Sleeping On Through

If you are Up North you have had snow and really cold weather. Good luck with that, and spare a thought for me as I face a 55 degree night tonight after work. Or for him hoping his hung over has worn off and he has found his way to shelter. During the course of my ramble with Rusty yesterday morning he moved but as you will see not far. He's not dead, so don't call 911 breathlessly telling me you've seen a corpse: he drank too much because life got the better of him. It used to happen to a lot of people around here but they're much reduced in number.

Curry Mansion is there on Caroline Street to remind us that Valentine's Day is coming. My wife looked up from her Amazon page and said Happy Valentine's Day we're getting watches. I haven't worn a watch in decades, but the past is the future and by Wednesday I should have an article strapped to my wrist once again. Apparently it will note my physical activity so I hope someone will care, perhaps some Moldovan hacker will count my steps or squats or whatever it does. I know my wife will be making sure I get up every hour I'm sitting at work. I am become patient in old age, this too will pass and I trust the next fad will be less weird and intrusive and annoying on my wrist. 

I like to walk and I don't need an Apple device on my wrist to make me walk. I walk early in the morning, well before six o'clock when no one is around, ostensibly to be social distanced but actually because I like walking with Rusty and no one else. Silence around us and a running commentary in my head. It's winter time here and there are more people around than in the sticky months of summer and some of them are exercising, some are stumbling and this homeless guy with a pack and a firm controlled stride compelled me to record him, a Sasquatch figure loping along with me hopping around urging my camera to wake up in time for this sudden vision of woodsy folklore. I caught a fuzzy image of the mysterious legend.

Key West has been a fabulous source of things to look at during the pandemic. I have found myself obliged to look deeper and think harder about what I see, and knowing this will all end before long has prompted me to remember what I felt as I saw. This page really is a diary and that aspect is becoming more and more apparent to me. Retirement beckons in one year and three months and with it I hope the end to the pandemic to allow easy roaming once again.

I was watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations on television this past weekend, avoiding rain and tired for the moment of the printed word, so I was seeking escape and journeyed to South Florida with the man whose television programs gave me hope for the medium. He killed himself yet I still think about him and I still miss his acerbic view of the world. His walk around Key West with Norman Van Aiken was a nostalgia trip for me seeing the Key West I used to know 15 years ago, long gone, and even then not a revolutionary phase of this turbulent island's life. But it was messier, it had more of the Bohemian and less of the conformist, the balance was still teetering even though the end was in sight. It was clearly not the Keys West of 1980 and yet there was a sliver of hope that fashion and style and symbols of wealth could be kept at bay a little longer.

I got some encouragement when Van Aiken declared Key West wasn't ready for his nouvelle cuisine and left the Town and Tavern restaurant for the wealthier pastures of Miami Beach. Nevertheless he took Bourdain to Conch Town Cafe and over his shoulder you can see the Lemonade Stand art studio now a bric-a-brac shop. I read Solares Hill, the weekly irritant to people in power, before time shut down the café and the Internet ended the newspaper assaults on the Keys bourgeoisie, replaced by online social madness unedited and allowing anonymous voices the freedom to throw up into the four winds of public opinion. I wonder what David Etheridge would have written on the events of January 6th. I should have liked to have held the newspaper with his words on it at the café.

At five in the morning I watch the cleaners hosing down Rick's, their loud voices reverberating around the tree bar and in my head I translate their Spanish jokes into the banter I used to listen to from the field workers on my mother's farm in Italy. The themes remain the same, sex money, time off, home and round and round. I never was any good at small talk, failing hopelessly to grasp the significance of sport in men's lives, unwilling to discuss women and uncompromising in my politics. You don't want me at the dinner table, nor do you want me on a work team discussing the above mentioned ways to pass the time. 

The men (no women) who clean the recreational areas downtown disappear long before anyone of importance wakes up and only a handful of joggers will run through the shiny wet sidewalks, the only trace of the morning labor to prepare for another day of crowds and drinks and unmasked faces. I miss a few things about pre-pandemic life but substitutes have largely worked. My wife and I exercise at home, a half hour a day and I find I save huge mileage and money not driving back and forth to the gym. We buy new releases to stream though I do find myself missing movie theaters...I don't miss people talking during the show,  that I need to remember before I get too misty eyed. Friends have fallen into a void and the exchange of ideas has dried up and that irritates me. But this period is a pause, a strange looking glass time when past is past and the future will be recognizable no matter how much the experts warn us it won't.

I get to walk and take pictures to please myself, I see the signs of pre-pandemic life lying around and I'm glad I leave it to others to gather in groups and act as though 430,000 Americans haven't died breathlessly in pursuit of herd immunity. My wife has been cleared to be vaccinated and all she has to do now is hope the supply of vaccine will keep speeding up. My relatives in Europe have not seen even a whiff of vaccine in their lives and despite the oddities of recent life in the US I remain firm in my belief we are better off here than there.

Key West manages to be insouciant and rigid all at the same time. Masks at all times, drinks at all times, take care but keep the economy churning. It's no wonder we all suffer from pandemic fatigue and confusion. I suppose Anthony Bourdain would have worn or refused to wear a mask as our own inclinations lead us but he isn't here to be pithily dismissive of one opinion or the other. The Southernmost City he walked in 2005 was in his mind full of artists and fugitives and other romantic characters but Key West has changed as has every city in the world over the past fifteen years. It would be nuts to expect otherwise. Defining the change for the better or the worse is all dependent on your perspective.

I think my problem lies in not knowing what has happened Up North over the past few decades. The glimpses I have caught on recent road trips leave me wondering what there is to discover.  We drove Michigan last summer in our first effort to bed down the van, to sort out life in a small space on the road, not a boat, different, smaller, harder to handle in some ways. Two things we see looking back was how much easier van life would be today with a year's worth of experience under our belts and how gorgeous Michigan was in the green bloom of sunny summer. Wisconsin too, except they didn't wear masks so we sped past them. It wasn't the Michigan of protest and kidnapping politicians and all that flag waving stuff. We even got some pretty good cheese. And we didn't get the virus.

I look back at 1918 and the Spanish 'Flu that originated in Kansas and was spread around the world by war. We have to remind ourselves that outbreak lasted three years. We read those words and gloss over the implications: three years. We are starting out year two here and thanks to science we have vaccines, but human nature being what it is I am sure we will find a way to spread this aggravation out for two more years. Fear of vaccines boggles my mind and every day I join Thomas Jefferson in thanking Dr Edward Jenner for his life saving work. But Facebook makes everyone an epidemiologist and illiterate certainty will lay us all low for another year I am sure at this point. I used to hope vaccines and good sense would end this pandemic this Spring but I am reluctantly settling in for another year of mask wearing and isolation, grateful for my job and my bosses who take the risks seriously.

As I work my way round to the end of today's musing I find myself back on Duval Street a few doors down from the Smallest Bar and the drunk in the white soled sneakers had found his way to the stairs at the strip club. You'd think I asked him to pose but I promise I didn't. Sure as eggs is eggs there he was backside in the air balancing on his forehead in a manner that could only be produced by the mother of all hangovers.

I thought that in his way it was a piece of performance art, the feeling left behind by months of Covid, the loss of friends and family, the cutting off of contact, the isolation of the virus, the hopelessness of even trying to drink your way out of your aggravation. Wake up to another day and the headache will still blind you. Better to keep your head down and pretend the world is not there.

Altered States

It was a funny moment when I looked at this picture on my computer and asked myself: where is this?  It could be a Sarajevo back street, or a customs warehouse in Puerto Corinto, but in point of fact it's an alley a stone's throw from Captain Tony's bar.  It doesn't really look like Key West does it?

It's a funny little town, built on trade and shipping and a splendid climate and those features of life in Key West continue. Of course there isn't wrecking going on as there once was, that strange practice of rescuing cargo from sinking ships but trade is as important as ever, no matter  what the hurdles:

Its a  source of wonder to me that these little stores can make a living and this winter has seen far fewer visitors at least to my eyes. 

I have to admit I'm counting down the days to Easter a variable date which combined with meting snows indicates when the high season of packed roads is over. This year that date falls at the beginning of April so two more months of snowbirds. That seems doable. 

The thing is when you aren't dining out, there are no movies, no concerts and no plays what does any of it matter? Commuting is a little restricted but not by much, listen to the radio, play a podcast and you're home. There haven't even been the usual crop of road blocking fatalities on Highway One this winter, so far.

It's the paradox of living in a highly touted tourist town: it's nicest at it's emptiest and this year continues to be oddly empty. That virus, when will it ever end?

Those Chickens

The city of Key West has now made it illegal to deliberately feed wild chickens in the city. So had you planned on bringing a big bag of bird seed with which to stave off avian famine you will now be flouting a new law. If you drop your fries accidentally and chickens eat them you will be just being a klutz. As far as I can tell it goes like that in the Southernmost City where wild chickens have been the subject of endless visitor fascination.

In the grand scheme of things this isn't really a  big deal especially as we all know the chickens will do fine as they have plenty to eat. Its not really about the birds, its about re-training tourists to see Key West through a  different lens. The mayor announced before the most recent election, which she swept, that she is onboard with a new vision for the city as put forward by a leading developer. In this vision Key West will attract fewer visitors but they will be wealthy people interested not in getting shit faced on Duval but on enjoying the ambience of an upscale historical little city in the sun. Not a place that welcomes sweaty wife beater vests and chicken feeders. I hope the jury will be out for a while on putting water bowls out for passing dogs (like Rusty).

Over the years I have come to respect the chickens in Key West. I grew up spending my summers running around a small Italian mountain village which was home to more chickens than humans so when I saw these birds on the streets they didn't seem that strange to me. I find chickens to be delicious, but while alive they are noisy messy birds. I have noticed they are also very family oriented birds. You'll see them wandering around town in tight family units, rooster, hen and chicks. Rusty doesn't like to go anywhere near them as he has faced off  against an angry hen and she gave him no quarter. He crosses the street to avoid chickens when he can and I encourage him to do that.

The cruise ship shut down has hurt downtown Key West during the pandemic and many stores along Lower Duval have disappeared, presumably owing to a dearth of shoppers.  The argument against the ships has been they don't contribute much to the city's economy, but after a year of no cruise ships Lower Duval looks pretty ravaged. I suppose the theory is that new and different shops will repopulate the empty spaces but I struggle to imagine a Duval Street filled withy stores that locals might want to shop in. The state is planning to tear down the recent vote in Key West to limit cruise ships so what happens next year, hopefully after the virus, will be interesting to see.

Key West has carefully cultivated  a reputation as a haven for Bohemian non conformists but its a reputation that is enjoyed more in name than in fact. The original city residents, the Conchs have put up with it reluctantly because they profited from the flow of eccentric seekers and their dollars. Businesses have done the same but as eccentricity shrinks and conformity is forced by new residents  who have no interest in allowing Bohemians to wander the streets Key West is pushing itself into a new vision of itself. 

The fate of the chickens may be uncertain but not because of the feeding ban, but because of the drive behind that ban to fundamentally alter the nature of the city. I don't think they have chickens wandering the streets of Boca Raton and I doubt  Key West will either before too long. I hope I'm wrong.

YouTube Lets Me Down (Rant)

I am become a YouTube snob. Perhaps that's not completely accurate as I think I have always been a YouTube snob. Over the years I have joined the ranks of those who have figured out that anything you want to do has been done previously, and video recorded by someone else ready to teach you how to do it. And that, in our complicated technological world is a very good thing. Until it isn't. Like any form of communication YouTube has great value for the things it is good at: in this case simple linear technical explanations. Were you to need to learn how to change a car light bulb or how to remove window shades without tearing down the plaster ( I speak from experience here) YouTube is excellent. but when it comes to more complex trains of thought, the nuanced life as it were, YouTube gets pretty grubby. I had better explain. But be warned this may turn into a rant. If you disagree feel free to comment.

I have been told that the written word is passé and video is the future. That broad statement of fact came in the wake of me being told that blogs were passé and Facebook was where it was (ungrammatically) at. I ignored suggestions I move off this page because I like recording my diary in this form with these pictures but that could be put down to me being stupid or pigheaded or both. If I were here to make money. YouTube videos have become a way indeed to make money but I decided a long time ago money was never going to be a motive to post my photos on this page or anywhere else. I show up at the office to answer 911 and I get well paid to do that. After 17 years of listening to misery I am pretty tired of it but the ultimate goal is in sight and a desire for money this close to retirement is not going to drive me to YouTube. It's too much work to do videos properly, also I don't like my own voice and what I have to say, I prefer to say like this. QED.

These reflections were squeezed out of me on Tuesday when I had the afternoon off, I had finished the books I was reading (Shadows, fiction by Webb Chiles well worth a read on your Kindle) and I was drifting through YouTube as Rusty snored on my leg. Usually I watch photography or van videos, reserving my van interests to people actually traveling not people moaning or building as neither activity interests me much. Photography videos focus on gear which is boring or complex computer driven editing which baffles me so If I can't find a video on actual travel done well, or photo composition that teaches me something new, I go back to reading or napping, as God intended we do on our days off. On Tuesday I made a horrible mistake and checked what that cheerful face was saying about Key West. I should never have done it. They are a nice young couple getting a free room at a hotel and using that as a base to explore Key West. I use the term "explore " loosely as their first Key West video involved tearing themselves away from the minutiae of their free room at the Pegasus and walking (masked, thank you God) to Sloppy Joe's straight down Duval, chickens included. In-depth research is not part of their schtick. Yankeesinthesouth Check it our for yourselves, you may like it. I found it predictable vapid and boring. And apparently irritating.

I suppose it's too much to expect travelers to make videos like Rick Steves' high quality productions but would a little research hurt? When I was traveling through Central America I dreaded boater get-togethers as they ended up usually being a bitch fest comparing prices and presumed price gouging. To me travel has meant learning, or at least making an effort to learn and with the Internet at our fingertips learning even a little history is easy and God knows YouTube doesn't exactly demand precision or depth in anything but  not one You Tube travel video seems to be able to tear itself away from offering travel advice to armchair travelers and comparing prices as though the world outside is one giant market and no more.  I see videos of pretty places with pretty faces expounding on cheap this or that as though we are ever going to actually be there ourselves. I guess I expect too much, hence the notion I may be a snob.

I used to be a radio reporter and I learned editing and meeting deadlines and how to get to the point over a dozen years of doing all three. I routinely slide a YouTube video two minutes from the beginning when I get past the advertising (nothing is truly free of course!). The pretty talking heads will blather for at least two minutes about nothing before they remotely get to the point, that has been my experience. To make a YouTube video as I would like to would involve video editing using film taken of the places I talk about, similar to  how I use still pictures on this page, to break up the verbiage. It is much easier to point the camera at your face and babble, script free for twelve minutes, collect the thumbs up and wait for Adsense to send money. Tellinga  story it ain't. Doing research goes no farther than buying a foreign widget in a strange place.

Besides, I like still pictures, I enjoy the process of capturing images for a story already in my head as I walk with camera in hand.  I wasn't planning to write about my growing disdain for YouTube, a lost opportunity for communication, when I took these pictures but after I lined them up I knew I could use them right here. None of these pictures need explanation if you have been reading this page about my nocturnal walks with Rusty and if my grumbles about You Tube are of no interest the pictures will, I trust, take up the slack.

I enjoy the freedom of not making money from this page, or from my pictures at all. Much is made of the word Freedom but the actual practice of freedom is a tough call for most people, indebted indentured and aspiring. "Independently poor" is what Webb calls it and he has a point. I don't envy the youngsters trapped in a cycle of making videos to live and having to live a particular way to make the videos. Then they have to deal with the avalanche of negative comments if they are popular.  I noticed after my accident and near death the persistent snarky comments dropped away as I suppose being nasty to a man at death's door was beneath even the trolls. Getting squashed was an extreme way to shame them into silence I suppose but inadvertently it has worked.

This is my world, a blank page, some photos and the thoughts in my head. I like history, I like geography and I love the ability we all have to be surprised by something, to be curious about something and then look it up and find out the reason why. Far too many of us are just to lazy to go exploring online. You would be astounded how often people call the police department and  expect me to know arcane legal issues off the top of my head. I try to be patient, if 911 isn't ringing and explain I'm a civilian with no training in the law but because I say "Key West Police" they expect an answer.  I try to explain that my job is to take calls for help and to send help but still they press me. If I can't palm them off on an available officer I turn to Google and read the results over the phone to a caller who by now has understood that is what they should have done for themselves in the first place. How old do you need to be to ride a motorcycle without a helmet? Is Florida's firearms permit valid in Connecticut? Don't call 911, Google it because I haven't a clue. Need an ambulance? That I can do.

The well meaning tourist couple on the Key West video looked around Sloppy Joe's and remarked the place must have some history. No duh, not that they had a guide book or came armed with the investigative instinct of a traveler. But the good news was they had some really interesting cheese on their sandwich. They held it up to the camera so we could see their hard cold melted orange cheese. It was extraordinary judging by the comments from the audience who were delighted by this bland superficial supremely uncurious view of  Key West.  The question I was left asking myself was, where do I go for my nostalgia views of Key West after I get in the van and go exploring for myself?  Perhaps I ought not to leave and just sit here moaning and grumbling until time runs out...

Alligator Alley

The two lane highway opened in 1968 to connect Fort Lauderdale to Naples and they called it the Swamp Pike and Alligator Lane, derogatory names for the people stupid enough to risk their lives on a narrow strip of roadway built up on the muck dredged from deep ditches either side. The road was unfenced and patrolled by wildlife which mixed it up with the drunk drivers and the sleepy drivers causing carnage among humans and beasts. It was not an easy 80 mile drive. It became known as Alligator Alley, a romantic alliterative name that has stuck, even unofficially, now that it is part of I-75 from Miami to Sault St Marie, Michigan. I have indeed crossed the Mighty Mac Bridge labelled I-75 so I know it's true. If you ever feel like dumping your snow chains and breaking free this is where I-75 ends, and no you won't see any alligators along the freeway. Sorry about that.

People still die here though you have to figure they must work at it because the dead straight road is properly fenced for all 80 miles and the median is huge so all you to do is set the cruise control and stay awake. In summer it is much less trafficked than a normal winter season.

In Florida speeding tickets are given out when you drive more than five miles an hour over the limit (cops can always get you for reckless or speed too fast for conditions if you annoy them...) so it is pretty much accepted that you can add five miles an hour to the limit...However if you do make sure you stay in the slow lane. The Miccosukee Tribal Police make a comfortable living pulling people over on the stretch of Alligator Alley that runs through their reservation as the ill informed think long and straight and boring equates to any speed you feel like.

Much is made of the name Alligator Alley and in myth this is a long hard drive across the southern part of Florida...you are driving through the mystical Everglades swamp etc. etc...which most people think looks like a cypress swamp with dank Spanish moss hanging off dank dark trees and all that. The Everglades are known as a river of grass because that is what they are, named by a South Florida environmentalist (Marjorie Stoneman Douglas) who wrote about the necessary preservation of the marsh to filter water and maintain wildlife. The Everglades are wide open and flat and may very well surprise you. Even where there are trees, below, there ain't much to see.

Big Cypress is more like it, a relatively small chunk of the Everglades preserved for the trees. If you want to see alligators and dank hanging moss and stuff you need to go further south. Alligator Alley is all business. This is where you drive if you want to cross the state with no fuss and at speed. An hour and fifteen minutes and you are done. Blast the air conditioner, listen to the radio and put your phone down. Cell phones work all across these days so you are never out of touch, lucky you.

There are places to stop along the way. Most of the recreation areas are on the eastern side in Dade County. They offer boat ramps and some picnic tables trash cans as well as  scattered trash and you can launch a boat or an airboat off a trailer or push a kayak into the water and paddle your brains out if you like. I don't know much about fishing but kayaking would be as boring as paddling through a haystack in my opinion. All you'd see from water level would be the stems of river grass, important stuff for the water but not scenic,

There are two rest areas along the way including a fire station, toilets maps and vending machines such as you'd find in any rest area on any freeway.  All the stopping areas are good for a night's sleep especially if - ahem- you have a your own van to sleep in. Do not confuse bridge turn outs with rest areas...this is where the Highway Patrol parks and puts you under the radar gun. "Official Use Only."

This is a recreation area. Open year round in hunting season expect hunters marching off into the swamps. There are no facilities here, just a parking lot but they are great places to walk your dog  or to peer up close at the dreaded swamps.

There is one truck stop along the way, at Mile Marker 49 ( Mile Zero is in Miami, Mile 101 is south of Naples). It is run by the Miccosukee Tribe and offers the usual showers trinkets food and parking. The gas at my most recent visit was 20 cents a gallon above the inflated prices along I-75 in southwest Florida and that wasn't the worst of it. They are building new modern facilities and you can't pay at the pump at the current facilities. I had miscalculated my range and unwilling to pay $2:40 in Naples for regular I pressed on and lost my nerve. I bought $20 of regular at $2:60 a gallon and I had to stand in line inside for the privilege. I was annoyed at myself. You can exit the freeway here and take Snake Road  (a mildly twisting two lane) north to the Seminole Reservation and Immokalee beyond.

At Mile Marker 80 there is one curve in the road. It's actually a 'Z' first left then right. This where I-75 joined up when  they converted the two lane  Swamp Pike into Alligator Alley. I remember the road work in the early 80s when the brand new freeway became a mud pit and you had to pick your way between bulldozers as they joined up the section from the east with the section from the west.

You may think you are lost in the wilderness but there are constant reminders you aren't. This is a modern freeway. There is one intersection near  the Naples end of the Everglades. Highway 29 goes north to Ave Maria, the Catholic town in the swamp. Due south you get to Everglades City, a rustic pretty small town that never developed into a "city" and you also cross Tamiami Trail, Highway 41.

Tamiami Trail is where you want to go if you want to see alligators and the Cypress Swamp and all the rest of it. The speed limit varies between 65 (Collier County) and 60 (Dade County) and it's a two lane highway that was built in the 1920s well before Alligator Alley was completed in 1968. It's scenic and has lots of places to stop, with rustic restaurants and the world's smallest post office. Best of all you can take Loop Road a 24 mile gravel road that actually dips into mainland Monroe County and will take you through actual wilderness guaranteed to see alligators and swamps. If it's your first time in South Florida take Highway 41 and Loop Road.

You might well see cars stopped by the side of the road on I-75  but with cellphones comes rescue.

And soon enough news arrives of the end of the road.  The roadway was built as a toll road and it was completed early and paid for a few years later. The toll persists. For a car its a Sunpass toll of $3 in either direction. If you don't have a Sunpass (why not?)  you have to stop and pay by hand. There are no tolls to pay if you join Alligator Alley from Snake Road or Highway 29. 

When I am in a hurry this is the way home. I-75 goes to the Fort Lauderdale airport via 595 and joins I-95 and the Florida Turnpike so you can turn south and go straight to Homestead. Recently the state has finished building a four lane highway connecting Homestead to Highway 27. Krome Avenue (named for Flagler's railroad engineer) is now a freeway to Homestead, with a few traffic lights. I find it preferable to fighting traffic on the Turnpike through Miami.

The west coast of Florida boasts some of the most horrendous traffic in the state, worse even than Miami's death trap racers. Speeding is endemic which I don't mind so much but when you combine fast driving with undisciplined lane changes, tailgating and impatience  I-75 between Tampa and Naples is a nightmare. I have found that three-laning the whole road has helped and driving a  big box van helps too as people see me coming and stay away even in their over sized trucks. I put cruise control on 65 to save gas and trundle up the slow lane ignoring the chaos. It works for me.

The art of merging with traffic from an on ramp needs to be taught just as learning to pass on a two lane highway would relieve a lot of tailgating stress. The problem is the drivers coming onto the freeway don't achieve escape velocity on the ramp and they combine that with not looking over their shoulders to see what the state of traffic might be. They just blunder on, force you to change lanes and then speed up and away once they have disrupted your zen. Weird. Once again the big box van helps. They can't help but notice it and it does actually convince them to take evasive action. If you are in a  car be warned, driving skills are not practiced here: be extra defensive. 

I really need to go and spend some time on Tamiami Trail, much more scenic, more fun and as I know how to pass on a  two lane highway I can find my own way home without tailgating. For wasting least time the romantically named but decidedly pedestrian Alligator Alley is best.