Anthony Bourdain, An Appreciation

Part of the fascination of Anthony Bourdain was watching him eat appalling foods with a big grin, knowing he was grossing you, small minded America, out. He was prone to remarking he had the best job in the world but watching him eat stuff I could barely look at left me knowing his was a job I couldn't possibly do.

Then there is the filming. Even on those days when he is eating recognizable food in a familiar setting one has to remember his was not an ordinary journey made by a private citizen. No, everything he did was filmed in a huge production. Who would like to eat like this?

I was quite surprised to see how many people I knew enjoyed watching his documentaries on travel and eating. Looking further afield it became apparent that a giant love fest was underway for the 61 year old man who had overcome so much to achieve fame and fortune and throw it all away subsequently at the end of a rope. And he left an old and dear friend to find his gruesomely abused body. That is unimaginable to me: walking into a hotel room to find your good old buddy hanged by the neck and dead. Awful.

Richard Cory

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Bourdain's public persona, the only one we knew, was that of a man who loved eating and living and doing it all to excess. And by choosing to kill himself he negated all that bonhomie, that lust for life. Never mind what he has done to his family his friends and people who knew him properly, as a human not as a celebrity or TV figurine, like most of us. They tell us we can't know what's really going on and that he suffered from depression of which he spoke. A British newspaper reported his girlfriend was seen in public with another man, hinting at a reason. To me none of that matters. What matters is he presented a truer  picture of life and travel on TV than I have seen. And now he has blown it all away. I am annoyed and feel let down as impertinent and as irrational as that may be.

With his  sudden and very private act of self immolation real life intrudes, a not subtle reminder than on TV everything is fake. What Bourdain was protesting by his death only his shade knows. Bourdain's rejection of life pushes me to seek out travel experiences with more urgency. I am not (yet) prey to depression as many seem to be so I have no plans to off myself but I know with absolute clarity my time is limited and there is more to see and more life to be felt and endured and sometimes enjoyed. That Bourdain lost sight of that in repudiation of his successful TV character is a shame and a loss and annoying but I am still alive and able to dream and plan and hope. I'm sorry he lost his mojo and now I shall try not to let his death  destroy my belief in the cultivated image he created. I like that TV version of Anthony Bourdain, the one who overcame addiction who loved life and ate crap I would never touch. I have that Bourdain alive and well and cheerful tucked away in my streaming service. The one who gave up and died is for someone else to mourn. I want and shall treasure the one I saw alive on TV. The one who taught me a better way to see when I travel.

Out Of Town

Rusty and I will be away for a week Up North, walking and seeing friends.

The blog will meander a bit  before  it resumes  in proper daily format next weekend after my break.
Tomorrow: my view of Anthony Bourdain.

Highway One

I try not to forget how dramatic my commute is, just a couple of feet above the ocean, but from time to time I do wish people could pick up the pace. Even now in June when the winter slow pokes are long gone we find ourselves trundling along ten or more miles an hour under the limit/ It's tough when you are living to a schedule but you can see why visitors tend to look around and slow down.

I got this next image from the Internet because it reminded me distracted drivers are also well in evidence on the Overseas Highway and where in the past I thought weaving meant drunk nowadays it could but it could also mean reading the phone. So when I spotted a couple of these motorcycle killers I decided yesterday was he day to slow own and pull myself and my Suzuki aside from the flow.

There are things you will see on your commute, things that flash by, work day after work day and you never take the time to stop and investigate, so after one too many slow pokes, one too many near misses from a distracted driver I decided yesterday, returning home from my exercise class, I would do just that: investigate. This marker has caught my attention over the years and it turns out it was an NFL player riding his bicycle in 2014 who was struck and killed instantly by an apparently distracted driver who claimed he didn't notice he'd killed a man:

From the Miami Herald Florida Keys Bureau:

A judge Wednesday spared from prison the 89-year-old Sugarloaf Key man who struck and killed former NFL player Christopher Dyko on U.S. 1 in 2014 and then drove away.

Domingo Javier Veloso, 89, wasn’t charged with striking the bicyclist but for leaving the scene of a fatal crash after his car entered the bike lane near mile marker 16 on Dec. 28, 2014.

“If he hadn’t have left the scene, there would have been no issues,” said Assistant State Attorney Christine Poist, who worked the case with prosecutor Jon Byrne.

Judge Wayne Miller no Wednesday sentenced Veloso to one year of house arrest followed by nine years of probation, a $5,000 fine plus the cost of the investigation by State Attorney Catherine Vogel’s office and the Florida Highway Patrol.

Veloso returned about 2.5 hours later with his wife, telling police he was the driver and that he had no idea he had struck a person.

Prosecutors didn’t ask for the 4-year mandatory prison sentence that goes with Veloso’s crime to but wanted some county jail time for the elderly man.

Miller handed Veloso a 364-day jail sentence but suspended it.

Veloso’s driver’s license, which was medically revoked by the state after the fatality, was also suspended for 10 years by the judge.

Dyko, 48, of Bremerton, Wash., who played with the Chicago Bears briefly in the 1980s after a standout career as an offensive tackle for Washington State University, was killed instantly, police said.

His family sent letters to the court but didn’t make the long trip to the Key West courthouse for Wednesday’s hearing.

Dyko was in the Keys to ride with a bicycle tour group and was headed back to meet up with some of them when he was struck, reports stated.

A little  further along I pulled aside again, this time at the Sugarloaf Lodge. There was a note on Facebook not so long ago about the return of the sign after Hurricane Irma tore it all down:

In point of fact the roof of the sign is still on the ground. It used to look like this:

And then there is the bicycle bridge to nowhere opposite Sugarloaf School. I sopped there too and pulled off the roadway. They ran out of money after they built the bridge, but there is supposed to be a  full bike path along Sugarloaf one day. As we have seen its needed to keep cyclists out of traffic.

On the opposite side of the highway is this absurd For Sale sign. It looks real but all there is behind it is mangroves to the horizon interspersed with water. It's like a classic Florida case of someone selling real estate made up mostly of water. Utterly weird.

At Mile Marker 20 there is a bus shelter which is no unusual thing, they have put them all along the highway for many of the stops between Key West and Marathon. The odd thing about this one, and I see it almost every day is the advertising. The  campground has been closed for major repairs and renovation since Hurricane Irma and yet the advertising is in place as though nothing happened. The Category Four hurricane came ashore just up the road from here...

It is an odd stretch of roadway is US 1. Like I said at the beginning there are all sorts of reasons to slow down and look around. At least I've finally taken the time to satisfy my curiosity about some of them.

Another view of that sign above in the scooter mirror, pre-hurricane:

Much better by night, is the Overseas Highway, much more peaceful.

Sky, Water And A Crab

It was a funky morning and after Rusty got his main run I stopped the car on the way home to explore that spot on the road where an old Flagler Railroad bridge has been converted into a fishing pier. It was a good morning for that as there were no anglers  on the old bridge to be pestered by my overly friendly dog.

Rusty did it again. He was trotting off down this dead end road where I had stopped to let him run and a  car came by and stopped to talk to Rusty. Like his last encounter it was a woman with an unhealthy interest in my dog who was hamming it up for her such that she got out of her car and seemed to resent me when I showed up to reclaim my dog, the one with the big happy wagging tail. 

One of these days I'll let him take off with a stranger then he can see how fast they lose interest in walking him reliably every day and fussing over him.  That would teach him. Sniff.

Meanwhile the photo above reminded me of Fall in a temperate climate with the apparently brown foliage on shore. 

My irrepressible dog found some land crabs and I feared for his nostrils as they are quite huge.

 Indeed I found one backed into a  hole too small for it's vast bulk so I got up close to look at him.

 Prehistoric looking things. No satisfaction at all for a dog looking for a live Frisbee.

Then home to bed. 

Night Shift

Next month marks fourteen years dispatching at Key West PD and that's a milestone inasmuch as I have never held down a job that long.  I never sought out a career, because I get bored when I figure out how to do something. And then I got the job with the pension and the manacles closed around my wrists. I have long said that a good job makes Key West one of the best places to work, which flies in the face of the commonly held belief that Key West is a good place to vacation. And yet, we have no snow days, traffic is never that bad even when it seems annoying and some of that hippy ethic that used to permeate life in the Southernmost City does still apply in small ways in parts of the town. In a well regulated world this is still Key Weird  sometimes. My work manacles are self inflicted and very softly applied. I am one of the lucky ones...

As nice as it can be to work in Key West it's hard at the moment to find workers all around the city including in police dispatch. So it happened that Nick and I only got help before midnight and we had to take our breaks early. I usually sleep on a cot close by in case I'm needed during my break because I enjoy closing my eyes for forty minutes in the later half of the shift. When lack of staff mans I have to take my break early I can't nap so I went for a ride on the scooter to walk the waterfront. First I paused at the dinghy docks behind Turtle Kraals, the dinghies resting where they used to corral turtles in the bad old days when turtles were live food for ship's crews.

Breathing the warm night air was a relief as I strolled the docks. 911 calls are not as frequent after midnight as they used to be and I blame the gentrification of Key West when most people go to bed early and those still up are far fewer than years past and apparently less driven to drink and fight in public. Its not a bad thing this change. Still the calls come in even if at a slower pace.  It was graduation night so that probably explained the many noise complaints we had to deal with.. A hotel guest wanted a police report for a missing shirt which was a first for me in 14 years call taking because usually angry guests blame housekeeping for stealing jewelry and heirlooms not articles of clothing. 

We got a call about a scooter accident and that hits home to me considering how much I ride. Then they called for a helicopter for an airlift to Miami's trauma center for the rider. And I pictured the scooter rider down in some horrific collision and I sat there and pondered my riding habits. Another night a liveaboard boater called to report her dinghy stolen. I could feel her pain after years spent living on boats myself. The human condition chips away at your soul night after night. Fresh sea air and quiet serenity helps. 

It's nice to get a  breath of air in the middle of a night of taking calls about incidents of drinking, of yelling, of getting hurt and of getting feelings hurt. Key West is not a hotbed of crime, this is by and large a peaceful town that just sometimes frays at the edges where the high cost of living and low wages cause some people to not become criminals, they just become vexed and they lash out and do silly things in the heat of the moment. Sometimes they get arrested. Their calls are often fueled by alcohol and I sit there all night glad its not malice but stupidity that creates work for me.  I have always felt lucky to have a regular year  round useful job in a town that employs  so many on a  seasonal  wing and a prayer. But a short walk in a dark marina helps me to get through it all as much as does walking my dog in the woods after I get home. It wears you out  listening to people be upset

Hazy Days