Its Spring Break and they are all around town. My wife went to dinner with a friend at the new Ambrosia restaurant in the nice new million dollar condos at the Santa Maria and she spotted impecunious students woofing raw fish, on the parental expense account no doubt. They aren't all big spenders, but they're in town and doing their youthful thing- everywhere. Smathers Beach is the main hang out for the decompressing college students in this weird Spring custom.
Smathers Beach is a long thin strip of sand (and seaweed) along the south shore of the island, backed by a four lane street which accommodates the wandering eyes of passing drivers, who tend to wander as they eyeball the youngsters:
I'm not one to question (excessively) the mating rituals of anyone, least of all people less than half my age but this Spring Break thing I have never understood , and had I gone to college I doubt I'd have wasted my time, or my testosterone at a beach with hundreds or perhaps thousands of similarly inclined youngsters. I'd have been riding my motorcycle. Come to think that was exactly what I did do when I was in my 20's on vacation. Students here come from afar:
And they sit on the beach or toss a ball:
Some apparently seek solitude, and find it too:
The vendors along Smathers sell the usual stuff, at least I suppose its usual because I'm not a frequent habitue of Smathers beach or any other frolicking spot along the strands of this great nation. The only beaches I like are the small secluded ones far from hot dogs and ice creams.
These vendors have all my respect, they cope with crowds, heat and no relief for hours in order to make a living while the beaches are bustling. they do it all day, day after day, and I'm pretty sure they don't go home to waterfront multi-million dollar condos. All for the pleasure of a life in "paradise." Amazing resilience in my opinion. This sign doesn't lie:
The moped traffic is pretty astonishing too, clumps of them, horns tooting and feet flying out as they parade their spectacular skill and
savoir faire in the manner of jousting knights. I'm quite fond of Honda's 50cc Metropolitan, but I never really considered it a babe magnet. Silly me.
Not forgetting the other thing that Spring break is about, which could make an interesting mixture if used simultaneously:
Then there are the electric vehicles and their apparently indecisive occupants. I have no idea what they were looking at or waiting for squashed into their absurd little electric car. Godot never approached me, I know that:
Bicycles by the dozen, including the ever popular vacation tandem:
Those rectangular signs on the back of mopeds and bicycles given them away as rentals:
This was no rental and made my heart go pitter-patter far more so than all the juveniles strutting around in their underwear:
For those not lucky enough to strut their stuff on a Vespa GTS, there are other classy activities to enjoy, sailing or para sailing for a start:
Those cement posts mark the location of an old boat ramp at the corner of South Roosevelt and Bertha Street, which hurricanes severally demolished bit by bit. The city decided it was not a good spot to be launching boats so they blocked it off. If one wants to sound like an old timer one calls this corner "the Ramp." I should note that the beach is something less than one might expect elsewhere in Florida where sand is what the land is actually made of. Down here sand is imported ( really!), the seaweed is free, courtesy of tidal flow:
And that seaweed which tends to rot gently in the heat needs to be cleaned up which requires the only farm tractor I've seen in the county weaving its way past the beach goers:
Just another feature of vacations in the Keys, beach clean up while you wait...Some people rent apartments and enjoy the view from afar:
But for some all the excitement is just too much and the beach can be an ideal spot for a little time out. That they sleep through it all is a testament to youth and a clear conscience no doubt:
I tip toed away back to my middle aged life. Nobody asked but if they had I should have told them it just keeps getting better the more middle aged you get. But if i remember right at that age no one can tell you anything. I'd also have told them to take their money, get a motorcycle and go and see some of the world. But that was me, young and middle aged.
It has been a few posts since I included gratuitous pictures of my Bonneville posing around town, and today, alas alack, is another one of those. It happened that we have been living through another Easter weekend and it seems for some this festivity is best enjoyed with one's family, which in the Keys often means making a journey, thus orphaning one's pets. So all is not lost for those like my wife and I who are on the holy day sidelines; we got to enjoy the company of Lula Mae for a long weekend.
I am one of those people that gets along quite nicely thank you with almost any dog, unless it is one of those sad creatures driven mad by neglect or imprisonment in solitary confinement in a yard or worse on a chain. My last dog died a couple of years ago and I'm not quite over it..yet, which is perhaps one reason I have yet to write an essay about Emma Goldman and Eugene Debs (and Debs died of cancer six long years ago already). My motorcycle had to stay put at home which was the down side of Lula Mae's visit but we did get to take a few splendid walks:
Lula Mae is an urban dog, used to wandering the sidewalks of the metropolis, but my idea of a walk is to find the path less traveled and then give it a good work out. Any dog that lives with me gets used to riding in the car and being poured out at one of any locations that strike my fancy. Lula Mae has no facility with water either and the sucking and gurgling sounds of the tide's ebb and flow at the submarine pens caused her some consternation:
Lula Mae grew up in rather insalubrious circumstances in Marathon and even had a litter of puppies before she was rescued from her dungeon. These days she lives the good life but from some dim recess of her memory she has retained a powerful loathing for other dogs. She's the reverse of my own phobias, as it were. And when taking her for a walk one needs to be cautious if other dogs are in the offing because she can pull like a train. While she has been known to overpower my wife, with me she pulls just for fun (Lula Mae, not my wife):
But in order not to spend too much time worrying about chance encounters I like to wander alone with her comfortably running back and forth off leash tiring herself out. That and some tug of war earns me a few quiet hours at home before the next bout.
That was the fun part of dog sitting, getting to enjoy the company of dog for a little while, long enough to be reminded of the pleasure and the obligation of dog ownership. The less fun part is a temporary return to driving everywhere in air conditioned comfort (it's been hot and sticky around here all weekend) with NPR on the radio and windshield wipers to fend off the occasional downpour. The thing is I have been bored senseless, more senseless than usual, trundling around in the back of a long line of cars, everywhere I go. I am reminded why many people who drive do it so badly- its deathly boring. 
I try to make it interesting, I try to stay alert and involved but other vehicles clog my sight lines and passing, even with a 3.5 liter v-six is fraught with all sorts of unpleasant possibilities when one is trapped in a cage. In town I find myself forced to lump along with no sense of adventure, no desire to take the long way there, no pleasure at taking longer to get there. I joined the lines of glazed eyes and glazed brains that bump across the bridges and causeways of the Keys. Of course I had a bright eyed and bushy tailed Lula Mae sitting up in the back wondering where the walk was going to be.
I'm not yet ready to be looking after a dog full time, I know it and I'm resigned to it for the time being. One day I'll put a fence around my house, stick a sidecar on the Bonneville ( like Ara and Spirit) and throw my dog and my walker in the hack. But for now, when I have to drive a cage I look out the window and struggle to stay alert, while not envying those around me carefree and irresponsible on their freedom machines:
All good things come to an end and Lula Mae is back home, after one final exhausting walk and tug-of-war and tomorrow I will be commuting properly, on the Bonneville once again, envying no one, riding for the fun of it. And yes, I will be missing Lula Mae just a little bit.
According to the agreement the only trees that will be cut down for the next decade are those that are felled naturally or cause a public safety concern. Amazing stuff, considering how hopeless the activist's cause seemed for such a long time. I am delighted.
There is a book about life in the Florida Keys that has all the elements of the modern pot boilers written about life at these lower latitudes, but none of the stereotypes. I can go through the remaining years of my life without having to crack a mystery story set in Key West, home of the Literary Eccentric Character. After all, I've read Charlotte's Story and that has given me my fill of true eccentric historical Keys people, at least in literature, to last the rest of my life.
Russell Niedhauk was apparently of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction and he betrayed his Teutonic roots in his levels of determination and hard work. He and Charlotte lived an idyllic existence on Elliott Key, fishing, tending their garden and other crops, beach combing and meeting smugglers and Border Patrol agents on their rounds. Yes indeed this book has something of the illicit in its pages, not to mention rather obscurely illicit transactions in the metropolis lightly alluded to by the late Ms Arpin-Niedhauk. Not exactly car chases but close enough.
It's a pretty book, nicely illustrated with drawings and photographs and the story it tells is illuminating for anyone remotely interested in South Florida history. Furthermore the story is told with a light touch which makes this an easy read, in case one could be worried about the style of a book written 70 years ago. 
The Niedhauks lived out their long lives in the Keys, moving on to take care of Lignumvitae Key later, what is now a park in the Middle Keys for many years. They were reportedly a well liked couple who ended their days on a houseboat in the Keys. But before all that, Charlotte took a trip to Key West and the final pages of the book include a tantalising description of the Southernmost City, including an illustration of the complexity of road travel before the 1938 connection was completed. That photograph of the car on the old (old!) Boca Chica bridge is never far from my thoughts when I travel Highway One. Perhaps one should be surprised to see so many cars on the island streets of Key West:
This was the book, I think, that gave me insight and appreciation for the difficulties of life long ago in these islands before the advent of air conditioning, communications and modern conveniences. It is also the tome that reminds me to keep my feet on the ground when I am inclined to complain about gentrification of the Keys, because sure as eggs is eggs, I couldn't have pulled off the lifestyle the Niedhauks subjected themselves to, for decades. Not with the humor and understanding and easy insight that Charlotte brings to her writing. 
Niles Is a common name in the Lower Keys, not least because the GM and Nissan dealer in Key West goes by that name. At Mile marker 26 there is a forty-foot tall span that crosses Niles Channel, and on the north side of Summerland key there is a hidden roadway that goes by the same name. Its quite tricky to find as one has to take Horace Road (really!) off Highway One and make a couple of ninety degree turns through a sleeping trailer park.
If you can tear your eyes off the sleeping woofer you can see Niles Channel Bridge in the background. I had been turned on to the possibility of some off road tracks by a young kid I met recently doing doughnuts in his truck when I was out exploring some other dirt tracks. Niles Road itself is the usual more or less straight line between mangroves:
I really like these roads, smooth and slightly curvy with few homes and a gentle breeze whistling through the branches. Sometimes I wish they went on further. Other times I wished that when I reached the end I was alone. But here, after a mile of paved road I found these two huddled with their pedalo boat, an unsuitable craft for windy salt waters:
Sometimes you just get a bad vibe and I don't know what these two were up to but whatever it was I didn't want to leave my motorcycle alone with them so I bagged my planned hike into the bushes where the paved road runs out and I turned back towards civilization, without turning the engine off. Civilization consists of a couple of unoccupied homes and a couple with signs of life. This one looked wrecked but when i stopped to shoot the "picturesque" trailer i observed the house had signs of movement behind the mosquito netting on the porch. So, again, I rolled away without giving anyone time to ask me to move on. It was getting to be a theme of Niles Road.
Then I spotted the dirt road turn off and finally found myself alone with Nature, on the peculiar marl particular to the dry season mangrove swamps:
So I worked my way through dry clay rutted by four wheeled vehicles, careful to keep my street Bonnie on the high side.
And it wasn't long before I hit moisture, deep water close in to shore as though it had been dug out by human hands, but in the process of being reclaimed by nature, as always:
And of course there is always human debris around in these places. Actually it was abundant and somewhat varied. First I found evidence of human ill treatment, a horseshoe crab used for sport. Its underside was pretty complete so it looked as though it had been plucked live and impaled, but perhaps I am reading more into than I should. Bored kids I suspected, for no reason other than I am extrapolating more than I should:
I tossed the baked little body back into the water where it sank slowly out of sight, a small Viking funeral. And if it was kids playing with the crab, then their elders and betters had been using this pristine spot as a dumping ground, ignoring the threat of a five hundred dollar fine as posted on signs along the roadway. A school bus roof? Priceless if not picturesque.
And more, so much more:
I even found a hillock a full six feet above sea level, and the altitude made me giddy scrambling up through the gravel, feathering the clutch, sliding the motorbike as I went:
I took the time to shoot a few more pictures of the Bonneville, and I confess I always like the look of the thing from the front, the aggressive tire and big round headlamp, very old fashioned I think. And in such surroundings too:
Further along I found an untouched trail, no signs of tire marks in a long time and the mud was smooth and flat, pierced by a few mangrove nematodes only:
And then back to the main road along the gravel trail:
And then back to the paved Niles Road, back towards the trailer park and sleeping dogs and busy fishermen and all the rest:
Highway One is overly busy during Spring Break with vehicles crowding the Overseas Highway in both directions at all hours, endless snakes of cars plodding to and from the bars of Key West. Luckily I had not far to go to get home and tend the sunburn brought on by my adventures. So little land so much fun. On a road bike no less.