A Cold Key West Bight

A cool sunny afternoon yesterday at Key West Bight. 

I took a lunch break and went fr an afternoon walk.

Sweaters are the order of the day this week.

I've been here before dawn and frankly the decorations are a lot more fun in the dark!

Some dude sitting on one of the conveniently placed benches. The white building behind the trees is Jimmy Buffett's Shrimpboat Sound music studio.

Unlike the predawn darkness, when you come out in the sun there are...other people around! 

Fisherman's Cafe has an interesting menu. Old school Key West. Outdoor seating only or you could to a to go and stay away from germs. Thats what we do when we are on the road.

I love the bright winter sun and the shadows it produces, in this case a clump of people waiting for something, probably a sunset cruise.

Not everyone is wearing. mask but the odds are more people are masked than not these days. 

Schooner Wharf Bar rolls down the plastic windows when the north wind blows, and there was no doubt the northwest wind was cold.

Lovely skies and bright colors and sharp shadows. I like how it looks this town in winter.

They say a good Florida parking spot is the one in the shade, however yesterday that refinement wasn't necessary.

Caroline Street, no traffic but endlessly bright in the evening sun.

Bright pink mustard yellow alongside Harpoon Harry's on Margaret Street.

It was a nice fresh break in a long work day. 

Heaven Sent Cold Weather

To say overnight temperatures below sixty degrees indicate cold weather generates sarcasm and ridicule but as I never tire of explaining cold in the Keys is different.

Not only are people not used to cool temperatures, cold weather here is frequently accompanied by strong winds and a great deal of numbing humidity.

People who think of themselves as being hardy and tough will express surprise if they find themselves in Key West on a 55 degree day. Oh, they say, it does actually feel a lot colder than it does at home in these temperatures.  Yes, I say not being given to patience, look around and see cold water and strong winds. Feels colder than you expect? Science. Actually I don't know why it feels colder than it is in winter around here but I guess its like blowing on a cup of tea to cool it down or something. Not that I ever did anything so gauche. My mother had seven different kinds of fits if I put my elbows on the table or blew on my excessively hot food. Anyway it feels cold around here when it's cold.

Then there is the lack of protective clothing. The small dog above was out wearing a coat that needed adjusting in the arctic blast over the White Street Pier.

The aircraft was probably bringing people previously yanked out of snowdrifts who were about to get out of the plane and imagine themselves in a tropical paradise.

Not quite but the forecast is set to improve inasmuch as daytime highs should hit 70 under bright sunny skies putting an end one hopes to an excessively long damp hot humid nasty brutish summer.

I am not known to complain about the heat but this year summer was long and ferocious and I am glad to feel cold for a few days while walking Rusty. Really, I am.

The shrimp fleet takes cover south of Key West when strong north winds are forecast and we have had those winds for a bit now. 

The other day our cellphone went all warbly and weird as winds gusted more and more ferociously. To make phone calls we went downstairs to the van to use the cellphone booster which helps us get a signal on the road. It was excellent.

By the weekend days will be 80 degrees again and nights will be around 70 and things will be back to winter normal, clear skies, few clouds and lots of pleasant days ahead.

For now we hang on and ride out the cold. 

And enjoy winter as it should be enjoyed.

Key West Bight Lit Up

Rusty likes to sit from time to time on our walks and watch what's going on. I am happy to join him. 

The lights will lead you to the toilet block overlooking the water and its surprisingly scenic.

Turtle Kraals is still here and every time I pass the signage I feel compelled to recall it's passing before it becomes something new. 

The windows are growing dusty and the decorations are being removed with a  few notable exceptions. I doubt the Conch Republic Navy will survive the passing of this older generation, and more's the pity.

The turtle museum, which ironically will outlast the Turtle Kraals restaurant. The pool between the two is the corral ("kraal" in Afrikaner) where the captured wild turtles were housed prior to their slaughter.

Winter dinghies are coming back but obviously in far fewer numbers this season.

He does spend a fair bit of time waiting patiently for the photographer.

One dinghy user took exception to me standing on the dock while Rusty sat and watched the world go by. I only noticed him when he walked up to me and pointed his phone in my face and said "cheese" loudly and ironically as though getting me back for standing with a camera. As you can see he was of no interest to me and I wasn't sneaking his photograph in my landscape picture of the early morning light over the harbor. I was waiting for my dog and getting cold in the north breeze while doing it. I was quite pleased my tourist disguise was working.

Hawaiian shirt, camera around my neck, looking for things to catch my interest, I often get lectures from people explaining Key West to me as though I have just arrived in town. One of the best things about being a police dispatcher (aside from the health and pension benefits) is the anonymity of sitting in an office and not being on patrol in a  police car. When I have had to do a ride-along  as part of my refresher training I always feel really uncomfortable sitting in the front seat of a police car.  Even when doing nothing more exciting than sitting at a traffic light the stares bore right through you. Cops hate the idea of sitting in an office through their shifts but I cannot stand the attention of a police uniform in public. 

To be identified as a tourist is totally liberating and I like being mistaken for a  "touron" the cruel and derogatory term some locals use for people who come visit Key West with joy in their hearts and full wallets in their purses. You will find the less time someone has lived here the more they try to differentiate themselves from visitors by looking down their noses at them, an attitude I find a little odd. On the street even with my dog I am the invisible tourist and occasionally I take abuse for it, but I get paid to be abused every day on the phone anyway. Cheese!

Mind you it takes me a few weeks to adjust my driving expectations as roads clog up with winter traffic after a Fall season of few visitors, fast internet and open roads. But once I step out of the car and look around expectantly, glad to be here, I melt into the background of people not lucky enough, or tough enough to hear the barflies say it, to live here. Honestly anyone can come here and give it a go and most people have very good reasons for not making the move but I suppose it is human nature to boost yourself at the visitors' expense. When I lived in California I discovered two things about the Golden State that surprised me in 1982. Californians never refer to their state as "Cali" and San Franciscans never refer to their city as "Frisco." One newspaper columnist suggested it was because both nicknames expressed excessive familiarity not appealing to locals. And we of Northern California never refer to Highways as "The" 101, that is a usage reserved for the lower life forms prevalent in Southern California.  They really do make that distinction and it has stuck with me.

So if you see me being dragged by a  dog and you want to stop me and roundly abuse me and explain to me how Key West really does have wild Cuban fighting roosters on the streets and how Hemingway really did transport a bar urinal back to his home, go right ahead. I will express suitable astonishment and ask to take your picture. If you want mine you are welcome and I do know how to say cheese.

Black Night White Light

Shadows and light on socially isolated walks. 

Christmas Lights

There is no doubt I have my doubts about Christmas. It's a holiday I don't get. If you look at it with the completely rational mindset of a child who grew up in an unhappy family and who remembers the holiday as a set battle between angry parents it's little wonder I have never much got into the spirit of the occasion. They look at me with disdain and call me Scrooge when I express my doubts about Christmas.

I like Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, robust straightforward calls for celebration but Christmas is a weird holiday that makes no sense. Don't get me started on the Easter bunny and chickens to celebrate the Resurrection of the Savior  because that mess is beyond the pale, but yule logs and pine trees at Christmas confuse me almost as much. I can't seem to get my focus correct on this very out of kilter holiday:

I like the burst of decorative effects and I am a sucker for goodwill to all men (and women) but I cannot for the life of me understand the ancillary requirements of the holiday. Why pine trees? Christ was born in a manger in Palestine, a desert land with date palms and olive trees. Ice and snow are the decorative accents people strive for at this time of year, though why you might desire electric icicles to adorn your home I cannot fathom. I can't get them in focus considering I like to live frost free, I prefer it in fact.

Father Christmas- that's a complete enigma, a saint they say named for a King of Bohemia. Why? Because he took gifts through the snow to one hungry family one year. Or something like that. 

I raised my puzzlement to my colleagues who took me to task from one end of the dispatch center to the other. It's not a rational holiday they said, sit back and eat chocolate they insisted, enjoy the decorations they ordered.  Which put me in my place. Still that little voice querying the details is still there whispering and wondering. Why is Christmas in winter. Why did they have to adopt the solstice as the time to celebrate and be cold and dark? Christmas in Key West is as close as I have ever got to enjoying Christmas in summer and it is quite enjoyable. Lots of lights and decorations even though we still get almost twelve hours of sunlight a day at this wintery time of year.

It helps when a cold front blows through and you feel the chill in the air and the Nordic themed decorations shine out in the night. So why, if  Christmas took place in the Middle East originally, has been transmogrified into a  festival of pine needles and yule logs and candlelight? I don't think usurping pagan holidays is much of an excuse. I am of the opinion we should move Christmas to June 1st so as not to clash with July 4th (July1st in Canada) and we could celebrate in proper warm desert style. 

It's like the Easter bunny and chickens and eggs at Easter, to someone with my literal mind I get all muddled up wondering who is messing with what. I have no desire to get dressed in Viking skins to celebrate the Solstice so I am left to wonder why Christmas trees? But there they are and very festive they are too whatever they actually symbolize. Lights keeping the solstice at bay? Adapting that concept to away in the manger was some stroke of marketing genius by someone buried in the distant past. I have to give in to the logic of it.

I do have one thing I really dislike profoundly about Christmas and that is the annual Christmas carol massacre. My wife kicks me in the shins every time I mention it but I hate the mangling of the German hymns upon which so many carols are based. It's not just turning on the radio either (or listening on line as we do) but its shopping or even simply buying gas. Through a fog of artificial electronic re-writing you can hear the original melody written hundreds of years ago to celebrate the original simple concept of a Savior, all reduced to a pile of inarticulate wails and bumps. Nothing I can do about it except retreat to the source and listen to the music as written in its purest form and leave the elevator noise to those that don't care. Which is everybody else. 

The other thing I can do is wander the public spaces in shirt sleeves in December and rejoice in all that Key West still has to offer in proper Christmas fashion: help to the needy on a scale most small towns can't imagine, space for the industrious, and a home still to the few remaining eccentrics without prejudice or unkindness. That seems like a lot of good in the face of a lot of my grumpiness.

Lights, colors and  the hope of a better year to come which in itself seems rather a burden for a few over decorated palm trunks after a year like 2020.

My kind of Christmas tree, lit up by the sun and waving in the wind. I sat on my deck in shorts and bare feet and thought how lucky I am not to have frostbite. I can't get all Nordic and go skiing or ice skating or reindeer riding but neither do I want to, ever.