Bye Bye Mangroves

I took a walk with Rusty as usual and I made it a point to photograph some mangroves for myself. 

It is not often noticed but in June 2007 when I created this page I called it a Diary and the reason was that it was going to be a record such as I had never had of things I liked. I like mangroves and where I'm going these three weeks I shan't see any. At least I don't think they have red mangroves Up North, that I've ever seen.

So I thought to myself, I shall post some pictures so when I'm on the road I can refer back to what I left behind. 

So this is for me, to remember the heat and the smell and sweat and the irritation of my viewfinder misting up. Of Rusty crashing down the trail and sitting in thick brown water to cool off.

Of the heron that flew straight overhead pushing the air aside  audibly like  a wind turbine.  I saw a white crowned pigeon flying alongside my car as we arrived and I looked to the right and there framed in my passenger window was the pigeon making high speed travel look easy. 

Mangroves are unique and weird and what makes them even more special is they are completely useless to humans. You can't burn them, you build with them,  they are a law unto themselves. You can't even walk among them, they are awful to try to traverse.

For the longest time they were targeted by developers because  they were considered not only useless but obstructive. And then of course they were found to have remarkable properties of great human value...Human beings are quick to pounce in judgement and slow to retract. 

Mangroves protect dry land by absorbing wave action. Mangroves protect fish spawn by giving shade and protection from the sun and from predators. If you want to go fishing protect your mangroves. And because the state of Florida values tourist dollars mangroves are now protected and you can't cut them down. as it always should have been. 

I really like Florida.  Not all of it, but some bits of it quite a lot.

Shake Up Cruise: Departure

Driving out of the Keys, I felt as always a mixture of excitement at the prospects for the immediate future and a slight sense of missing out on those parts of keys living that cannot be reproduced elsewhere. I left work at two in the afternoon and got home with those last few pre-departure details to organize, remembering to unhook the van from the household current I managed to electrocute myself as I forgot the inverter onboard sends electricity both ways.  My right forefinger and my tongue tingled for a few minutes as I hopped around waiting for a heart attack to fell me and end my pointless existence, yet as I looked at a colorful world through tears of painI wondered if perhaps I had enhanced my natural senses rather like the delicious Dilaudid of happy memory but everything went back to normal, especially as my wife never heard my yelp of pain when I grasped the still live outlet in my right hand. What a dumbass, I thought to myself as I coiled the now lifeless cord, thinking how little trouble I had ever had with my shore power cords on boats. Van life requires its own set of skills and we are on a rapidly arcing learning curve.

The plan was to drive as far as possible Tuesday night to make for a short easy drive on Friday to my sister-in-law's place near Asheville in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Normally it's a 16 hour drive from Cudjoe Key but the van stays closer to sixty than 75 mph so Google distances take longer than I expected. My first van life lesson. It was a  Good plan suffering from Poor execution as it turned out. Rusty has yet to get used to the van which makes weird noises as we run over bumps and the engine roars unexpectedly giving our nervous dog no peace which is unusual for Rusty who lies like a dead dog on the back seat of the Ford Fusion. He likes time to get used to things so time is what we will give him, especially as we ourselves need time to get used to this new way of traveling. In the era of coronavirus our roadside activities are curtailed anyway and we on this trip we shall rely more on ourselves than outside entertainment and I know we will miss it. Snacks from the fridge are much healthier but much less eye popping than some fo the objets on sale in southern convenience stores. Pickled pigs trotters have been on my list of things to try when I am too drunk to notice what I am eating. Not on this trip will my curiosity be satisfied.

Mask wearing seems spotty judging by what we have seen at gas stations and rest stops, and avoiding non mask wearers is exhausting and frustrating. That the debate about the value of masks grinds on gives me little long term hope for humanity. as it seems a small enough burden.  I have to say that the simple of act of driving makes the world feel normal. Sitting high up in my Promaster van the world outside looks as it always has done, no change, no pandemic out there on I-95. It is oddly reassuring to be taking a road trip.

I drove until one in the morning, remembering similar journeys by car and of course by motorcycle, and here I was now with my family asleep in the back, a BBC radio drama on the Bluetooth connection and the cabin temperature perfectly regulated against the outside heat and humidity of a Florida summer night. We arrived at the rest area where I took a wide open spot in a parking lot constrained by construction where all types of vehicles were mixed in together. No one was wearing face coverings at the toilet facility where we scuttled in and out like masked bandits. We try to use our portapotti for needs of last resort, like a two in the morning call of nature. Mostly its nice to know its there for emergencies. Very civilized travel.

When we were out sailing my wife and I liked to anchor where we thought we could get away with it, frequently trying to ignore the guidebook's recommendations which were always specifically marked on the sketch charts with a little ink drawn anchor.  We noticed how sailors on the Mexican Riviera liked to park their boats right dead on Charlie's recommended spot. Our choice of anchorage in the van became a Charlie's preferred anchorage by morning as we clearly had the best spot in the rest area, hemmed in by a whole bunch of late arrivals. Gannet 2 proved herself once again by blocking all outside noise including the rattling generator of the 18 wheeler that slid in next door about 2 in the morning. I think they packed Gannet 2 with serious insulation when they built our conversion.

Rusty and I were out walking the vast expansive rest area when Layne sent me a text saying she needed help. I hurried Rusty back and found her standing to attention with her slide out pantry pushing her hard in the back. The shelf on which the slide out pantry is built had come adrift making it impossible to close. We held it half closed with a bungee after we emptied the shelves which was when I noticed something. Custom Coach Creations was 44 minutes away according to Google and as I drive The Golden Van rather more slowly than average I told them we'd be there in about an hour. One missed turn later we showed up and Dave the magic carpenter set to work and fixed the whole thing. Done under warranty in 15 minutes. Back on the road we passed our rest area four hours after our intended departure but who cares, all was well I with the world and my sister-in-law had Indian Igli ready for dinner whenever we arrived. Igli is a rice dumpling with curried vegetables on top and it was excellent even if we got there at eleven o'clock that night....Long driving days in defiance of my plan to smell the roses and take it easy on this pandemic vacation.

Rusty made his own statement by stealing Layne's breakfast wrap when she put it down to do something, the first time he has done that perhaps because he was hungry, unlikely, or making a statement about van life, I don't know. While she set to and found more prosciutto and cheese and a tortilla in the fridge I took Rusty for a walk. Once again the little tyke refuses to be taken for granted. There was no point in yelling at him.

Upon hearing about our retirement van a friend of ours in St Petersburg decided to get one built for him, triggering a latent impulse he had been nurturing for a while. Dale got the last Promaster van Custom Coach can sell for this model year. Amazon is delivering in its own vehicles and has bought the entire national stock of Promasters, Ford Transits and diesel Sprinter vans this model year. I feel lucky we got to order ours with our optional color last year and get it done before the virus and Amazon make things so difficult for everyone else.

Rusty meanwhile tucked himself up under a van awaiting conversion and like the good stray he used to be, stayed out of trouble. Even when I called him to come out and get with the program he sat tight wagging his tail slowly and wondering why he had to move. He only came, and reluctantly when we started to back up towards him. He rides mostly sitting under my wife's legs, popping up when we change course or hit a bump and he looks out of the passenger window over her knee with profound interest. I hope he settles down but my idea of him laying in bed looking out the back windows which are at eye level has only been realized when one of us lays there with him. 

Layne took the wheel outside Jacksonville and drove through Georgia while I slept the sleep of the just with Rusty curled up next to me. I hope he learned from my sterling example that van noises are no bar to sleeping soundly. The nap set me up to keep on driving though South Carolina into the mountains as dusk, that lovely long drawn out northern dusk settled over the Appalachian mountains.

The winding mountain road to Celo community on State Highway 80 from Burnsville was wreathed in wisps of fog giving incoming headlamps a Transylvanian twist as they approached dipping and weaving on the impossible winding ribbon of asphalt. In the best of cars, or on the nicest of motorcycles the speed limits in the mountains of North Carolina are a nonsense in my opinion, designed to make visitors from Florida feel small. I ask you: 55 miles per hour? Here??? I muttered to myself as I set. to dodging wet patches and fog patches and weedy patches as the locals smoked by in a blur of speed. I pulled over when I could but in the foggy dark it was impossible to tell which opening in the side of the highway was a driveway and which opening was a plunging crevase of doom.

Finally we arrived in the self built Hansel and Gretel cottage Bob and Geeta have lived in for half a century in Cell community and with a struggle, after riding the wild gravel approach road through the rhododendrons I parked more or less flat and turned off the engine. Rusty leapt out and settled next to the van, front paws crossed watching the world go by while listening to the night sounds. He ignored us, socially distanced around an outside table eating Indian food and drinking beer and bourbon and talking nineteen to the dozen until sleep overcame us and we filed out to the van while the civilized people retreated inside the house. Silence descended except for the sound of dog and woman snoring and me typing. 

On The Road

I have reached that time of the year when I get a long vacation from answering 911 and fielding calls to the police department. As much as I enjoy working at Key West PD I do also enjoy my breaks and I try to get in a long stretch away early in hurricane season before the threat of storms gets serious, usually in September and October. So it is that we now have our camper van to use for a vacation which it happens is a pretty good deal in this time of coronavirus. I am supposed to be back at work on August 8th so I have three weeks to explore while remaining socially distant. This page will not be focused on Key West and will most likely not get daily updates. Things will return to normal in the second week of August I hope. Maybe sooner if our travels are stymied by the virus.

Our original plan was to go to Maine for cool weather and friends who live isolated as they too fear the effects of contagion. The northeast has long since imposed quarantines on incomers so that was out. Our desire to spend more time in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Up State New York will have to wait. Then we thought go to Chicago and visit equally self isolated cousins while combining a tour of Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, two area unknown to us. Also hopefully some cooler weather...At the moment it's impossible to say if we can pull this off in our self contained van but if plans have to change we have no reservations, or tickets or requirements to be anywhere. 

Our back up back up plan is to explore Appalachia which is not new to us in general as my wife's sister lives near Asheville and we had hoped to go further afield. I tell people who for some unaccountable reason call the police department for advice that if they come to the Keys prepare to be flexible, rules change and not everything may be open or available. So now I get to take my on advice.

We spent the last week sorting our tuff and loading the van and filling the water tank and second guessing our choices so by the time you read this we will I hope, be in North Florida or close to Asheville casting off the cares of the daily grind. I hope in less than two years to be on the road to Alaska but that is a high expectation considering all the madness and uncertainty this year has brought into our lives. I may find myself still working and glad to have a job with health insurance and seniority....

It may seem implausible but I shall look forward to returning to local walks with Rusty as he returns to his favorite trails. He is a creature of habit but he wouldn't want to be left behind, nor would we wish tot ravel without him. Just as I won't mind being back at work, my wife enjoys her students, online or in person and she expects to be teaching from home for her last year with the Monroe County School District. For now we shall see what we shall see and I shall post here some pictures as I am able. Have a good summer yourselves- I intend to, socially distanced, masked but on the road somewhere.

Dog is My Co-Pilot. Not really but he likes to get up close and look out while we are parked ready to see what's next. 

Fitzpatrick Street

I looked up and saw the sign against the black sky of the early morning hours. It looked like a cry for help from a  town watching the numbers go up steadily. Bars are closed and you can't drink legally at a bar in a restaurant. Beaches are open but social distancing outdoors is required. Masks are required indoors and out all over the city. Carefree Key West the vacation destination has been replaced by a place where uncertainty rules. And yet the town remains the same underneath the layer of human frailty.

You can have your picture taken as an alluring two dimensional mermaid, but until you get to the end of Duval Street a white illuminated background fills the facial oval to weird effect:

It didn't look too green to me but that I believe is what this heron is called, perched on the mooring ropes of the glass bottomed boat.

The brick design on the old bank building at the north end of Duval Street is highlighted in every photograph taken of this spot in the past century at least. It's a symbol of permanence in impermanent times.

I don't think the ghostly appearance of the Harbor House on Front Street was improved much by the  political appeal. The race for mayor has attracted three candidates this year divided on the subject of cruise ships. Mark Rossi, the owner of Rick's equates closing the city bars with "Gestapo tactics" but I'm pretty sure the city won't be rounding up people for transport to death camps. Trivializing the Holocaust is a national pastime in political circles.

Fitzpatrick Street is the cobbled connector between Front and Greene. I really like the way it puts me in mind of a frontier town in some Hollywood western. I expect to see a horse tired up in front of a saloon.

Except at five in the morning Rusty and I are alone. Socially distanced I guess, even from reality.

Masks For All

Things got weird on Monday. In a time of widespread general weirdness that's a difficult thing to say. Yet something changed in Key West after the city manager sent out a notice advising everyone has to wear a mask everywhere in the city. And with that, the only places you can be in Key West without a mask are at home or in your car. Or in your workplace with the door closed to your office if your boss allows. 

I can't define what changed but a change there was. Florida has been racking up insane numbers of positive tests every day, between ten and fifteen thousand new cases daily and numbers in the Keys have been rising steadily with only 17 ICU beds throughout the county. The city of Marathon has a tent hospital with four beds and only one of them ICU equipped...thanks Hurricane Irma.

The roadblock in March made for a strange apocalypse in the keys and then the pressure got too much and we reopened to tourism to get money flowing. For a while some people seemed to think the crisis was over but it should be clear by now there is a lag between infection, symptoms and severity of illness so it takes a while to reap that which we have sown. So now after a brief period of normal life for the unwary we find ourselves back in crisis mode. It feels like the rollercoaster will never end.

Politicizing wearing a mask has turned into a social and economic nightmare that has us by the throat. I should have thought burning your social security card would be a better symbol of freedom from The Man than not wearing a mask and infecting everyone you know and love. But my rational mind doesn't compute like many other people apparently so I stand on the sidelines and wonder at the weirdness of those Other People.

I wandered around the Pez Garden at 5:30 in the morning checking the statues of famous people from Key West history and I thought about the wars and alarums they survived and the plagues that were part of life in the 19th century when no one understood where yellow fever came from.  They plugged ahead and did what needed to be done and buried their dead. I was reading about the 'Flu epidemic of 1918 incorrectly called the Spanish 'Flu and apparently there was an endless debate even then about wearing a mask. Nothing much changes it seems.

As the virus seems to clamp tighter every day on the Sunshine State I try not to look too far ahead. Europeans are bracing for the second wave so they are going out to beaches and bars while they can as they have put the first wave behind them. New York state seems to be out of the weeds after a couple of months so I am trying to hope that by late September Florida will have calmed down too with God knows how much illness between now and then. I have no facts to back up my hopes but there it is.

I expose my wife and her failed immune system to the virus by coming to work but we do what we can which is all any of us can hope to do. I hope our very cautious RV road trip will help shake off this siege mentality that is gripping me, but if the world outside is as crazy and mask-free as iu have heard we may have to retreat back to the Keys and get back into isolation once again. If we don't wear masks, as feeble as they seem, it feels as though this will never be over. 

Thirteen million people worldwide have the virus and even our President is finally wearing a mask. Those two facts alone should tell us all something: we missed the boat on controlling this thing. I wish we had this mask ordinance in March but hindsight is too easy. Masks it is now, until they sound the All Clear. 

Why Gannet 2

I can confidently state after a lifetime driving all kinds of machines I have never given a vehicle a name. I have unfortunately a severely practical state of mind, I attribute that to my Aspergers though it may just be because I am lazy or something. The Golden Van broke the rule and therein I suppose lies a story. I call it the Golden Van with a slight tip of the hat to my ironic self after Custom Coach Creations said this was the second such van they had ever converted. Most customers go for standard white as delivery is instantaneous whereas a special color ( I wanted maroon, nixed by my wife) takes up to four months to deliver. We were in no hurry.

A motorcycle rider I met years ago blogs frequently (in English) from her home in Germany whence she returned after years of living in Canada, where she rode and named her motorcycles. Sonja asked why then did I choose to name the Golden Van? She and her husband now spend their free time wandering Europe in their Volkswagen van from their home base in Southern Germany. Oddly enough we follow similar paths... 

So why did I break the habit of a lifetime and give the van a name? It goes back to sailing. When I came out of the hospital determined, now that I could walk again, to have one last adventure before the Big Sleep my wife and I pondered our options. We could always go back to sailing we thought, until we discovered Rusty hates the water; the poor dog isn't perfect after all. So he gave us the excuse to think outside the proverbial box. Besides we had a hankering for something different. With a van we thought we could see more stuff, go inland, park in the middle of places we wanted to see, tour the parts that could not be reached by boat. We are not Webb Chiles, clearly.

"Go to the edge of human experience and send back reports." That phrase set this thing in motion. I came across Webb Chiles as a young man, an aspiring sailor who read avidly as one does when one's young head is full of dreams. I never had Webb Chiles' drive to sail off into what he is famous as describing as "...the monastery of the sea."  But his books were compelling and his experiences extraordinary. The first American to sail alone around Cape Horn is the record that gets me especially as his boat was not suitable and conditions were dreadful but he bested that record in his own estimation by sailing almost the entire way around the world in an open boat. He wrote memorable magazine articles about living under snow in Boston winters and i followed along from my safe berth in the Santa Cruz small craft harbor in California.

So when he sailed to the Keys a few years ago I offered my dock to look after his boat. That offer did not work out but we met anyway and so it went. His boat for the sixth sail around the world was as usual totally unsuitable, except of course it wasn't as Webb Chiles was sailing it. The Moore 24 is designed for sailing downwind on California's coast and winning races in what is known to sailors as the "ultralight" class of racing sailboats. That they were nurtured in my former hometown of Santa Cruz is a coincidence. Gannet is 24 feet long, flush decked and yes, I repeat, it is called Gannet...

Hmm. Could that be why my Golden Van is named Gannet 2? Why yes it could, that could be the exact reason. If that satisfies your curiosity read no further.

I would never have dared to name my lumbering home on wheels after Webb's lithe fast torpedo of a world girdling boat, and the idea never entered my head. It was Webb who suggested it after I told him of our plans. I want to drive Gannet 2 a long way before we come back to Key West and while I hesitate to mention plans I talked with Webb of them and as usual he was entirely supportive and enthusiastic. He after all has gone far too far in boats that should never have made it in the opinion of armchair critics and the peanut gallery, so when I talked  airily of long distance travels his only comment was "You'll love South Africa, fascinating country." Ok then, now I have some commitments to live up to. And send back reports from those edges of human experience.

My wife chose the design, Tomasz at Key West Signs made them reality and Webb endorsed the job. I and my trepidations stood aside. Now he says to be done properly Gannet 2 has to take on a proper nautical identity and gain a gender. The Golden Van becomes a "she." That will take me a while to master but I shall do my best.

In sailing tradition one names a boat then adds a so called "hailing port" as well. The idea was two ships crossing paths would call out essential information, hailing each other across the water in the era before radios existed. "Gannet 2 out of Key West bound for Anchorage" for example. So we added a hailing port to the name as well.

Webb lives a spartan life at sea, one of which I approve as he spends very little time maintaining systems even though he has the essentials covered in the most modern way, electronics, music and a place to sit and manage the boat, He even makes videos and you can get the best idea of what sailing an ocean is like by watching them.  I love minimalism as I hate fixing things. 

I travel with a wife and dog and blame my level of luxurious frippery on their presence. I am a hardened outdoorsman you understand and would be just as happy sleeping on a  square of canvas suffering the miseries of heat cold and mosquitoes with nary a complaint. Which may or may not be true about me...Fortunately we will never know as my wife is in charge of living arrangements and I do as I am told. So we travel with mood lighting surround sound and a television, not to mention convection oven, insta pot and electric burners all powered by solar panels and a complicated inverter to create household electricity also generated by two alternators in the engine...phew! Apollo 11 had nothing on us!

That's the story of the naming. My Promaster Van is named after a 24 foot boat that has sailed around the world and could even do it again if her owner chose to do so. My Promaster Van has a lot to live up to, as do I. And let's not forget my long suffering wife. And dog; don't forget the chief security officer. I suppose we had better get on with it. Retirement in two years will put us to the test.

We travel not for trade alone,

By hotter winds our hearts are fanned

For lust of knowing what should not be known 

We take the golden road to Samarkand.

James Flecker