Packing

The fact is my life is slightly boring at the moment and I apologize. 

We plan to be on the road in three weeks but until then it's a Phony War, if you know to what period of history I am referring...we are living a life of reduction and there's not much to write about. Forgive me.

My days now start with an early morning neighborhood walk with Rusty. He has been perfect as usual and now I'm not getting up at 4:25 am anymore he lets me sleep in. Around 5:45 or 6 am I hear a dog yawn and nails clicking on the tiles as he politely wakes me from a deep sleep and reminds me it's time to check the neighborhood.

A walk down to Spanish Main and back lasting twenty minutes in the dark of the morning is enough to wake me so after he gets his treat I lay down on the couch and read while Rusty uses his dog door and lets himself out to enjoy the sunrise which comes around 7 am.

When Layne gets up she sets the day's order of service and we drink our tea, mine hot (Yorkshire Gold) hers cold (mango tea in a can which sounds an abomination to me) and after my Weetabix cereal we get to work and start organizing. Yesterday we went down to the van early and put stuff away in the cool of the morning then we repaired to the house upstairs and decided we have to live in orderly spaces so we put boxes away and tidied up the living room and the kitchen and the bedroom. That felt good.

Then Layne sat down and did paperwork and I kept my brain fresh by doing the New York Times crossword ($20 a year subscription). Rusty wandered in from his favorite hole in the front yard to sleep for a while on his bed.

He comes and goes freely with no fences or restraints and he lies down in the sun like a junkyard dog without a bed to his name. He loves gravel even though he can sleep on two beds, two couches or even our bed. Nope he lies in the dirt and snores while we work.

We stop for lunch and continue our streaming binge. One way we get through the stress of packing up a twenty year life is we pick a TV show and binge mercilessly. Currently its Justified on Hulu and we had forgotten how unmercifully violent the show is. Good lord.

A workout is reserved for those days when we have the energy followed by a swim in the canal followed by a happy dog ready to go for a walk.  He and I get in the car and drive out to the mangroves where I carry a camera and Rusty carries his energy from his day long sleep. This is Summerland Key at dusk heading into the sunset. 

The Mobil station is home to Dions fried chicken  in the convenience store. I know we are going to binge at least one more time. I may be too greasy after that to type a blog entry.

Kemp Channel Bridge connects Summerland to Cudjoe Key. There is not one single trip I make on the highway these days that the traffic  can hold the speed limit or God forbid five over. One thing  I am not going to miss is getting off Highway One which has become a mess over the past few years. There have been several serious accidents recently but every day its dicing with death. A slow driver causes back ups and people tailgate and get impatient and as much as I'd like to pass and escape frequently I'm jammed in the middle of the angry drivers and passing makes no sense so I pull over on the shoulder instead and let them pass by. Frankly I'm over it, people texting and not driving, speeding stupidly, not paying attention and driving erratically so I'm looking forward to taking back roads far from busy commutes and freeways in parts of the country where there is more than one road. I'll show you what I mean when we take to the road and leave the South behind and head for my first random destination: Texas Hill Country. Early December I hope. That will be frigid. This will get interesting.

Meanwhile we're packing and putting stuff in the trash and dropping generous tips to the garbage collectors who hump our overloaded trash cans out of sight. It's really not glamorous but I beg your indulgence, and we really will be traveling very soon. They shut down my work e-mail account yesterday so I really am out. Things are real but I have no regrets. I can't wait. That the first month will see us visiting assorted friends makes for a great start to an open ended road trip.

An End, A Beginning

We thought we were so clever when as youngsters we came across the phrase “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Wow! Who had ever heard of such wit!? 

Indeed today is just that. I worked my last shift, I am retired, I turned in my ID card, my door key to the Police Station my locker padlock and my headphones yesterday and walked out of work for the last time. 

I was lucky my last day was spent working with two friends who reminded me of the very best of times, those shifts spent in easy camaraderie coping with the job taking time to talk of this and that between calls. The day passed easily. 

The landlord has his notice and we will leave the house come what may by the end of the month and probably sooner. Layne’s dentist is backed up and her last dental check could only be had later in the month so we may be hanging around a little longer than anticipated but that’s okay. Key West is a good place to hang around for a while. 

I have read of the loss of identity that comes with retirement but I confess for me the loss of friends is harder for me than having to say “I used to be…” especially as  my retirement is combined with a total life do over! 

In a life that now suddenly has no deadlines, no imperatives to be or do, to meet expectations, I am totally at home. 

I am free now to say or do what I want, to no longer be a small cog in a vast machine that I represent publicly. I have no great revelations to make, no scandals to lay bare but if I do behave badly in public I now do so in my name, not as an ephemeral and unimportant employee of a public agency. That feels rather pleasant. I am liberated of expectations and responsibilities. 

I am me now, merely the driver of the Golden Van, Rusty’s dad and Layne’s co-conspirator. 

If you have a complaint about leaf blowers don’t call me! I am no longer responsible…I saw a photo of a house on fire and all I could think was - not me. I know nothing. They managed without me.  They always have. They will be fine and so will I. 

Alligator Alert

I have visited the Blue hole on Big Pine Key for twenty years and then on Thursday the well known Blue Hole resident said goodbye in spectacular fashion. Out of the water and along the trail he crunched some thing so loudly I imagined it was my bones.

The Blue Hole is called that because it is a pool of freshwater in a spring of islands that lack freshwater resources. There are no natural lakes or springs or rivers or streams in the Florida Keys. Alligators live in fresh water (crocodiles, the less aggressive dinosaurs, live in salt water) thus there aren't any in the Keys. A puzzle is here!

Since Hurricane Irma. new signboards have gone up to explain the vagaries of the Key Deer refuge whose office is closed to the public (Thank you Covid)  in Big Pine but you can read the public sign boards wherever they are posted. And there are lots of them.

I have no desire to feed Key Deer who congregate around homes where the best vegetation is raised on ornamental gardens. The idea of feeding an alligator is about as appealing to me as having an unnecessary colonoscopy but some people do actually feed them I was told by a resident of one of the houses near the Blue Hole.

I know a long time alligator in the Blue Hole starved to death after ingesting a rubber toy thrown by some imbecile visitors which blocked its intestine and prevented it eating. Which explains the mystery of a fresh water dinosaur in islands surrounded by salt water. The alligators of the Blue Hole are imported.

The story of tarpon in the fresh water was a new one to me, see below:

Hurricane Wilma pulled a number on these islands with massive flooding in every direction. My way home was blocked by an alligator in the roadway apparently washed out of the Blue Hole by the same floodwaters that brought the tarpon. All I saw was a wet black tail swishing angrily as the beast sought refuge in the mangroves. 

I was hoping to spot the alligator in the water somewhere near the viewing platform overlooking the hole which in real life isn't blue at all. Instead as Rusty walked on his leash ahead of me to the left I looked to the right and to my surprise saw the snuggle toothed snout poking up through the undergrowth. Rusty never saw a thing and was probably wondering why I keep him on a leash on the rare occasions we visit this place. Rules are rules and sometimes they serve a visible purpose.

We walked on and wandered the trails round the hole. I kept Rusty close but honestly I wasn't concerned at this point. Alligators inspire terror and they are fearsome beasts but as long as you aren't stupid they will leave you alone. Being stupid is swimming in freshwater canals where they live, especially at dusk or at night. 

I wondered at the algae blooming in the water all round the pond. I can't imagine it bodes well for the residents of the hole and made me wonder if coming out of the water to sit in the shade might be preferable to being surrounded by scum. Maybe alligators aren't so fussy.

By the standards of mainland forests the pines of Big Pine Key, so called for the size of the island not the trees, are pretty small and underdeveloped. A pond like this in most areas of the East Coast would be nothing special, but around here where quarries are the only source of fresh water lakes this place is rare in the Lower Keys.

The construction projects required to develop these islands needed gravel and rock to build homes, rail beds and roads. And they dig these materials out of the ground. Where you find a freshwater pond you find a quarry. This one is particularly pretty thanks to the growth on its shores. 

We walked out the back into the edge of a subdivision of homes that apparently attract flocks of Key Deer. Rusty was much more interested in the smells in the bushes than he was in live animals and just like the alligator he saw nothing around him except what he smelled. I reckoned it was a good walk.

If the hour long drive to Key West doesn't put you off you could do worse than live behind the Blue Hole among the trees and wildlife.

The speed limit on Key Deer Boulevard, the main connection to the Overseas Highway is thirty miles per hour and speeds are checked. Deer are everywhere so texting while driving will end up doing you no good at all around here. 

Driving north from the highway the road is straight and featureless among little pine trees and palm shrubs. Some maniacs ride the full five miles to Port Pine Heights on the bike path in the blazing sun.

The Blue Hole, three miles from the traffic lights in Big Pine.

Normally you stand on the platform and peer down at the water.

The literature explains how fresh water trapped in these places gathers in a pool above the salt water penetration in the rocks below.  They call the fresh water a lens as that is what to looks like I suppose when seen in profile.

I recommend taking a look around before reading the small print based on this last visit.

I put Rusty in the car and went back to see what I could find. I found nothing wandering around and peering. Oh well I thought, he's gone back to the water. Had he hell. A slight rustling sound under the trees and finally I spotted him.  He had long since spotted me and I could see his round black beady eye following my movements which suddenly stopped.

He found something hard and crunchy in the leaves and while I watched her crunched. Alligator jaws are powerful in part because they are fixed. They can't chew, they can only tear or in this case crunch. 

Alligators creep me out more than other predators because they snag their food when they can and put their prey in a hole underwater to rot so they can pull it apart more easily. This means they don't hunt when hungry but when they have the opportunity to grab something.

They can run like mad on land and they swim like fish. Well adapted is what you could call them. I'm told we look large to them on land because we tower over them and that puts them off snagging us. I hold onto that thought. It seems to work, as he turned around, came out of the tree with some trouble with his tail and then rested, watching me. I decided to keep my feet and went home.

To Be Here

They say change comes from within and I suppose that must be true even outside the world of Zen philosophy, but in the real world change takes a great deal of setting in motion. When I told the landlord October would be our last month he ruminated out loud on a recent flood insurance hike and suggested he wasn't going to rent anymore.

Talking to a young vigorous lad I hired to move stuff around he said his Dad likes to own property on Cudjoe Key.  The symbiosis seemed obvious though whether they will work anything out is not for me to know or care about. I hope so if my landlord wants that deal because he has been a good landlord and an all round decent human being.

Thats how it works in the Keys, you have to be here to be here. A Facebook friend had been looking for a place and I contacted her before the landlord said he wanted to sell but she was already settled. Had she not been in a new place this home could have changed hands with no public notice, between friends with recommendations. You have to be here to be here.

A young couple I know are looking to buy in the Keys, happy young fools (!), wide eyed like we were twenty years ago...They haven't got their paperwork and downpayment organized yet so they needed a temporary open ended solution for the next phase of their lives. She was talking to a client who said I have just such a place, move in next month. At the sort of reasonable rent that shows the landlord likes to be friends with a trustworthy person and doesn't need help paying the mortgage. You need to be here to be here.

Dr Edie the mobile vet came by yesterday and Rusty left the room in a hurry. He curled up in my arms like a scared little shrimp as I lifted him back indoors and onto the couch to be tortured. He was so anxious he didn't even notice the two needles he got in the scruff of his neck, one for rabies and the other for the Distemper Parvo etc... general wellness stuff including I note Canine Covid. 

I'm guessing Rusty is an anti vaxxer by his demeanor but he is owned by a believer in the value of vaccination so he's out of luck. I highly recommend Dr Edie as after twenty years of looking after my dogs she has never set a foot wrong. She is a mixture of modern treatment and old-fashioned common sense with profound knowledge of the issues and problems animals face in this particular environment. One weekend Cheyenne's face blew up and I drove her to the Marathon Animal Hospital and they diagnosed a brain tumor and suggested a needle was the only answer. I went home crying uncontrollably and called Edie who showed up on Monday and took a quick look at Cheyenne's and my distorted faces and tried not to burst out laughing. Rattlesnake bite she diagnosed. She'll be fine.  Luckily it was probably a baby snake and she didn't get much venom. If it was cancer she said authoritatively the roof of her mouth would be distorted but it's fine. Of course she was right. What a ghastly weekend that was. I worship the ground Dr Edie walks on. She said call me if you have a problem on the road. I will.

You Have To Be Here to be here. If you want a laugh check out the Pan American Travelers page on Facebook. Most of it is dreck with a few tidbits worth plucking out like any mass gathering of people. Not everyone will be to your taste and that is as it should be else it would be a dull world indeed. The part that bothers me are the repeated pleas for reassurance. As though a bunch of armchair critics of no known history are in a position to judge and advise on your plans and routes and dreams and hopes. Is it safe to drive to Veracruz? Probably. What plans do you have to negotiate the dangers of El Paso would be my answer.

You have to go there to be there. If you screw up or something goes wrong you deal with it. The armchair critics will have moved on to unnerving some other poor lost soul. If you want to know if borders are open governments around the world have their rules and regulations posted on pages far from Facebook armchair critics.  On that same Facebook page  I have seen remarkable journeys undertaken by people driving much underrated Promaster vans. I am not an off road fanatic but I am looking forward to seeing what I want to see whether or not there is asphalt on the road to the spot in question.

I keep hearing the need for extra fuel two spare tires and massive off road ability at the merest mention of gravel dirt or sand. If I over estimate my ability I will report back, I promise, but when I see people say "I need four wheel drive" I wonder what lunar landscape they plan on driving to with their home on wheels?  Everyone wants four wheel drive nowadays and are willing to spend a quarter of a million dollars to get it. I felt obsessively wasteful spending $90,000 to get my dream off road, off grid, self sufficient Fiat Ducato built for me. My obsession as I shall explain in detail later is to have redundant systems and things that are easy to replace on the road in Third World countries. Automation and electronic wizardry are far from my priorities. Yet we have spent a hundred grand to get there. Amazing isn't it?

In the end you have to go there to be there. If you think I am crazy to leave the Keys remember you will need to come and take my place to come and take my place. There are jobs galore and the city is advertising 19 open positions this week, an unprecedented number and range. A new ay raise takes effect this month negotiated by the Teamsters. And yet we have half empty shelves in the supermarkets, service is worse than ever and slower and life seems to be a matter of swimming in slow moving marmalade to get anything done.

Just like driving the Pan ("All") American Highway to live in the Keys you have to find your footing on the lowest rung and start move one small step at a time. New experiences don't come easy, but for all, may they be worth it.