old entrance to the park sits forlorn and awaiting final removal. What happens to this land I'm not sure but at the moment it's outside the Navy fence.

 The old Navy warehouse building is still there but as you can see there is plenty of paving going on.

 Paving everywhere.

I am going on vacation next week until August so I will look forward to see what this looks like when I get back from my European tour. Posts here will change a  bit in content and regularity and  I will also be putting up pictures on my Instagram account, if Turkey and Italy are of interest. Rusty stays with friends and I shall miss him horribly, right now I am trying not to feel guilty leaving him behind. Till then enjoy your summer!

Utility Key West

Standing on the dock at what used to be known as the Westin resort (nee Hilton) the hand held camera managed a picture that more resembled a painting than what I seek,  a representation of what I see, which is to say a form of reality. There was a dreamy quality in the shaded tones of yellow against the black of night of the Margaritaville Resort and boat basin:

I used to work on the waterfront here, riding my scooter across town from Sunset Marina where I lived on my boat. When this place was the Hilton the scooter parking was a free for all though now it is all locked up and severely restricted:

 It was hot work running a sailboat any day the tourists wanted to go for a sail and some days there was no wind and much sweat, which came and went like the tips did as well. When I walk Key West these days I see scabby paint and dusty shop windows and gardens flourishing amid the mold and neglect of a town that seems to have no respect for the money the visitors bring. This sort of lack of attention to detail seems to me to show no respect to the people who bring the money:

 I have perhaps too much time on my hands walking Rusty and thinking. Before people wake up the air is cool and the streets are empty and I like it that way. I have long since wondered too about bus routes. Sometimes people call the police trying to figure out where they can catch a bus out of town. I have to confess the schedule is complicated if you don't know the places mentioned, but the route is incomprehensible. None of the buses in town or shuttling up the Keys seems to travel Key West in any logical form whatsoever. You need to be a chess master to figure bus routes out. I wonder why?

I posted this one on Instagram, not just for the mural but for the sentiment. Anyone who begs for used clothes is some form of hero. In my world they are but in the world of work they are barely noticed, the people who make the machines go. 

There has been so much noise about Lyft and Uber being allowed into Key West by a  new state law, that I fear  disappointment may follow in it's wake. I don't think the people who created Lyft and Uber much care about employment law but there again cab companies don't seem to do much better. True they provide the cars but drivers have to earn more than hundred bucks just to pay for the car plus fuel so the ride share model seems pretty similar. Its not like Key West cab drivers are union hires with benefits losing out to weird millennial style part time workers using their own cars. I find it hard to work up any enthusiasm for the Uber versus cab wars one way or the other.

I find that Duval releases a sense of reassurance after hours, the lighted windows the serene empty sidewalks tell me things will keep on keeping on. During the day the hustle and the crowds tend to overwhelm but while Rusty checks his things out I have time at this hour, before six in the morning, to see Duval not stressed.

 The Key West sticks around, the one that defies the tourist brochures, the one that annoys and irritates and yet that never quite goes away, the one that lives on the streets:

The workaday world of Key West, at night.

Duval Street At Night

Taken during the witching hour between four and five in the morning.

 That time when bars have to be closed and everyone has gone home.

Almost everyone: 

A lot of people have been waiting impatiently for the new state law to take effect, requiring municipalities to allow ride sharing services to operate.

 I wonder how Lyft and Uber will do in Key West, and if the cab companies will flourish.

 Key West will survive this new flourish of a  convenience economy.

The Clinton Square market has survived more than a life time's worth of change and it's still here. I shall have to try to do the same, welcome the changes...

July 4th Corsican Style

I visited Corsica about a decade ago and spent a delightful week riding a motorcycle on narrow winding mountain roads and along some of the prettiest yellow sand beaches you have seen. But there is of course a ton of history on this island 50 miles wide and a hundred miles long which rises to a jagged peak 9,000 feet up. Corsica has been described as a continent contained in an island. In the 1970s it was known for its violent radical Corsican independence movement which represented and still to some degree represents the minority desire for independence from France.

 

from the Web

The island has had to deal with an influx of people from France who have overwhelmed the native Italian speaking Corsicans in a similar way to that invasion of wealth that is stressing the lifestyle in Key West. Independence advocates are a minority even among native Corsicans though they do mess with road sings and from time to time blow up a bomb here and there. They set off a bomb at a post office while I was there and injured a child mailing a postcard.   which is an act of stupidity not worthy of Corsica's historic struggle for political independence.

from the Web

All of this by way of introduction to the Father of the Nation, Pasquale Paoli a remarkable politican born on the island and whose career influenced the founding of the United States in ways most people have never heard of, and why should they? Paoli was born in Morosaglia, a tony village in the mountains and grew up to be one of the mot celebrated rebel leaders in exile of the 18th century. He was actually very respectable and a darling of the English speaking world.

At the tender age of thirty in 1755 Paoli found himself head of state of a new republic, having kicked out the Genoese occupiers from all but a couple of coastal forts. He sat down and wrote a set of rules for his new nation. Much is made of his universal suffrage, everyone over 25 got the vote, including women. The independent Corsicans beat off the overlords from Genoa who gave up and sold their island to France who took two expeditions to finally destroy Pasquali's Republic in 1869. But his ideas lived on and were adopted by the revolutionaries in the United States a few years later. Count him a father of the founding fathers. 

From the Web

Which brings us to the nub: I am not alone in noticing this extraordinary connection. After years of never being able to find any confirmation of my crazy idea, the US- Corsica connection, I found a page that agrees with me. Check it out HERE LINK.

 Of the French defeat of Paoli and his army in 1769, Voltaire wrote:

The main weapon of the Corsicans was their courage. This courage was so great that in one of those battles, at a river called Golo, they made a rampart of their dead to have time to reload behind them before making a necessary retreat; their wounded were mingled among the dead in order to strengthen the rampart. Such actions one only sees among free peoples.

Paoli was an inspiration for the patriots’ group, Sons of Liberty. One of the founding Sons of Liberty members, Ebenezer McIntosh, named his son after the Corsican leader, calling the lad Paschal Paoli McIntosh. Furthermore:

In 1768, the editor of the New York Journal described Paoli as “the greatest man on earth“.

The Sons of Liberty started as an underground group championing ‘no taxation without representation’, which became their well known motto. All of the 13 colonies had a Sons of Liberty chapter.

Everything is connected and it all goes back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a revolutionary that these days would be rated far too radical for consideration. Who would have thought?