The Socialists are coming! The Socialists are coming...on a Triumph Bonneville? Its a terrible thing but places like Duck Key make me crazy, so naturally on a beautiful Fall day like today with 85 degrees of sunshine and a cooling southeasterly breeze it was a perfect day to drive myself crazy.
Duck Key sits south of Highway One at Mile marker 61, across a short causeway decorated with columns and signs that don't actually say Keep Out but that's the theme. You can't keep a good Bonneville out.
Duck Key was the creation of Pritam Singh, the hobo turned Sikh developer born in Boston and settled in Key West who famously drove himself broke buying the Navy Base that became Truman Annex. He made a fortune ultimately and turned his hand to making Duck Key just north of Marathon, Paradise in the Middle Keys, as it were.
This wide spot in the Highway is a shared paradise, half occupied by a mixture of elderly cement homes, in the raised style of the sixties. 
These are being taken over by Money and turned into Palm Beach by the Keys. 
I love these massively expensive homes tiled with Mediterranean roof tiles that'll blow halfway to Tampa in a hurricane. Actually these objects of conspicuous consumption irk me to death. I see no value in making expensive exurbia of a Florida Key, a place traditionally reserved for scrounging a living, not lounging a living. I suppose a traditionally inclined Conch sponge fisherman might sneer equally at my level of indulgent living, a weatherproof home equipped to excess with air conditioning, running water and a low flush water closet. The height of bourgeois excess no doubt. My little island has no Mickey Mouse bridges across the canals.
On the other hand Duck Key, the half that isn't Singh's exclusive Hawk Cay Resort, could never be described as plebeian. 
I mean, one has to wonder a little bit about this opulence doesn't one? Especially considering that most of these homes are unoccupied. These are the homes of people who show up a week or four every year, and the rest of the time they are the domain of electricians and plumbers, gardeners 
and Mexican weed whackers. Some idle people fish off the canals, for fun:
but that's too close to life in the rest of the Keys, I think. So the anglers are a lone breed far from the majority of elderly housebound millionaires, yet hardly close to the world of commercial fishing.Duck Key is not a serene place, the few empty lots are lined with Realtors' signs looking almost disdainful that someone might want, or worse need, to profit from these small squares of open spaces wedged between the homes and pools and canals. The air is redolent with the sounds of small motors buzzing as the industrious Mexicans clear away leaves, whack impudent weeds and apply coats of paint to slightly worn exteriors. I ride through this world and wonder why people feel the need to own more than they can use. Its a terribly European sentiment, I admit and I try to shake it. But I cannot be like my American neighbors who feel only a warm glow of satisfaction when they see people who have managed to make vast fortunes and can think of nothing better to do than to add to them. I think its a very American sense that its possible for anyone to accomplish given industry and luck in the proper proportions. Europeans have a nasty sense that to be successful demands a hook between the shoulder blades and a sharp tug back into the mire of ordinary living.
And then I ride home and revel in my quiet neighborhood of small houses, unadorned canals and empty snowbird nests. Just like Duck Key, only less so.
We have met the enemy and he is us. My kind of Socialism I suppose.
This is a town with narrow streets and way too many cars already so for up to 8 months out of the year finding parking is a drag and people shove and squeeze their cars into excessively small spaces in an effort to create a space where one might reasonably be assumed not to exist. In New Town, the more expansive outer two thirds of the island, parking spaces are more reasonably proportioned by collective madness seems to take over local drivers and they ding and bang each other's cars as though they were in the narrow confines of Old Town. 
The net result of all this mainland attitude meeting the island reality of limited space means that there just isn't a really good reason to own a cage unless you have off street parking and like to drive to the mainland from time to time (I qualify in both categories). Nevertheless when seventy percent of the cars on the island drowned following the Wilma inundations of 2005, almost everyone I can think off went out and bought new SUVs to replace their lost transport. The net result is crowded streets, as badly clogged as ever.
My mainland vehicle is a 5 year old Nissan Maxima and it has its share of scratches and scrapes, though it runs perfectly and is a fine 3.5 liter machine for passing slow pokes on Highway One. My wife is girding her loins to replace it, as it approaches the 100,000 mile mark, with a convertible. She's hesitant partly because she hates spending the money (she doesn't mind buying me a motorcycle though- women!) and partly because she knows that if she gets a glossy Sebring or a Solara it stands an excellent chance of getting dinged- bright clean cars attract scratches in Key West's Old Town. By contrast our "Conch cruiser" a ten year old scarlet Geo Metro is crisp and clean and completely scratch free. I figure its just too modest a car to attract the attention of the sociopaths who feel compelled to put scratches on strangers' cars. 
I guess if I lived in the city I would not bother with a car, its easy enough to rent one, and off street parking is rare as hen's teeth in Old Town. Even in New Town, land of suburban styled American homes, garages are usually converted to living space, so cars end up where kids can egg them, drunk drivers can sideswipe them and disgruntled pedestrians can key them. But you can't separate most Americans, even emigres to island living from their cars. Its a tribute I suppose that around one third of city residents have chosen to deprive themselves of their cars. 
I doubt the Autoridad in charge these days would be too impressed were we to return and expect a transit for our 34-foot catamaran through the canal. These days its a self funding operation and every transit has to pay for itself and sailboats are very low on the totem pole. Our buddy Anna rode through with us to check out how she and her husband Ian were going to cope with their boat Joss. We had a minor crash later when the tug we tied up to left us in the lurch and we were slightly beaten up as we were dragged through the lock sideways by the currents. Damage was minor but we stared death in the face for a few awful minutes.
Days later Joss made it through fine, though I was always worrying about what had happened to us as we locked through on their trip. Ian confided in me later that he couldn't get the image out of his mind of Miki G swirling helplessly through the lock like a leaf down a drain. 
Miki G moored for several weeks at the now defunct Pedro Miguel Boat Club, next to the Pedro Miguel locks on Lake Miraflores. The marina used to be a Canal Zone perk, but during the US Administration it was also an excellent place to tie upto make repairs and rest from the culturally arduous business of cruising Latin America. Pedro Miguel was an English speaking, boater friendly, oasis even in the years after the Zone was ended and Americans only stayed on to help transition to Panamanian Administration. However the Autoridad del Canal de Panama has shut the place down after a long legal battle and pictures such as this can no longer be taken because the club is gone (plus we sold the boat to a friend in Key West who isn't interested in cruising right now!). One of these days I'm going to write an entry about all the place I've been that no longer exist. A depressingly long list, indicating an excessively long and well traveled life I think, even though the places themselves weren't that great; the USSR and East Germany high on the lackluster destinations I Have Known. 
I keep this picture framed in my office to remind me of our mad cap adventures trying to find places to walk the dogs away from the prying eyes of the officious Customs agent who was determined to enforce Panama's 'no pets ashore' rule. Emma, our Labrador stuck close to me while Debs, our Husky dived into the bushes like the little explorer he always was. Everyone in the rest of the country ignored the quarantine rule and we took the dogs everywhere with us, into Panama City, into Darien by rental car, and up into the mountains in the middle of the country.
After we got through the Canal we spent several more idylic weeks in the more famous San Blas islands on the Caribbean side of Panama. These Kuna indian islanders practice a low tech medieval lifestyle in their own autonomous province known to them as their Kuna Yala, with their own system of justice and social pecking order, similar to, but more idylic than, a US Indian Reservation. These islands resembled the Keys somewhat, in as much as they had coconuts, narrow sandy beaches and lots of scrub vegetation. We sailors gathered in calm anchorages and hung out barbequing under the stars, telling stories, swimming and playing cards until our supplies ran out and we had a private plane fly us out the fixings for a massive Thanksgiving dinner in November 1999. Believe me, we were absolutely bulging with thanks that memorable desert island holiday.
Teaching kids to pet the dogs (with treats of course!) on the Rio Diablo/Corazon de Jesus footbridge in the Kuna Yala. Kids are kids in the most remote places and Labradors do like their treats.
Boot Key has been formally cut off from the United States this week, making it a minor outlying island in the tradition of Conch Republic craziness. Boot Key is a small lump of scrub and mangroves on the Atlantic side of the city of Marathon (Marathon "Key" despite the best efforts of tourism promoters does not exist), and its partially occupied by a road, some commercial fishing docks leased to the fishermen by the owner of the radio station that operates out of Boot Key. The State of Florida in all its majesty this week ordered the City to shut down the drawbridge because it isn't able to support it's own weight let alone cars and humans. The radio station is now having its personnel ferried to the island courtesy of the City, which has to scrounge up at least $10 million dollars to fix the bridge to nowhere, or $1 million ( estimated) for the Corps of Engineers to dismantle the bridge's opening span. Which by the way still requires an operator to open the bridge to allow masted boats to get into Boot Key Harbor. The theory is that if the span is left open it might blow over in strong winds. As one might surmise there is a good deal of heated debate going on about what to do with this problem. After the parties involved solve this issue, they promise to head to Jerusalem and bring peace to the Middle East.
This was the summer that I never made it out to Tarpon Belly Key, a place where I can put out a recliner on the beach and take a quiet read. Even though the beach is more rocks than sand, this can be viewed as an advantage as it attracts fewer visitors. I can't remember a time when I found someone else sunning themselves on the pebbles when I wanted to be there. Indeed I read in the paper this week that Tarpon Belly had a visitor who really would rather have been elsewhere. Silly man. He took off from the ramp at Blimp Road on Cudjoe and paddled his kayak out into the wind blown waters. It doesn't look far but he was apparently stuck.
The brisk breezes dragged him out and washed him up on Tarpon Belly. There's not much there for a castaway but he was apparently in good health when the Marine Patrol found him the next day. Having failed to make the 40 minute boat ride even once this summer, through flat waters, I rather envy him his stay on my island.
Target is the store she most misses in the lonely fastness of Key West, and of course Costco, where we went later, for those essential huge boxes of bananas and 144 count tubs of sponges and barrels of liquid aminos and I don't know what.