Home Sweet Home

Its summer time, puffy clouds that tend to turn thundery, flat waters, crystal clear and hot to the touch...
.............inland from the park, the causeway that supports Highway One offers a bed for one of my favorite plants: the seagrape. Their fruit isn't at all bad either, if you can get to the ripe grapes before the birds swoop down and clear the bushes.
Money Key, a mangrove-covered spoil island just south of the 7-mile bridge is cute froma distance. Up close its a mosquito infested pile of sand and rocks, debris piled up b y Flagler's engineers when they built the seven-mile bridge just to the north.
So, back to the theme:

Yes well glad to be home and rested by a few nights at work, so it was past time to head out on the Vespa and check out some of my favorite spots around the islands. It takes a bit to find back streets in these narrow roadways but I've found a few over the years.

The weekly "Solares Hill" runs a summer time feature called "Places we Love" which makes me think I know more than I know, because they feature places I've found on my own. I've also found quiet corners never before published. In case you are wondering this place isn't a secret.

Veterans Park is no hideaway, unless you are heading south off the end of the Seven Mile bridge oblivious to all around you, because there it is, large as life for all tourists to see. Those that are dawdling and looking around will spot this little spot and feel encouraged to stop. I like the shady tables under trees, a breezy place to read and think and snap a picture or two. If one is energetic there is a smidgeon of a beach, swimmable at higher tides. Also you get a nice view north, the seven-mile bridge to Marathon, and to the south the open waters of the Florida Straits. I just love the sparkle on those waters, so call me a tourist too, even though I live here!

My european trip was memorable and deserves a mention, but I was glad to get home, 96 degrees and all.

Settling In

I made it home in one piece along with bags of stuff and hundrds of photos and enough weird memories to last me another year of routine. A mixture in my mind such that I can hardly separate the railway ride from the scooters of Albania from my sister breaking down in tears when she saw me for the first time in 20 years.
The house is as it was, the blog seems do-able after three weeks away and I shall wrestle with the camera in the days to come, and the formatting, and the controls and on and on.
The Vespa started first push of the starter and I rode home from the storage locker with a big smile.
And so, tonight, to work.

Preparing for Flight

Wouldn't you just love to be able to flap your wings and lift off for a new destination. And so we do we middle class, middle world people. We burn tens of thousands of gallons of aircraft grade kerosene in order to stretch our wings and plop ourselves down a few thousand miles away. With all the fuel I could run my 70mpg Vespa, full speed several times around the world. It would be a gruesome, achy way to travel but the fuel would go a long way using my scooter.
I hate flying. Its crap standing around in lines like sheep, taking off our shoes in honor of Richard Reid the mad bomber who pissed on his own bomb, and then spending hours wedged into plastic seats breathing everyone else's germs All the while burning a giant hole in the atmosphere, or looked at more apocalyptically, when we fly we clutter the overburdened atmosphere with more burnt gasoline gas.
But every cloud has a silver lining and my wife has procured for us, by the alchemy of airline mileage credit cards and persistence, two lovely business class seats to Vienna. Comfortable travel it seems even as the plebs in the back of the plane burn kerosene wildly in their narrow plastic-lined torture buckets.
There is some other thing that is vaguely wrong and troubling to me. I'm starting to look forward to this trip. All those fears and niggling worries about being back in the lap of my family, the root of all the trouble in my early life, is melting away, perhaps because I am truly tired of being at work. Perhaps because there is nothing to fear.
So, in a few hours we flap our wings and head east, like eagles soaring into the old world. The home of Vespas, and Etruscans and American tourists in gold pants and tour buses.

Putting My Vespa Away

Today I managed to lock my Vespa up in a dark stuffy cell. I rented the storage locker for a month while I'm off galivanting in Italy and my scooter will sit still in the dark. Its tough picking a time to leave for a summer vacation when you live in the Keys, hurricane season works up to a crescendo in August and particularly September, so I'm off hoping June/July will be quiet.
I never cease to amaze myself how much I enjoy riding the scooter through these islands. Its not a motorcycle, nor do i want it to be a motorcycle. I've had quite enough of riding along, my feet and legs out in the breeze, a hot engine nestled between my legs,my feet slipping ever-so-slightly on the foot pegs and my pant legs flapping horribly in the breeze. I have to remember to shift gears, an annoying habit as it takes my attention off the road and the views and the general pleasure of riding in the tropics. Yes, the tropics, the subtropics, the heat. I love the heat especially sweeping through the green and the blue and the warmth on my silent, smooth Vespa. I am going to miss the daily
ride.
I am glad I have a commute because it gives me an excuse to ride. Its just a one road county around here but its one hell of a road. Bridges give way to causeways just a few feet above the sea. The views off each side of the road show flat waters, clumps of green mangroves sprouting out of the water like toadstools. The road itself is lumpy with lack of maintenance and the roadside attractions are pretty rough. I mean this is a corridor that absolutely screams out for some urban planning...Shacks superimposed on shacks, neon, landscaping that more resembles a junkyard than anything else, all sidling up to the long umbilical that is US Highway One.
And then there's me, sweeping happily along on my gearless 250cc buzz bomb. The great thing about the Vespa GTS for a middle-aged man like me is that its comfortable. I can sit, have sat, on the broad black seat for 12 hours and been able to walk away at the end of a trip. That was ona recent trip to the Everglades. I did a similar trip ast year on my cruiser motorcycle and my ass hurt aftre one hour.

Weather or Whether

The saying goes that the weather is what makes life so appealing at latitude 24' 30" North, and, assuming you like warm weather that's no lie. The ranks of the residents swell every winter with legions of snowbirds who flee south to escape winters they've lived with all their working lives. Winter weather in Key West is alternating patterns of what feels cold to me, 60 degrees (15 celsius) and windy rain with the arrival of a cold front followed by a tolerable 75 degrees (18 celsius) and bright wintry sunshine.
In summer, when the snowbirds have long gone it just gets better, and I revel in heat and humidity leavened by breezes and airconditioning. While the snowbirds dandle their grand children in 100 degrees of 100 percent humidity I duck out of bright sunny 90 degree days, and sit on the porch in the breeze after a swim, or I choose to lounge indoors and set the air conditioning to 76, cool and refreshing and shady.
The best of the weather is the rain, and for the first time in my life I don't dread the onset of the rainy season. Unlike most places where precipitation coincides with winter and produces cold damp, muddy, or God forbid snowy conditions, here in snowbird's paradise summer rains bring a welcome chill, a refreshing flood which passes through and disappears in half a day leaving more sunshine, more puffy white clouds and rising steam from the wet blacktop.
Then there are days like today when I want nothing more than to ready for departure putting away outdoor stuff and...it rains, it pours, it buckets down and nothing can be put away wet not even for a brief absence of a few weeks.
Wet garden cushions and wet Vespas will moulder gently in the dark. So I sit and wait and write a post, wishing for bright hot sun, and instead wave after wave of thick black clouds, pelting rain and gusts of cool wet air hold me captive indoors, watching the trees swaying and drinking outdoors- a jolly green festival, a soughing ode to rain. Time's awasting and there's a plane to catch Monday morning, whether I'm ready or not. The stress of sub-tropical life.

Continuing My Test

I decided to set up this blog before my three week vacation out of town. I expect to come home refreshed and supplied with stories and pictures for my amusement.
Meanwhile another thought about Key West:
There are four commonly told lies about my home town. Key West is NOT:
an island: its a peninsula connected to the mainland by 42 bridges;
tropical: it lies in the sub-tropical belt, the Tropic of Cancer is between Havana and Key West;
in the Caribbean: its in the Atlantic, and America's Caribbean Islands are the Virgins and Puerto Rico, not Key West which lies well north of the Caribbean Sea;
laidback: this is the worst lie propagated by Jimmy Buffet's popularization of "island time." Most people hold down at least two jobs to allow them to struggle by here.

Key West is the best place I've ever lived, and I moved here from California with little or no understanding of the Parrothead phenomenon or the Mid West obsessiveness with Key West. I just wanted warm air and water and a good jumping off spot for travel by land (that peninsula thing) or air (Miami International). It has turned into a place that for the first time in my nomadic life speaks to me as home. Key West warts and all.
Oh and then there's my Vespa. Key West is America's most scooter-friendly city: might as well have my scooter featured as well. I've been riding motorcycles for years and around here I can pretty much leave the car at home. So I decided it was time to go back to a Vespa, after years away from scooters, riding bigger machines. Riding my GTS gives me an armchair seat to watch the Keys go by.