My wife is finally able to ride her Vespa after wrist surgery in mid-December and even though I've taken the ET4 for the occasional spin it has essentially been sitting for the past several months. Thus it was I decided the Vespa needed a proper tune up, and I chose Vespa Sarasota because Vespa Miami screwed up the repair of my GTS's fuel injection so badly that my wife no longer trusted them. Luckily I don't mind driving but getting out of bed at midnight cost me a bit. The ET4 was already loaded in the trailer, the Sirius receiver was in the car with a pillow, a blanket and directions to the store:The drive out the Keys was pleasant enough but I wasn't making great progress because I was babying my trailer and sticking to about 60 miles per hour on the cruise control. Then I heard a loud thump and shortly thereafter a rear tire started flapping ominously. I am not fond of those ridiculous doughnuts they offer as a spare tires but they actually make good sense and take up less room in the trunk. I change a car wheel like I was born to it. I kept on pressing on but it was no good, by 4:15 I was knackered and I pulled over into a rest stop.
I was out like a light, stretched out in the passenger seat snoring like a grampus. It was cool outside about 67 degrees and I was snug under my blanket but the alarm went off all too soon. By six I was back behind the wheel hammering out more darkened miles. It was no good, even though the sun started to come up I was still tired out and my imagination was playing tricks on me. Fog was wreathing the highway and I felt like i was floating a ball of cotton wool. I pulled off again and took another nap.When I woke up it was daylight and gray and the freeway was still there looking endless:
I was wishing I was there but the last miles of this 350 mile jaunt were proving to be the longest of all. I got there at dead on ten o'clock when Darren opened up his store:
I parked the car and took another nap while he started disemboweling the Vespa. Then I woke up and found a tire shop which happened to be across the street from IHOP and that solved two issues at once. Then I found a motorcycle shop and bought a new inner tube for my Bonneville. It's quite amazing how much you can accomplish on the mainland. It's like everything is on the shelf. Then I went back to the Vespa shop and...took a nap. By 1pm the ET4 was ready, cables lubricated, changed belt, rollers, air filter, spark plug, oils and a new maintenance free battery. Darren also changed the fuel hose and vacuum hose and changed the front brake fluid and adjusted both brakes. Phew! All for $600. "Take her for a test ride" he said. So I did.
The ET4 was buzzing along merrily, the brakes were perfect and I was remembering the joy of a nicely tuned Vespa. I stopped on the causeway to St Armand's Key and took a picture of Sarasota Bay, all cloudy and summery:
I have vivid memories of sailing the bay on my way somewhere and getting caught by the mother of all thunderstorms. I threw out the anchor and dived into the cabin to wait it out. Southwest Florida has the worst summer storms, but I was riding in glorious sunshine. I zipped through downtown St Armand's Key with all its Romanesque statuary and neat flower beds:
And got to the beach finally:
A mish mash of notice boards signs and prohibitions:
And pedestrians striding along determined to enjoy their beach:
And so they should because the beaches here are magnificent, these are the strands deluded visitors expect to see in key West, poor things. If you want endless stretches of beach the West Coast of Florida is hard to beat.
If you need waves crashing on the sand for visual effect or body surfing you'd be better off on Florida's East Coast, but you might be surprised how many miles of deserted beaches you can find between Anclote Key and Naples. Sarasota does have a few waterfront condos but its not that crowded really:
And the condos themselves had a largely old fashioned air to them, smaller than the canyons of the East Coast, perhaps less impersonal:
Spot the Vespa in the crush of beachfront parking? No parking hassles for me.
The hot spots downtown were quite surprising, beautifully landscaped of course but full of pedestrians. people were out and about on their own two feet all over the place. Sarasota may be today what critics fear Key West may become tomorrow:
I think Hemingway would have run a mile had anyone suggested this piece of faux Key West architecture could have constituted a retreat for him. On the other hand he was pretty fed up with tourists in Key West in 1938 so the Southernmost City in the 21st century wouldn't have done much for him either. Looking carefully at these street scenes two thing stick out one is , how clean and tidy it is and...
...how few residentially challenged citizens there are. More accurately there are none. I wonder what they did with them? They do have public transportation and these signs put me in my mind of Seattle's SLUT system as another acronym with attitude:
It was I admit a short tour of a pretty mainland seaside town. I had hours of freeway to get under my belt if I wanted any hope of dinner with my wife. Back across the causeway, with downtown Sarasota laid out before me:
There was some public Art I couldn't figure out downtown. There was a pile of rusty car hulks planted nose down in the ground in a circle, looking a bit like an average parking afternoon in Key West and across the street I saw this giant tooth in a park:
And no one setting up house underneath it, always a surprise. I paid my bill, said goodbye to the smart little Vespa shop with a promise to return,
and back out into the nightmare of mainland traffic:
Ease of shopping yes; but this stuff I don't miss at all. Every time I go North I wonder how it is that people aren't screaming wrecks after being squished up like this. Oh wait a minute they are, aren't they?.......................................
As of the Modern Vespa Forum Darren (speedyscoot) closed the store in 2009 but still does scooter work in Sarasota. He published this as his contact number (813) 205-0469 for anyone in the area needing scooter work.
I had business to take care of Up North which didn't really count as a recreational trip, and I wasn't even riding two wheels, but I took some pictures as I rolled the Nissan along I-75, known as Alligator Alley, to remind myself how much I enjoy these views. This two wheeler was why I was there:
My "business trip" was getting the wife's ET4 tuned up and owing to my recent contretemps with Vespa Miami/Ft Lauderdale she nixed having them work on her Vespa 150. So instead of a 6 hour round trip I had a 22 hour round trip to get to Vespa Sarasota and back. More on that in another essay, but these pictures, which have nothing to do with Key West are here to illustrate superficially a little of what one would see when crossing Florida on the Southernmost...Interstate. 
It's not technically a freeway, there are toll booths at each end and the charge is $2.50 for two axles and $5.00 for three. But you do get 100 miles of almost dead straight road in each direction for your money.
Alligator Alley used to be State Road 84 and opened in 1969 according to the history books. Then the powers that be took it upon themselves to widen the road and finished that job in 1992, which I remember as a mess of mud and rocks. Nowadays its a short cut from Fort Lauderdale to Naples, and very efficient it is too, with a 70 mph speed limit and all. But I still prefer the slower pace of the old, two lane Tamiami (TAMpa-MIami) Trail, which gives a much more intimate and historical view of the Everglades. I took this picture on my trip last year:
And yes, the Tamiami Trail, Highway 41, is also straight as a die for much of its way. I guess for some two wheeled users the freeway makes sense, and I saw a fair number on the Interstate. These two were between Naples and the toll booth:
What interested me is the footwear on the dude nearest my car, blue crocs on the freeway...
But he is wearing a helmet. Which made him luckier than me because he was riding while I was snugged down behind the air conditioner of the Maxima. He didn't wave as he went by.
But the brown sign behind the exit sign beckons the traveler towards more bucolic delights, the parks south of the interstate:
Between Highway 29 and Fort Lauderdale these curiosities start popping up:
I've traveled a few miles of Interstate in my time and I've never seen a sign quite like this. Or to be more accurate I've seen the signs pointing to recreation areas off Interstates, but I've never seen just a recreation area right off a freeway, a recreation area as a freeway destination in itself as it were. It's actually a boat ramp too:
Drive the Alley, launch your boat, and they have floating docks to cope with the rising and dropping water levels (mostly dropping overall as the 'glades are rather distressed these days):
The Everglades are threaded by all sorts of waterways and canals, filled no doubt with alligators and fish because you will see people lining the canal banks with rods. Others launch their boats here and take off for a day's sport among the reeds. The recreation areas also have a few modern variations on the Miccosukee Indian chickee huts for people to come out to the Interstate and enjoy a roadside picnic:
And its not just people recreating in these areas:
I recreated by taking a thirty minute nap. It had been a long day and I was completely worn out, continuing the theme of my life lately. It was a perfect afternoon, a brisk cooling breeze was blowing out of the north and there wasn't any humidity in the air. I slept like a baby with the windows down, in the vastness of the Everglades, with the car parked under the sole scrap of shade:
Lots of people use the freeway as a quick drive across the southern end of the state but there are paths and trails that head off into the back country from some of these recreation areas, and I've only explored a few of them. With rainy season upon us I may have left it too late for a return visit this spring.
Oh well, at least I got to see the big skies of south Florida once this winter. Rest and recreation after a fashion.
Grrr! One thing I wish were different on the motorbike was that the tires were tubeless as they are easier to repair than the current tires with tubes. New tubeless rims are on my wish list now, before a rev counter and a belt drive! The Nissan Maxima is a fine car but...
I got up off the table, a bit groggy, and thought to myself how pretty it looked under the street lights and what a shame I didn't have my camera with me. Oh but I did, I remembered suddenly, and with most of my lunch break snoozed away I got to work. The lense came out fogged it was damp and i got the rather nice halo effect as though mist was laying over the Key West, but the reality was rather more prosaic: I was thinking to myself that summer is finally here. On the afternoon ride into work the summer rain clouds had piled up all over the flats, big white puffy balls of cotton reflected off the turquoise waters. They deserved a picture of their own but I was late for work and busy working the throttle rather than the camera. I like the Higgs Beach/Rest Beach area not least because its close to the police station and Sandy's all-night Cuban Cafe is on the way so I can sip con leche and watch the waves, and the distant horizon while reflecting on my life.
"I'm giving you a verbal warning..." he said. I had my papers, I admitted my stupidity and I was wearing proper clothing (and I did use my signals properly, perhaps that helped) and wasn't drunk. If you think people don't drive drunk at 6am in the Lower Keys you might be surprised...
I left work last week right after we got a call about a young man who had fallen unconscious. It soon became apparent that he was in a serious way, the call taker could hear screaming and sobbing in the background as we tried to help bring him back with CPR over the phone. The day shift came in and we packed our stuff and left. As I pulled out the Bonneville onto the Boulevard the ambulance appeared from downtown, all lights and noise. I fell in behind Rescue and ambled along behind them, they headed to the hospital, me headed to the Highway and home. The ambulance was running slowly, keeping up a steady 30 miles per hour and I knew why. A firefighter was driving and keeping it steady while the paramedics attempted to revive him in the truck. It felt like a funeral cortege, as traffic bunched behind the flashing lights and I imagined him so young and so definitely dying right there in front of me, hidden only by the curtain of the ambulance door. The ambulance turned left to the hospital on Stock Island, I revved it up and took to the open road, exercising all due diligence as I wanted neither an ambulance nor another Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy in attendance on my commute that morning.
The Weather Gods did a nice job of fooling me yesterday. I stepped out of the police station after yet another night of blather on the radio ready to wallow in some more of the delicious, lubricating humidity and instead we had received (may the Lord make us truly grateful) a surprise little cold front and the wind was honking out of the north and there were sprinkles of rain in the air and temperatures had plummeted to 67 degrees. I pulled on my waterproofs, which naturally chased the rain away almost immediately but I rode home in blusterous crosswinds and pitch dark. It was entirely exhilarating and being the weekend there was almost no other traffic out at six in the morning. I was actually slightly chilled in the cold north wind, but even in the strongest gusts,estimated above 30mph by the weather service, the Bonneville tracked straight. I was riding a motorcycle that had its mind on one thing and that was finding its way to its stable. We flew (not that fast officer!) and the sensation of flight was increased by the powerful gusts that hit us as we came out of the cover of bushes and buildings into the open windswept reaches of the bridges.
Another day another dollar as they say, though the frequency of my appearance at work is getting a little much. The good news is I get to do that much more riding with all this commuting and this week I blew past the 9100 mile mark. I calculated while showering this afternoon that I have ridden 42,000 miles in the past three years since we moved into the tree house, variously on the Suzuki, the Stella (ugh!) the Vespa and the Bonneville. So many miles for such small amounts of roadway. I dread to think how many would have accumulated had there been real motorcycling destinations!
Small town America is loaded with repositories of local arcana and culture, and Key West has it's own Museum of Art and History too, and of course I think its the best small town museum around. Certainly its in a splendid building, an all-brick genuine US Custom House, designed with snowfall in mind and built to a standard specification.
The Art and History Museum has several permanent exhibits on offer and rotates several of its rooms for visiting shows. Seward Johnson a sculptor backed by the Johnson and Johnson family fortune has been a favorite for some time. He likes to make mind bending sculptures rendering three dimensional that which we consider familiar in the world of Art. American Gothic, the grumpy farmer, his pitchfork and his daughter is an icon. So naturally the sculptor needs to mess with people's heads:
They are enormous, the statues:
But Johnson also has some more life sized statues for people to play with, possibly familiar from art class:
The Art and History Museum has its own display chronicling its long era of neglect but the place has been brought back from near destruction and has become a lovely Victorian to wander around in, unusual in Key West, brick and wood and everything:
It's ten bucks to get in, with a whole ten percent discount for local ID, better than nothing I suppose, and there he is, at it again, Seward Johnson:
It looks like nothing more than a copy of the Mona Lisa, the enigmatic smile and all, but walking along side the picture it becomes apparent this sculpture has its own story to tell. Playing on the obscure origin of this painting Johnson made a sculpture following the theory that La Gioconda (as she is known in Italy) was actually a version of the artist's male lover and "her" legs have been sculpted to reflect that notion:
Elsewhere in the room we have women with pearl earrings and skirts flying, all familiar images rendered in three dimensions. Last year Johnson had an exhibit of impressionist art in similar style and it had quite an unexpected effect on me walking among the life sized diners I'd seen for years and taken for granted in two dimensions.
The History part of the museum is preoccupied with one incident in particular, the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898. The battleship blew up in spectacular fashion and the US took this as a sign of Spanish hostile intentions and promptly went to the assistance of Cuban rebels, ending up in possession of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
Speculation is that possibly the coal in the Maine's bunkers got wet and produced explosive gases, as coal will, and the less gullible take it upon themselves to suggest the US may have been responsible for the explosion that took the lives of US sailors. Rather in the manner of people nowadays who suggest the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Be that as it may the killed and injured were transported to Key West, the dead buried in a plot of land famous in photographs of the city cemetery, the injured cared for at the Navy hospital. The museum got a bunch of artifacts after it was all over:
The other big deal in Key West history was the arrival of Ernest Hemingway and there is a fair bit of him in here:
Killing fish, slaying babes...
...drinking, traveling and killing more animals. Fighting in World War One, as well:
He wrote a few books in Key West and one about Key West, he drank with Sloppy Joe Russell, at Captain Tony's, and was fairly miserable at home by all accounts. In the above photograph there are souvenirs of his time in Italy and a picture of his first and (they say) only love. All terribly romantic but from what I can figure he fled Key West when the highway arrived and spent many years at his favorite home which was in Cuba, Finca Vigia ("Lookout Farm") which from what I have heard has been perfectly preserved by the general fossilization that has taken place in Cuba over the past 50 years.
And he got his own portrait painted too, by Paul Collins:
His intaglios are much prized these days and he made quite a name for himself. I happen to know reproductions are on sale on Duval and I think its about time my wife got me one for my birthday.
The originals that are on show at the Museum tend to leap out at you:
The Museum celebrates the history of wrecking and Porter's anti-piracy squadron, which cleared out all pirates in less than a decade after the city was founded (much to the discomfort I'm sure of all the irritating pirate lovers who want to make out the keys were all about pirates). Porter didn't think much of Key West and left as soon as the job was done. But wrecking was quite the business for decades:
And it was legitimate too. It made fortunes for it's practitioners, and brought a level of sophistication to Key West which was decorated by ship's cargoes from all over the world. Then came the lighthouses and that put paid to much of that. The museum has a couple of large maps of 19th century Key West on display. This one show Fort Zachary Taylor as a separate island, before the harbor was filled in around it:
Alongside that is a rather corny but cool diorama for Key West's waterfront at the same period.
Key West really was isolated back then, and its population of 12,000 stayed pretty steady over the years. Nowadays we have double the numbers but we also have double the area as the city has spread over the whole island. What was scrub lands is now New Town. History appeals to me because it gives depth and meaning to the present. It gives me perspective when people moan about modern day changes. And there are news paper reports about the arrival of the railroad that express the fears and reluctance of many about how the island would be irrevocably changed. I ask people now about the notion that perhaps we should cut the bridge link and they look horrified. Change isn't always good but sometimes it has its good points! 
"Your most honest..." ? No worse than today at least.
