When I was eight years old I did not get to take sailing lessons. I was landlocked. The good news was, a few years later I was riding a Vespa, and I am, as may have been noted still riding. Wednesday was one of my numerous days off and I was riding into town to see the movie Mongol (Genghis Khan didn't get a break as a youngster, in and out of handcuffs, wife stolen, home burned it went on and on for two full hours) and I got detoured by a bunch of white handkerchiefs on Garrison Bight.
Garrison Bight (bight in sailing lingo means an indentation in the coast) is an almost entirely enclosed body of water, enclosed in part by Flagler's engineers when they built the train depot where the Coastguard Station is today on the north side of the island. It makes for an ideal body of protected water to park boats in the city marina, or to sail small boats without danger of large waves or being dragged over the horizon by errant tides. This is especially helpful if you are small and your boat is small and you are learning how to sail it.
The Key West Sailing Club has a summer program of sailing lessons for kids as young as eight and for a week they twirl around the bight in Optimist dinghies, Optimist is the brand name not the state of mind of the sailor, under the direction of a club instructor who rides in a outboard powered skiff giving direction and help:
I cannot think of a more wholesome activity for a young person living in this city where people frequently complain "there is nothing to do." The waters are as safe as can be, everyone is wearing life jackets and the grown ups sailing the club boats respect the right-of-way of the youngsters:
This is also an affordable activity as the Sailing Club is the little tiki hut next door to Spencer's Boatyard, a do-it-yourself kind of place. I used to be a member when I lived in the city and membership cost something ridiculous like $10 a month, which gave me access to the clubs sailboats, like this:
The sailing club isn't the Key West Yacht Club at the opposite end of the bight, home to the city's glitterati who get the pauper's rental rate from the city of one whole dollar a year for their property...The sailing club is rather more modest, and perhaps more accessible:
And the Sailing Club offers tons of fun on the water which I spent a good few minutes watching and enjoying. I can't say I was envious of the kids, but I think they are lucky to get the chance to know the joy of sailing at such a young age, with an instructor who enjoyed the fun:
Of course I left the house too late to wander around for long in the city before my movie started so I had to jump on the motorcycle all too soon. A passer by headed towards the dinghy docks and saw me photographing the boats. I mentioned how pleased I was to see young sailors learning the sport and he watched them a moment and echoed my sentiments about not getting into it young enough. " They sail better than I do," he sighed.
I missed a couple of previews but sat down in time for the start of the show. Young Genghis lost his dad at the age of nine, poisoned by an enemy, and he and his mother were kicked out of the tribe to wander the steppe on their lonesome. He'd have done better had he learned to sail and got clear of that messy country as soon as possible. But he was landlocked and had to learn to ride a horse instead. Key West youngsters have choices.
Gas prices have dropped a few cents around here from $4.30 to just under four dollars for a gallon of regular, yet the cost of gas remains an issue of course, and I live at Mile Marker 27 and my job is at Mile Marker 2 so my commute is a fifty mile round trip, which at 43 miles per gallon equals what it equals. As I'm a modern man with too much time on my hands I get to thinking about what if... we, because my wife works at Mile Marker 5, tried commuting by Key West Transit? So, as an experiment yesterday afternoon I rode the Marathon to Key West shuttle, to go into town to meet my wife at her work. It's a long walk to the bus stop on the highway, three quarters of a mile up my street from my house and even with the pleasant ocean breeze its still 95 degrees out on the asphalt:
There are a few stops along the way with benches and shelters and solar equipped illuminated advertising, but mostly the stops are poles along the highway. The ride to Stock Island's College Road took about 40 minutes, ten minutes longer than a ride on my Bonneville might have taken, and I spent the time finishing Carl Hiassen's novel Flush, set in the Keys and a fun read:
The driver was a barrel of laughs, actually he just drove like the silent connsumate professional he was, though I liked his Keys look, of the understated fishing guide school of dress:
I pulled the pinger after we passed the dump on College road and the bus came to a creaking halt:
From there it was a short walk past sunset marina to the Sheriff's Administration and Jail complex where my wife works as the Juvenile Jail teacher. This stop is also the pick up point for people who live at the Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter (K.O.T.S) which offer air conditioned dormitories showers lockers and an address for the working poor of the area. Anyone is welcomed and not everyone actually rides the bus to work. Some hang out and wait for the Safe Zone, as it is also known, to re-open in the evening:
Here's where I ended my trip, my book finished, cool refreshed and ready to help my wife move her boxes around her office. A highly satisfactory journey with a tiny carbon footprint, I think.
I usually leave the office a few minutes before six, and the fresh warm air outside the frigid Police Station is a pleasant contrast, however by the time I've stowed my stuff on the motorcycle and I'm rolling up North Roosevelt Boulevard I have adapted to the outside temperature, hovering around 80 degrees, and it starts to feel on the cool side of pleasant, even in July. By the time I'm on Big Coppitt Key at Mile Marker Ten the night sky is starting to show signs of sunlight and the houses on the eastern shore of the island are starting to appear out of the gloom:
Across Shark Channel the sunrise is doing its thing, clearly visible from the boat ramp where I parked:
Being so close to the water puts me in mind of the times when we lived on a sailboat and woke up in the morning on board with that cool damp breeze blowing through the cabin.
Standing at the boat ramp the waves, thrown up by the breeze splashed against the cement wall sounding just like waves hitting the hull of the boat. Sometimes I get a hankering to be back on the water.
Back on land commuters are starting to increase in the direction of Key West after six in the morning. Most are smart enough to have their lights on, some think they are visible in the half light as they rush headlong to work without lights:
I took photographs on two recent mornings, one while riding the Bonneville:
Then I found a nail in the rear tire, so while I waited to see if the tire would go flat (not so far!) I borrowed the wife's Vespa, which is always an alternative blast on two wheels. I may have sold the GTS 250 but I still enjoy a romp with her 150cc:
I parked the ET4 on the bicycle path that winds along the Saddlebunch Keys to take the time to play with a few cloud formations in the dawn's early light:
While I am not as susceptible to mosquitoes as many people, eventually they manage to annoy me enough to force me to move along. This is the time of year when they are out in abundance and though I don't get welts or rashes from their bites they do manage to annoy me by hovering all over my face. Which is another way of saying it was time to go home to bed:
Compared to the larger cities a block may not seem like much but in Key West it's plenty to be going on with. Bayview Park aspires to the classical roots of public spaces designed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, formality, high minded statuary and nobility of purpose are the watchwords like this formal entryway across from the Police Station: 
In Bayview Park we find a massive stone monument, a block of immutable rock, commemorating the sacrifice made by New Yorkers preserving the Southernmost City for the Union in 1862, and at the opposite corner Jose Marti, Cuba's revolutionary hero is celebrated in marble in a style typical of 19th century statuary.
And at the opposite corner of the park a Czech artist Emil Adamec has erected two statues, a male and female torso expressing he says a gateway between Havana and Key West two cities divided by political barriers. 
Dogs are prohibited which doesn't mean they don't get to visit the park if they have daring owners, but mostly I see people playing tennis here standing on the courts in the sun knocking that fuzzy little ball back and forth. There is even a pro instructor even to help the amateurs on their way, so there is no excuse for an attitude like mine except sheer bloody-mindedness.I think they forced me to chase too many balls during my youthful imprisonment in boarding schools. 
There is basketball, softball and a set of slides for the toddlers. The softball field looked particularly ghostly in the moonlight Saturday night on my lunch break. In the distance, rising up like a fortress one sees the Harvey Government Center illuminated against possible softball ambushes from the darkened park lands where I lurked:
For everyone there is something in Bayview Park including public restrooms, facilities not to be under valued in a city where the complaint is frequently;y heard that there aren't enough. Even if in this instance Key West seems to favor the institutional-correctional look for its loos:
The restrooms are another reason Bayview tends to get a disproportionate number of residentially challenged hanging around. A few years ago the Salvation Army got permission to install a shower trailer in the Police Station parking lot but even since those facilities were dismantled the park provides determined homeless people a place to lay down:
And you thought bleachers are meant to seat people watching softball? Key West, home to multi-purpose facilities. Even in the muggy night air the aluminum benches looked less than homey to me. Homes alongside the park tend to have the characteristic Key West look to them, old, handsome and frequently just a little run down. At four in he morning they can look vaguely sinister:
I like working nights for a lot of reasons but having middle of the night lunch breaks is my secret perk. 