If you happened to live near Mile Marker 24 and you wanted to start a band you might think of calling it anything, but were you to choose the name Mile Marker 24 you would be too late: it's taken.
Mile Marker 24 was playing at Boondocks Bar on Ramrod Key last night and to no one's surprise the place was packed. This group of friends that decided to play music full time is developing a cult following and when you listen to them its no surprise. They aren't pioneers by any stretch but they are the genuine article that Jimmy Buffet used to be and pretends to be today. The guys in the band play that brand of music that one might call island funky, the sort of sounds that mix Soca Reggae and Parrothead in equal measure and produce a sound that pleases anyone who lives or aspires to the Keys way of life as promulgated by the sainted Buffet.
Boondocks is an excellent location for the band, informal Tiki architecture, intimate seating for lots of people and a decent restaurant serving a solid serviceable menu. The seats for those not eating filled up well before the start of the concert and the T-shirt and CD stands were doing good business.
I like the music (what's not to like? A group that includes an actual trumpet and tin drums is searching for, and finding, it's true Caribbean roots), and the band sings about rum and hurricanes and tropical breezes and even if you didn't know any of them you'd know the lads sang of that which they know. They aren't pirates or millionaires (yet) they are just a bunch of dudes having fun and inviting the listeners in to enjoy their jam session. It's very effective.
Boondocks is an excellent location for the band, informal Tiki architecture, intimate seating for lots of people and a decent restaurant serving a solid serviceable menu. The seats for those not eating filled up well before the start of the concert and the T-shirt and CD stands were doing good business.I like the music (what's not to like? A group that includes an actual trumpet and tin drums is searching for, and finding, it's true Caribbean roots), and the band sings about rum and hurricanes and tropical breezes and even if you didn't know any of them you'd know the lads sang of that which they know. They aren't pirates or millionaires (yet) they are just a bunch of dudes having fun and inviting the listeners in to enjoy their jam session. It's very effective. We had a good time at Boondocks, the staff are cheerful and helpful, speedy and efficient and though Bud Lite is nowhere near what I consider to be a beer (yes, yes real beer for real yuppies please) it was a pleasant place to spend an evening. The shrimp Alfredo included lots of shrimp and truly al dente pasta and the blackened shrimp on the side were spicy and delicious. Lighting is of the "mood" variety as one can surmise from the fuzzy picture.
All this abundance of joy followed by an unfortunately short ride home on the ever delightful Bonneville. My wife finally admitted that commuting in a convertible makes her look forward to the daily drive.
We got to talking about the commute while chatting up the wife of one of the band members. We used to live in the marina she runs in Key West and now that her husband is becoming a full time musician she too has a commute from the area of...Mile Marker 24 to the marina. As a convert to the keys commuting lifestyle she told us how much she likes living in the Lower Keys outside the city.
We feel like its a secret not shared by the inmates of Key West who put up with narrow spaces, loud noises of all kinds and crazy neighbors. I enjoyed living on our Gemini catamaran while traveling but it was a tiresome in the Key West marina we called home for a couple of years. Marina living is "affordable" and for too many people its just cheap rent, say $800 a month, not a sailing lifestyle and our living aboard became a burden to us and our Labrador. Not half the burden it is on a marina manager dealing with all the petty bullshit of a bunch of malcontent liveaboards so I am pretty sure our friend will be glad to get away and become a road manager for the touring band.
All this abundance of joy followed by an unfortunately short ride home on the ever delightful Bonneville. My wife finally admitted that commuting in a convertible makes her look forward to the daily drive.We got to talking about the commute while chatting up the wife of one of the band members. We used to live in the marina she runs in Key West and now that her husband is becoming a full time musician she too has a commute from the area of...Mile Marker 24 to the marina. As a convert to the keys commuting lifestyle she told us how much she likes living in the Lower Keys outside the city.We feel like its a secret not shared by the inmates of Key West who put up with narrow spaces, loud noises of all kinds and crazy neighbors. I enjoyed living on our Gemini catamaran while traveling but it was a tiresome in the Key West marina we called home for a couple of years. Marina living is "affordable" and for too many people its just cheap rent, say $800 a month, not a sailing lifestyle and our living aboard became a burden to us and our Labrador. Not half the burden it is on a marina manager dealing with all the petty bullshit of a bunch of malcontent liveaboards so I am pretty sure our friend will be glad to get away and become a road manager for the touring band. This summer Mile Marker 24 is going on tour nationwide which is great for them and better for Parrotheads across the Mid West, but living in an RV, being on the road, and playing every night someplace different for six months is a dedicated life I do not envy.
Even though they will only be singing about hurricane watches and we will actually be living them. Oh well.
So I took off with the helmet and gloves in the top case and enjoyed a perfectly glorious summer afternoon in January. 85 low-humidity degrees, bright sunshine reflecting off the water and traffic that didn't bother me a bit as I was perfectly content to pootle along at forty miles per hour.
The road beckoned. And I had choices- east or west? I went north instead, an oldie but goodie. In keeping with the laid back theme of the day I just blipped the throttle when some dork tried to cut into my lane before the traffic light; I assumed lack of attention, not homicidal tendencies and kept going.
I crept towards No Name Key on the back roads, clipping the dirt short cuts in first gear and missing the holes as best I could. The Bonneville, even in its modern incarnation is renowned for its torque, that is its ability to get up and go from low revs in high gear. What isn't so well known is that it has a very tall first gear which makes ambling at walking pace a little more tricky. I like to think I could pick my way through a dirt road or two in a more hilly part of the country but I think it might be quite an exercise in feathering the clutch or going hell for leather, which would, in either case, be unnerving. Dirt on Big Pine is mild and not so bracing.
So much so I stopped and played with my Nikon Coolpix point and shoot camera, fiddling with focus and light and wondering how I managed before the advent of digital when you took your pictures, took laborious notes and got it all muddled up when you finally got the pictures home. I could see my crappy ones immediately, by the side of the road. 
It wasn't anywhere near that dark, but I liked the definition I got on the cloud, which got a summery, thundery air. No Name Key has but one road leading to a dead end, actually the place where the old pre-Overseas Highway ferry arrived from Knights Key in Marathon. Nowadays the boulevard just stops at water's edge and the few people who live on No Name do so on typical side streets on canals. 
This was also the place where the Cuban counter revolutionary nutters practiced for the Bay of Pigs invasion in dreadful secrecy because it was all terribly illegal. Nowadays its a wilderness area, electricity-free and the bridge from Big Pine offers splendid fishing apparently. For me the end of the road was a place to play with the camera.
No motorcycle. Then add one motorcycle.
Then add a motorcycle part and let the exposure show the real state of the day.
I tried to take a trip down a dirt side road but soon enough the gruesome ubiquitous "No Trespassing" sign popped up with a locked chain dangling across the dirt. I positioned the Bonneville to hide the chain and highlight the motorcycle.
Then I figured the Bonneville's 865cc power plant deserved a mention and a thank you for giving me 5,000 splendid miles.
And on my way off the island I passed by this wonderment that caught my eye. I'll bet you can't get the decrepit structure at the end of this lane for less than say, 750,000 US dollars. Consider there is no electrical service on No Name Key so you'll need to learn to maintain the generator, replace the batteries from time to time, and drive 20 minutes just to get to the Overseas Highway, which still leaves you an hour from the fleshpots of Key West. You'd think with all these inducements to keep looking the owners would perhaps clean up one's first impression? Hell no baby! 
We don't need no stinkin' curb appeal. Nor vertical mail boxes apparently. Its all part of the charm and if you don't understand it, no one can enlighten you. And you probably shouldn't think of buying either if you think an expensive home for sale deserves the best possible presentation. This is as good as home sales get in the fabulous Florida Keys, when a crappy home looks like a million bucks on a sunny day in January.
Help! The sailors are coming to town! It's January and the amateur boat owners and their professional crews of the Southern Ocean Racing Conference are littering our streets with their boats and trailers and massive trucks. They've taken over the Outer Mole and Truman Annex parking area and are exposing themselves en masse to our weak January rays. Unlike the inappropriate tourists paddling in the freezing 77 degree sunlit waters, these sailors are busy maneuvering trailers: 
maintaining the hulls:
and hoisting themselves aloft to reeve halyards and secure tangs:
Busy, busy stuff, which is all very well and good but it has impacts, you know, all this busyness. I don't want to sound whiny or anything but our town is now filled with burly sailors and while that may make many a gay heart flutter, as it did years ago apparently, when the Navy loosed hundreds of lonely sailors on the city nightly, for those us us trying to live well regulated lives these sailors are a damned nuisance.
City residents more often gripe about Bike Week and loud motorcycle mufflers, or Lezzie Week when the city fills with women holding hands, but personally Race Week troubles me. Not least because, as a former cruising sailor, everyone expects me to be interested in the antics of a bunch of pituitary cases loose on the water, but also because too many islanders don't know the first thing about sailing and they expect me to know about racing. Aside from the fact that I couldn't care less about racing, I couldn't care more about the long slow lines on the roads and streets as boats come and go with all their protrusions and extrusions laid unnaturally horizontal.
Which, when they are left vertical even I have to admit they have somewhat slightly poetic lines, as they soar above the ugly, slab-like raceboats.
But also because this is the week my wife has her birthday and finally after years of pretending to ignore the problem we have to come out of the closet and admit it. No matter how much money the city at large earns from Race Week we absolutely hate the fact we can't go out for a quiet tete-a-tete and have dinner together somewhere nice, because every bloody eatery is packed with loud obnoxious sailors using bread and wine bottles to illustrates the day's idiocy (tactics they call them) carried out on our beautiful winter turquoise waters.
Really, couldn't they just move race Week to say, early February and let us celebrate the passing of the years together with a nice, quiet meal out?
Am I a fuddy-duddy or what?
Layton is just a long straight stretch on the highway, a speed limit of 45 mph, with, from time to time a Sheriff's deputy on patrol keeping an eye on those passing through. However there is always one patrol car lurking near the Post Office and you know when you are tailing a visitor because the brake lights come on in a hurry.
I never speed through Layton because after the tyro has slowed and sped up again realising its only a decommissioned patrol car, there can often be found a second, occupied, car at the last remaining grocery store in the little town. 
Or possibly a patrol car on the verge further south near the entrance to Long Key State Park, just before the limit goes back up to 55mph. 
The suburban canals behind the homes give access to some pleasant natural mangrove waterways, decent enough fishing spots of course,
but also they lead to the real prize,the open waters of fish-infested Hawk Channel behind the reef, and to the north there are the endless shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Sailors know of Long Key because of the bight at the east end which offers a shallow anchorage and the Channel V bridge which provides the last seventy-foot tall bridge before Marathon.
Though you can't buy gas because the gas pumps and associated grocery store/bait shop closed a while back. 
Layton has two claims to fame. One was that the author Zane Grey spent winters living and fishing here between writing Westerns and second I bought my first and only skiff from some dude who lived on a canal behind the grocery store and marina.
It was a 14-foot Dusky for with all the trimmings including a duff 30 horse outboard that died soon after, but the hull is excellent and with a new Yamaha its a great addition to my motor pool. I think about that slick bugger every time I ride through town.
My wife and I ate at Little Italy one night on our way out of the Keys; it was old fashioned checkered table cloth Italian food, decent enough I suppose when you are waiting for a traffic accident to be cleared, but rather funky old fashioned. There was a plan to develop the restaurant out of existence and replace it with a resort, but for now what with bursting bubbles and all, its still there. This waterfront thing is next door to the restaurant and aside from not knowing what its about exactly, it highlights the fact that as usual curb appeal is totally lacking in the Keys. God Bless Funky.
But they don't depopulate Key West for Layton, because there are only a thousand hardy souls who can stand real-life Mayberry blandness, and my helmet's off to them every time I rumble through- at a sedate and legal 49 miles-per-hour.
I think diving is a very eccentric activity, its eccentricity alleviated, I'll admit reluctantly, if you choose to dive in waters as clear and warm as those of the Florida Keys in summer. I qualified as a diver 20-odd years ago in the cold dark waters off Monastery Beach near Carmel, and though it was summer in California the green dark waters of the Pacific Ocean pressed in on me as though I was locked in a freezer. I floated down through the green pea soup and eighty feet down landed gently on an endless rippled beach which disappeared into the murk on all sides. Red rocks showed brown in color, green kelp looked black. I found diving sucked the life out of life itself. I quit after several attempts to enjoy getting cold in deep darkness.
Sailing in warm tropical waters I found a snorkel, mask and fins to be all the equipment I needed to enjoy bright sunlit colors and all the fish, corals and other sea life I needed to keep my little brain amused. Snorkeling the pristine waters of Central America was the cruisers way of "going to the movies." Some boaters liked to haul diving gear and air compressors around but I was content floating near the surface. It turns out humans throughout history have not been content and their curiosity gave rise to a long history of humans submerging themselves. Sufficient indeed to allow a migrant to the Florida keys to build his own History of Diving Museum. 
Its at Mile Marker 83 in the Upper Keys and its hard to miss, unless you are determined not to check out the north side of the Overseas Highway as you roll past Tavernier on your way south. I had never given it much thought but the history of diving is actually a history focused on diving helmets. You can't breathe, much less see, or work underwater unless you have a proper helmet. Halley, of comet fame pondered the problem and came up with this design, reproduced in the museum a few hundred years after the fact:
Personally I think this thing looks creepy and would probably have a heart attack were I to encounter it in a dark alley at night. The museum itself is fascinating, created inside an extended building with a self guided tour in a U-shape through various chambers that trace the evolution of diving (helmets).
The rooms are crowded with equipment, mannequins, displays and audio visual explanations and it is totally absorbing, even for someone like me who has little interest in suiting up and jumping in.
The museum has an absolutely staggering collection of helmets including one from each country that has ever produced a diving helmet and that alone, apparently is a claim to fame. They were all neatly aligned in a lighted audio-visual display. Next door there were literally piles of helmets of all shapes and sizes in abundance, all over the place:
That display looked pretty much alike to me, the fundamental commercial design is what it is, but the amateurish first efforts to create helmets ended up looking like a crazy quilt to my untutored eye:
From those early beginnings divers have learned to dress themselves in the underwater equivalents of armor plate which allows divers to work hundreds of feet down at surface pressures. This suit was made in Italy after World War Two:
The pride and joy of the display seemed to be the US Navy Mark V helmet, so unusual an item that they even displayed a fake copy of this Rolls-Royce of diving helmets, familiar to some of us from the movies. They showed four examples of the real thing on a rotating display:
And now I know more than I ever expected to know about the history of diving (helmets).