Still Cold

This  cold snap needs to go away.  The shrimp boats as of yesterday were still parked on the horizon under the protection of the island of Key West, whipped by winds but facing small waves. When the shrimpers gather its always a sign of a strong north wind on the way.

I know 58 degrees (14 Canadian) seems paltry compared to what Minnesotans and Mainers face but they are prepared. We have three blankets, one fleece each two wool caps and extra socks. And we are used to 80 degrees. People from Up North bitch all the time when they venture here in the summer in temperatures I find tolerable and they expect me to empathize...

 Check out the clothing on the mob scrambling for hot coffee at Sandy's on White Street:

Wind proofing is the  trick. In the sun outside of the breeze it's quite comfortable but my house is on stilts and that doesn't help. I remember commentators in New Orleans after Katrina bridled at the suggestion the 9th Ward rebuild on stilts to avoid future floods. They said stilt houses looked like cocktail olives on toothpicks. Maybe so but they would have been dry...nonetheless my olive on a  stick gets wind shipped from all sides and underneath. It's an elevated ice box.

I saw the cruise ship in town yesterday, a huge hulk looming over the little chain stores at the end of Duval Street. More to the point check out the heavy winter clothing on the passersby.  Arctic blasts not anticipated by vacationing cruise ship travelers, I'm sure. Welcome to the tropics where we spend winter bundled up and summers getting battered by hurricanes. 

 Frankly I don't know how people cope without electricity Up North when ice storms strike. It's miserable sweating in the summer without electricity but being without electricity in a winter storms seems positively dangerous to me. I guess it's all in how you want Mother Nature to beat you up.

Supposedly we are supposed to be back in the eighties this week. Can't come soon enough for me.

Breaking Down

I went home early last night. We are short staffed at work so I went in feeling under the weather and stayed long enough to give my colleagues breaks and help them through the early part of the night, these days the busiest part of the twelve hour shift. At midnight I left the office aching all over and exhausted only to find my car was locked tight and the door code - a brilliant Ford innovation - wasn't working. I had left the key in the ignition and the ignition wa son flattening the battery till there was zero energy left in the thing. Not even the door lock would work. Like so many people I felt like crying to 911 but I manned up and called a wrecker. My wife was volunteering to bring me a key, a 30 minute drive in sub arctic  conditions, windy and 55F, but I heroically declined.

Bubba showed up laughing at me. He and I talk on the phone most nights when he tows vehicles blocking private property, as the police department is required to check them to make sure they aren't reported stolen. This was the first time we met face to face. He laughed like a drain at my predicament. Then he released me and started my car in less than 30 minutes from phone call to me driving out of the police station. What a tool I felt! Clearly not myself with this damned cold...

In good news when I left home around ten o'clock to show Rusty a good time the last of the garbage, what used to be hurricane debris was being picked up in my neighborhood and the curb was being swept clean. It actually felt really good. An hour later I was driving back and marveling at how nice a street looks without trash everywhere. I had forgotten. Then I slept the rest of the day. Tonight I took the ignition key up to work with me to avoid mishaps. 

Cold And Windy

It's a bugger when you have a head cold. The difficulty sleeping, the constant coughing, the knowledge that it WILL go away, the nagging seeping cold around our tropical house...Rusty begged hard enough for a walk this morning I staggered off to some open space and let him romp while I sat out of the wind and wished I was in the car, a hundred yards away with its powerful heater and entirely out of reach. Rusty likes me to participate even if only passively.

Back home the forecast suggested we might hit sixty degrees but the cold north wind convinced us to get our pitiful supply of blankets sorted out. I made endless tea and napped exhausted from my "walk" my wife who is a stalwart when it comes to pain and coughing and horrid stuff like that hacked away on her end of the couch and I sneezed on mine. Rusty was not amused.

Outside the rain had gone for good and the cold front settled in for a mixture of dark gray clouds scudding overhead and patches of blue sky and a little heat-free sunshine. Rusty sat on the deck and pottered in from time to time through his dog door to make sure we were stll alive and ready to play with him for a moment. 

What a waste of a day. I am not some puritan driven to be productive all the time but I do like to find some pleasure in some part of each day. I know its not minus 20 degrees and there is no snow or frozen water pipes or whatever but it feels cold to someone who only wears socks to work or to exercise. The air is humid and frigid and my supply of winter clothing is pathetic. So there. Don't get used to 80 degree temperatures, all enveloping humidity and cool breezes because one day you are sure to be caught out. 

Off Line

I don’t do well when I’m ill. I like to be coddled and fussed over so at least on that front my wife does me proud and enjoys making soups and mixing flu powders while pulling blankets up around my neck.  My dog does his best but he does get impatient when walks become short or scarce.  All this because there's a bug circulating around the Lower Keys and it is prostrating people by turn.  In my kind of desk work these things circulate easily. Despite our best endeavors with wipes and hand washing.  I thought I had got away with it and then the cold weather closed in and for some reason cold weather weakens my resistance. So here I am snuffling housebound and watching wind and rain sweep the last frost free corner of North America.

Nasty weather doesn’t last around here, by next week we will be back in the 80s by day and above 70 by night. For now I am shaking off my cold hopefully in another twenty four hours when I will be able to get out and see what’s going on. It’s always fun to see people bundled up and white caps on the waves when winter storms blow through.  

For now we are laid up snuffling and feeling sorry for ourselves.   Pathetic. 

Wheels in Key West

The weather has been absolutely perfect lately with the prospect of more to come. I know most of the country is freezing but the Lower Keys are bright and crisp and sunny, cool at night and breezy without a trace of humidity. It's been warm enough there have even been a few mosquitoes out enjoying sunny afternoons among the mangroves in the back country. So Rusty and I took a walk downtown and I was reminded of what a two wheeled culture we enjoy in this end of the Keys.

I have seen people riding and using their phones, cyclists and moped riders so when I saw a passenger surfing the web on Southard Street I didn't think much of it. However now that winter residents are filling the streets it has become that much more hazardous to ride two wheels. Just last night between Searstown and the Police Station, a couple of miles on the main thoroughfare I was cut off three times by distracted pushy drivers. I don't think they are used to seeing people riding scooters as daily transport, because obviously they want Key West to more closely resemble the metropolis they don't want to spend winter in.

I saw this Vespa (below) on the sidewalk near Five Brothers and I wanted to like it but I am a convert to modern automatic Vespas for speed comfort and reliability.  In the world of Vespa nerds this black beauty is what they call a  "Viet Bodge" because there is a huge market in refurbished scooters from Vietnam. Early efforts relied on lots of chrome, bondo and paint to cover rust and dents and got them a terrible reputation. These days Vespa purists still hate them but I think that if they are used as around town gentle rides they may do well enough. You can tell a Viet Bodge by the twin seats, the spare wheel on the back, the not-original glove box behind the leg shield and the chrome rails everywhere. Add to that the extra thick carpet and the non stock exhaust and white wall tires and there you have it. Caveat emptor.

These three wheel things are renting well too, for thin people afraid to ride two wheels. I would feel large and silly in one but there you are. I ride a Vespa so I look silly on two wheels.

Lots of people ride  bicycles in Key West and it makes sense in a town with no hills above 16 feet and no distances longer than four miles or six Canadian miles, you'd think a bicycle would be ideal. However I am not a fan of cycling in Key West, I'd rather walk or ride my Vespa. Here's why: the streets are narrow and while you are allowed to ride on the  sidewalks you face stiff competition from pedestrians who have right of way. 

Cars tend to be unforgiving and there is constant sniping between cars and bicycles. Cyclists only tend to follow rules of the road when they are in their favor, like demanding their three feet of space from passing cars but then ignoring stop signs and traffic lights...I don't much care one way or the other but riding a bike seems like a very stressful way to travel these marrow streets in a country where European style urban driving is not practiced. American drivers demand vast acres of space and long distances between cars and no bicycles cluttering up their line of sight...

But even here we have a few Euro drivers. This 300 cc Vespa has a French tag and is always parked on Fleming at Duval. You'd think at some point they'd choose to join the rest of us and pay a modest Florida tax fee to use Florida roads...

Not so far. 

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

I have done this before and it feels like it is time once again to enjoy some great travel writing. Eric Newby died in 2006  after a life spent traveling and writing. In 1956  he published The Last Grain Race an account of his experience sailing a four masted barque to Australia from England and back. His most popular book A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush made his reputation. It is from that book that the Observer newspaper made available this excerpt which is the final paragraphs of the final chapter from one of the funniest travel books published. 

We came to cornfields and a village called Arayu, full of savage dogs and surly-looking Tajiks and mud houses like those of Egyptian fellahin. This patch of cultivation was succeeded by a mighty red-cliffed gorge where there were caves in which we sheltered from the midday sun. But not for long. The path to Parian and Shahnaiz led up out of it, high over the mountain. At the watershed we turned still more to the north, going downhill again now and into a final narrow valley where the wind threw the spray from a river in our faces. It was spray from the Parian, the Upper Panjshir. We had made it ...

'Look,' said Hugh, 'it must be Thesiger.'

Coming towards us out of the great gorge where the river thundered was a small caravan like our own. He named an English explorer, a remarkable throwback to the Victorian era, a fluent speaker of Arabic, a very brave man, who has twice crossed the Empty Quarter and, apart from a few weeks every year, has passed his entire life among primitive peoples.

We had been on the march for a month. We were all rather jaded; the horses were galled because the drivers were careless of them, and their ribs stood out because they had been in places only fit for mules and forded innumerable torrents filled with slippery rocks as big as footballs; the drivers had run out of tobacco and were pining for their wives; there was no more sugar to put in the tea, no more jam, no more cigarettes and I was reading The Hound of the Baskervilles for the third time; all of us suffered from persistent dysentery. The ecstatic sensations we had experienced at a higher altitude were beginning to wear off. It was not a particularly gay party.

Thesiger's caravan was abreast of us now, his horses lurching to a standstill on the execrable track. They were deep-loaded with great wooden presses, marked 'British Museum', and black tin trunks. The party consisted of two villainous-looking tribesmen dressed like royal mourners in long overcoats reaching to the ankles; a shivering Tajik cook, to whom some strange mutation had given bright red hair, unsuitably dressed for central Asia in crippling pointed brown shoes and natty socks supported by suspenders, but no trousers; the interpreter, a gloomy-looking middle-class Afghan in a coma of fatigue, wearing dark glasses, a double-breasted lounge suit and an American hat with stitching all over it; and Thesiger himself, a great, long-striding crag of a man, with an outcrop for a nose and bushy eyebrows, 45 years old and as hard as nails, in an old tweed jacket, a pair of thin grey cotton trousers, rope-soled Persian slippers and a woollen cap comforter. 'Turn round,' he said, 'you'll stay the night with us. We're going to kill some chickens.'

We tried to explain that we had to get to Kabul, that we wanted our mail, but our men, who professed to understand no English but were reluctant to pass through the gorges at night, had already turned the horses and were making for the collection of miserable hovels that was the nearest village. Soon we were sitting on a carpet under some mulberry trees, surrounded by the entire population, with all Thesiger's belongings piled up behind us. 'Can't speak a word of the language,' he said cheerfully. 'Know a lot of the Koran by heart but not a word of Persian. Still, it's not really necessary. Here, you,' he shouted at the cook, who had only entered his service the day before and had never seen another Englishman. 'Make some green tea and a lot of chicken and rice - three chickens.'

'No good bothering the interpreter,' he went on, 'the poor fellow's got a sty, that's why we only did 17 miles today.'

Soon the cook was back, semaphoring desperately. 'Speak up, can't understand a thing. You want sugar? Why don't you say so?' he produced a bunch of keys, like a housekeeper in some stately home ...

'That cook's going to die,' said Thesiger; 'hasn't got a coat and look at his feet. We're 9,000 feet if we're an inch here. How high's the Chamar Pass?' We told him 16,000 feet. 'Get yourself a coat and boots, do you hear?' he shouted in the direction of the camp fire.

After two hours the chickens arrived; they were like elastic, only the rice and gravy were delicious....

'England's going to pot,' said Thesiger, as Hugh and I lay smoking the interpreter's king-size cigarettes, the first for a fortnight. 'Look at this shirt, I've only had it three years, now it's splitting. Same with tailors; Gull and Croke made me a pair of whipcord trousers to go to the Atlas Mountains. Sixteen guineas - wore a hole in them in a fortnight. Bought half a dozen shotguns to give to my headmen, well-known make, 20 guineas apiece, absolute rubbish.'

He began to tell me about his Arabs. 'I give them powders for worms and that sort of thing.' I asked him about surgery. 'I take off fingers and there's a lot of surgery to be done. They're frightened of their own doctors because they're not clean.'

'Do you do it? Cutting off fingers?'

'Hundreds of them,' he said dreamily, for it was very late. 'Lord yes. Why, the other day I took out an eye. I enjoyed that. Let's turn in.'

The ground was like iron with sharp rocks sticking up out of it. We started to blow up our air-beds. 'God, you must be a couple of pansies,' said Thesiger.

· Extracted from A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (Picador), reprinted by permission of HarperCollins. To order a copy for £7.99 with free UK p&p go to observer.co.uk/bookshop