Its about that time of year when Scooter in the Sticks announces that his Vespa is suffering from lack of attention and as the Pennsylvania salt chows down on his muffler he wants everyone else that rides daily to confess that they torture their motorcycles with a lack of attention. I told him I wash my Bonneville regularly and he seemed almost taken aback. I wasn't lying, I have an entire routine laid out, and here it is.First I hose the motorcycle down with a low pressure hosing. I do this anyway two or three times a week just to limit salt air corrosion which is a constant problem in the Keys. If its the weekly cleaning day I squirt Moto Clean 900, a Swiss product on sale at Pure Triumph, Fort Lauderdale, and then I brush it to break the dirt build up. Then more water, on low pressure of course, and things are starting to sparkle with about 6 minutes of moderate elbow grease. 
Then I take a cloth and mop up some of the water. On the Bonneville it tends to puddle at the base of the cylinders front and back. I use a microfiber cloth not only because it absorbs a ton of water but also because it doesn't scratch. I am also in the habit of running the cloths through the laundry from time to time to keep them clean and grit free. So far this operation has cost me ten minutes approximately. I like to run the engine for a few minutes to dry off the droplets that are left, sparkling in the sunlight, so I'll take advantage of this pause to show a gratuitous picture of my motorcycle, looking good at the submarine/housing pens. 
Then I use the can of Anti Rust pictured and I spray it on the chrome, the engine covers, on the carburettors, on the cylinders, around the headlamp and instruments and on the handlebar controls. And that's another three minutes.
Then I put everything back in the crate, put the crate in the shed and go upstairs to read the paper and drink a pot of tea on the porch while enjoying that virtuous feeling that comes from having a clean ride. Naturally this operation is easy to do with an average ambient temperature hovering around 80 degrees with the sunlight dappling the palm leaves. As if that weren't enough my Parabellum 20 inch windshield needs cleaning from time to time and I like this Teflon based cleaner. Its does a nice job of cleaning the plastic and unlike Plexus, another product I've used, All Kleer does an excellent job of keeping the surface slippery enough to allow raindrops and even dust particles to blow off.
Just rub it in with one microfiber cloth.
And dry it with a fresh cloth and the shield comes up beautifully shiny. I also use this product on all painted surfaces, fork legs, side covers, fuel tank, fenders, lamp lenses and I find it excellent in all respects. I also use it to buff my helmet visor and it does a nice job there too. 
My fabric Triumph bags ($250) come with built in plastic rain covers but I like to spray fabric bags with water repellent silicone because they get rained on unexpectedly from time to time. It's worked well so far, as I sprayed them when new and they've been through some weather (rain, people, NOT snow!) and the contents remain dry. 
I'm also reading about a lot of frustrated riders Up North who can't get out the front door for snow sleet and ice. Naturally I don't have that problem but this stuff sits on the shelf in my shed for my other engines. I use it in my gasoline generator that waits for the next "weather event" to knock out electricity. I also put Stabil in my boat's outboard when its on the trailer during the colder winter months. To leave an engine sitting without this in the tank is plain nuts. The recommendation is to add Stabil to the fuel and run the engine long enough to get the stuff into the carburettors or fuel injection as well. It just takes a few ounces to stabilize fuel for months.
And finally for those of us in the chain gang there is the final drive mechanism. I swore I would never get caught up in this nightmare again, but the Bonneville was just too sweet to pass up. Besides there is a belt drive manufacturer in Pennsylvania that sells $1000 belt conversions for Triumphs. When my chain wears out I'm getting one. Until then:
I use a specialised brush to wipe the links with good old fashioned kerosene. It smells like shit but the links come up clean after I give them a nice rag wipe. Plus I pull off the front sprocket cover and swoosh kerosene around there, then I check the tension (my Bonneville has the optional $250 center stand, thank you) and then I squeeze my Loobman chain oiler and off I go:
With apologies to Scooter in the Sticks because riding really is what it's all about. The rest is just dealing with crap.
I took my lunch break late last night, long after my two colleagues took theirs, and I set off on an island tour. It was a perfect night for it, a nearly full moon, a strong east breeze clearing out the humidity and pushing lumpy white clouds fast overhead. At 43miles per gallon my Bonneville isn't as frugal with a gallon of premium as my Vespa 250 (70mpg), but its still allows me to rack up the miles without worrying about the cost of dead dinosaurs. My Shell credit card gets me a five percent rebate too and that's starting to add up these days:
I was enjoying the night so much I took a couple of back roads to my first stop. Denny's on North Roosevelt is one of the few overnight eateries on the island and at 3:30 in the morning I pretty much had the Formica dining room to myself.
I have been reading The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy, a biography of a year teaching Gullah inhabitants of a 1970s barrier island in South Carolina. It's tough to read a book at work where I'm constantly interrupted by the phone or the radio, plus reading at 2 am tends to put me to sleep, so I prefer to write my blog between radio calls. Two strong cups of coffee and some peace and quiet were entirely refreshing at Denny's. 
I got back on the Bonneville at 3:55 and took off for Stock Island. Florida is a helmet-optional-for-adults-with-health-insurance State, and though I generally ride with a lid I make no apology for the times when I take to my motorcycle without. Last night was one of those occasions. It was quite glorious to hear the engine purr, to feel the reinforced breeze grabbing my hair and forcing my eyes to water slightly behind my glasses. When I'm all togged up with Kevlar and fiberglass and leather I have to force myself to feel the sensation of riding and it takes more self control to slow down and smell the passing saltwater. Glove-less, helmet-less and with my shirt snapping in the breeze I have all the inducement I need to slow down and feel the ride. It takes me back to my feckless youth when rain gear was a garbage bag and cold weather gear was waxed cotton, gross beyond measure where it rubbed the skin. Waxed cotton you say? No really, we wore canvas jackets and pants impregnated with solid kerosene wax to make it waterproof, which also rendered it smelly and and greasy to the touch. 
Nowadays even my panniers have reflective tape sewn into them. I was young and enjoyed riding in the 1970s and in my defence I knew no better. Nowadays I know better but I like to ride not just for the pleasure of the ride but also for the memories. Just being out in the warm night air, unarmored is a powerful memory aid. I grow weary of all the arguing over helmet laws because one side is shrill and the other makes me feel old, so I do my own thing and am prepared to take the consequences. Just as I revel in the pleasures of my memories.
College Road on North Stock Island, Mile Marker 5, is where I like to go when I want to practice taking some curves and pretending for a mile that I'm in the "countryside" and last night didn't disappoint. I played with my sight lines, took the curves with my toe touching ground near the apex as I practiced applying torque in the curve to increase traction and remind myself how to ride in the twisties if ever I find myself back among the mountains. 
After a few runs back and forth between the mangrove hedges I stopped to enjoy the post-eclipse moon at the edge of the lagoon and watched silver clouds scudding across the sky, driven by the winds. Across the water I could see the bright lights of the landfill, known locally as Mount Trashmore, the highest point in the Lower Keys. 
Nearer to me were a few squares of lighted windows in the dark rectangular bulk of the hospital, where I wondered might there be a few inmates staring at the ceiling counting their remaining hours and wishing they had filled their time with more adventure and less certainty. Perhaps a helmetless rider rendered immobile? Don't think I don't think about it!
Back in the city I turned left at the triangle and took off south on what Florida calls Highway A1A, which the city labels as South Roosevelt Boulevard and which I label as my favorite route into town. Since Hurricane Wilma deposited feet of sand across the road and closed it for months Florida has rebuilt the roadway, improved the bike and jogging path and created a smooth black ribbon of four lane highway. To the left as you head inbound you have the Straits of Florida, 90 miles of saltwater to Cuba, and to the right you pass the East Martello Tower:
And then a scattering of hotels, Double Tree, Hyatt, Sheraton famous chains all of them boasting modern amenities and ocean views in familiar architecture of the massive sort. Coconut palms transform the familiarity by shaking their fronds under the yellow street lights and turning the hotels into tropical resorts. I'm alone on the road and the Bonneville's headlight illuminates the sand and crab grass along the bridle path, the track where Key West's elite supposedly exercised their horses in the days before horsepower.
From Smathers Beach its a quick run up White Street, then Virginia to the back of the police station, park the motorcycle (rear wheel towards the curb, out far enough to be visible of course, Irondad) and back up to dispatch, lungs full of fresh sea air brain full of fresh appreciation for the rides possible in even a small place like Key West. All is calm in the room, an attempted suicide is recovering nicely at the hospital, no fights downtown, no burglaries, no lost tourists. Time to sit and ponder and feel the air, hear the motor in my head and plan the ride home in an hour followed by a fall into bed mind still buzzing with the ride. Do car drivers understand the stimulation they are missing?
Someone with a very large back hoe or a plentiful supply of dynamite came to the north shore of Boca Chica Key, at Mile Marker Eight and blew the bejeezus out of the limestone rock. They call these cuts in the rock the Submarine Pens. Thus one could reasonably assume that they were created to dock submarines in... However when you visit these very expensive holes in the water it becomes obvious the most you could do with them is...swim in them!
I don't know who dug them and I don't know when they were created but there are fully seven rectangular holes in the limestone, and to me as a veteran of the Canal they look wider and are definitely longer than the thousand-foot locks of Panama's Eighth Wonder of the World. They also appear to be a great deal less useful, even though they do look quite pretty in a pastoral, unmilitary sort of way: 
These holes in the water could be Key West's Stonehenge or perhaps, viewed from the air, they could be the island's crop circles or cousins to the enormous figures drawn in the deserts of South America. Submarines? I don't think so. I've poked around online and the only mention I can find of submarines and Key West are the official docks at Truman Annex, where the Navy was based for a long time. On the north side of Boca Chica Key the long arm of military militariness is still felt at the inner end of the road past the last pens:
The gate has a shiny new lock to protect the radar installation for the nearby Naval Air Station airfield where Navy jets take practice flights:
And clearly some locals have taken advantage of these unused giant swimming pools. I found a camp site complete with fire ring, tables and chairs and pool "facilities."
This place has been floating around in my consciousness forever, because I have heard people talk about the pens, but I have never previously bothered to come out here. Why? I don't know really despite my self anointed tag as an explorer. Now that I have come out here I feel like a kid discovering a huge new playground, and I'm guessing that weekdays in summer I shall find a corner or two within this "park" I can enjoy by myself on a hot sticky afternoon. 
The access road runs parallel to Highway One and then passes through some broken gates. As I rode the Bonneville through the gates I wondered, in a rather paranoiac state of mind, if armed Navy guards were going to leap out of the casuarina trees, armed to the teeth with camouflage sprouting from their helmets. No such thing came to pass, as I rumbled down the tatty old access road. In the distance, beyond Highway One, I could see the hangars at Boca Chica glowing in the evening sun:
And alongside the access road the old outlines of cement bunkers, probably ammunition magazines rose out of the mangroves like large immobile turtles: 
I first rode to the end of the road, snapping pictures as I went, still half wondering if I was in fact trespassing, but after I got to the locked gate I realised that I was alone on an empty, unmarked street open to all. The fact that we in the Keys live on small slivers of land necessarily gives these extra strips of open space value out of all proportion to what you see here. This is an excellent piece of parkland right off my commute and I can see strapping a folding chair to my saddlebag, stuffing a thermos of tea inside the same saddlebag and taking an afternoon to sit in the shade and read in peace and quiet, far from the distractions of modern life. No bums, no radios no nothing to disturb me or my motorcycle.
It isn't as though I have explored the whole place yet, so next time I will have to poke a little bit further, ride a little bit deeper into the undergrowth and check out a few more views.
Nevertheless I don't think that, picturesque though they may be, the Submarine Pens of Boca Chica Key are ever going to reveal the whys and wherefores of their existence. 
They call the chassis frame members a "tridiron" in smartspeak and those frames come in silver or black. The rest of the bodywork is plastic paneling that can be changed by simply unscrewing the various panels and attaching new colors of your choice. A nice way to eliminate dings and scratches...These 40 mile per gallon cars were conceived as urban transport and the original Smarts were 600cc, six foot long cars that could park rear to the curb in half the space of a "normal" car. In Italy they sometimes end up in motorcycle parking!
These newer models are 8foot 8inches long, hit 90 miles per hour and come complete with heated seats, air conditioning and full sound systems.
The entire vehicle is designed around the cabin which is the same size as a regular car's front seats, but the rest of the vehicle is a tad bit shorter.
I found the Smart pleasant to drive, a bit clunky in automatic and but smoother with the manual clutchless shifter so beloved of modern sporting cars. It picks up okay, but not brilliantly, and feels the bumps more than a longer car might but its a very usable vehicle incorporating a modest but adequate trunk. In some respects it is a worthy successor to the venerable Fiat 500, a simple car that offered no frills, a clunky gearbox (double declutch first gear!) and got people on the road even if they had little money.
The Cinquecento by Fiat has become an icon such that Florentine jewellers were selling them as trinkets on the Ponte Vecchio when I was visiting last year. Fiat has produced a new, more comfortable 500 as part of the new/old retro wave of automobiles led by the VW Bug and BMW's Mini, but my sister still has her original Fiat 500 in perfect condition and won't drive it anymore because she's shy and says it attracts too much attention! 
Modern Europeans are spoiled for choice when it comes to attractive small cars and my wife, while passing these paragons of economy on the pillion of my friend Giovanni's much more robust BMW 1200 two wheeler, took a fancy to Nissan's (convertible) Micra as her favorite.
For myself I still like the original urban machines, like this Vespa lurking in a Florentine alley,
or the BMW 650 I rented last June, seen here at the castle at Alviano near Orvieto: 
And modest scooters of all stripes still stir my heart more than micro cars:
Inside the Piaggio Museum in Pontedera, Tuscany, there are all sorts of vehicles that speak of Italy's need for wheels in the wake of World War Two. Piaggio's Ape (ahh-pay) is still seen everywhere on modern roads in Italy and the Third World including India where they still build them; it's a classic three wheeled workhorse. My wife cracked herself up sitting in my sister's Ape 50 "moped:"
The fruit vendor used to make his rounds in my Umbrian village driving an Ape 30 years ago, weighing the fruits and vegetables in a hand-held set of scales. And I remember the Vespa 400, real micro cars on the streets of Italy in the 60's and 70's. Now they are relegated to museums, the Smart car of their day:
And here's a gratuitous motorcycle picture, a heart throb if I ever I saw one, a Gilera single at the Piaggio museum:
Take that you urban poseurs! It would undoubtedly be hell to ride on modern city streets, but the image is lovely nonetheless, for those of us that dream unfettered dreams. 
My wife still dreams of owning a Smartfortwo convertible, she has her colors picked out, metallic blue on a silver tridiron, with the comfort package, out the door including sales tax for $20,000... but its not going to happen. And its a shame because this is the first car I've ever seen her really passionate about.
This was not a showroom in the normal sense of the word. This was a throwback to the East German style of selling Trabants, the smoky two stroke cars that passed for transportation in the former Worker's Paradise. You got what you were given which was whatever the Party thought you deserved to receive, and were happy to get anything at all, never mind the color of the body or the number of doors. The coed remarked how nice the Key West buyers had been when they received their cars, a Cabriolet instead of the Passion and how they had kindly taken what they were given (for $3,000 more- no discounts for French shipping errors!).