When I was a lad, before I took up my studies in the United States I crossed the Soviet Union on the Great Siberian Railway. I came away from the trip astonished by the lack of technological ability in the Soviet Union. The samovar on the train worked okay but hot tea was as far as it went:
The International Tourist Agency, Intourist, which supervised my journey (I was not a member of any group tour) set me up in designated tourist class hotels that cost the Earth, one hundred dollars a night was a lot in 1981, and I found myself sleeping in third rate accommodations, leaky double glazed windows, cold running water only in Siberia (!) in October(!!). It was the equivalent of an eight dollar a night fleapit on my trip across the US earlier that year. So I came away from the eight day train journey wondering what all the fuss was about. In California there were endless protests over nuclear weapons, and fear that we would be overrun by the godless communists was second only to fear that Ronald Reagan might unleash the bomb first. I stood on the sidelines and wondered what all the fuss was about. I figured anyone who couldn't build a decent hotel stood a very good chance of blowing themselves up first, before nuking their neighbors. Chernobyl proved me right.
The International Tourist Agency, Intourist, which supervised my journey (I was not a member of any group tour) set me up in designated tourist class hotels that cost the Earth, one hundred dollars a night was a lot in 1981, and I found myself sleeping in third rate accommodations, leaky double glazed windows, cold running water only in Siberia (!) in October(!!). It was the equivalent of an eight dollar a night fleapit on my trip across the US earlier that year. So I came away from the eight day train journey wondering what all the fuss was about. In California there were endless protests over nuclear weapons, and fear that we would be overrun by the godless communists was second only to fear that Ronald Reagan might unleash the bomb first. I stood on the sidelines and wondered what all the fuss was about. I figured anyone who couldn't build a decent hotel stood a very good chance of blowing themselves up first, before nuking their neighbors. Chernobyl proved me right. After we got married my wife wanted to take a honeymoon on a beach in Greece (a vacation desire outstanding I'm afraid) but I said let's rent a car and tour Eastern Europe. So we did for three weeks and three thousand miles banishing all desires for a paltry beach. If you've never seen a horse sit on it's haunches the Hungarian plains are the place to see it:
Since those heady post-Iron Curtain days Eastern Europe has boomed. And now it's going bust. Ukraine and Hungary are the first to fall, the Russian Stock Exchange has had to shut down trading repeatedly and the International Monetary Fund is asking for opinions on what if it decides to essentially print money to save Eastern Europe and who knows who else. This rumor has made news because the IMF has only ever previously issued Special Drawing Rights once before when the Soviet Union vaporized. Then things went back to normal and the IMF begged money from member states and distributed it as loans helping to keep Third World countries poor and indebted.
Since those heady post-Iron Curtain days Eastern Europe has boomed. And now it's going bust. Ukraine and Hungary are the first to fall, the Russian Stock Exchange has had to shut down trading repeatedly and the International Monetary Fund is asking for opinions on what if it decides to essentially print money to save Eastern Europe and who knows who else. This rumor has made news because the IMF has only ever previously issued Special Drawing Rights once before when the Soviet Union vaporized. Then things went back to normal and the IMF begged money from member states and distributed it as loans helping to keep Third World countries poor and indebted. The problem now is that the IMF is trying to help out a whole tier of second world countries, known more politely as "emerging nations." Actually they had emerged with democracy and functioning economies and everything into the light of the first world sun, but then suddenly everything went poof! Led by the spiralling US economy whose lead they had originally imitated by creating fake wealth, all their collective debt that has funded their emergence has started to come due. And guess what? That's right! They can't pay! Amazing isn't it? Their currencies are even more worthless than Dollars or even Euros, their commodities have lost all value and we in the First World are too busy losing our shirts to spend time and money in their craft markets.
Dominique Strauss Kahn, IMF Director (BBC Website)
This handsome figure of a Frenchman was busy getting spanked a couple of weeks ago for abusing his power by having sex with a subordinate and then helping her get a massive severance package when she went to work in a nice London Bank. He has apologized, his wife has publicly forgiven him for his one night stand (deluded woman) and now Strauss Kahn is facing the slightly more complex problem of how to bail out 1.6 trillion dollars worth of debt with 200 billion dollars in the bank. Turkey is already making belligerent noises about how they won't accept IMF Imperialism, but like I point out at the local level, if you have a mortgage you are a serf.
Here's the thing. Like the US, the IMF has the authority in its charter to issue bonds and even to print the equivalent of money. Like the US the IMF has a burden of debt it simply does not have the money to pay off. So, like the US, either it lets the countries fail, it prints money, or it issues bonds. Serious economists say the US should sell bonds, even as they forget to ask who will buy them. If the IMF is anything to go by, printing money will be the only solution short of total bankruptcy of all involved. Call this a dry run to illustrate the future of your currency...
Who said we in the US can't learn from foreigners, and damned Frenchmen to boot?
It was a warm windy night after Fantasy Fest wound down and I went to take a quick tour of the city before I went home. Lower Duval was closed thanks to an ocean of broken bottles in the street so I wandered a little further afield to get some fresh air and take a stroll. I started out at Simonton Beach home to a bunch of bicycles illuminated in the headlights of my car:
It rained pretty hard in the days leading up to and following Fantasy Fest and city drains seem to manage to cope better than in the past. There was certainly some flooding but new drainage systems seem to have helped.
Key West has different sensory cues compared to most cities in temperate climates. I look out at gray clouds and shiny streets and I see winter because I grew up in a world where cold weather followed on directly from autumnal storms. In Key West, puddles and shiny streets indicate the heat and humidity of summer:
After I parked the car on Simonton I took a walk down Front Street towards the Galleon Resort. I found a few people walking, or better yet staggering along the street but it was pretty quiet which surprised me. I guess alcohol had taken it's toll.
I find Key West to be an evocative place at night, there are parts of the city that look positively 18th century like the wood structure above, while in the next picture below all I could see was Casablanca in 1941:
I am fond of saying that Key West drives me to temperance. Alcohol is abused so much and by so many people and I hear about it so much at work that I find myself getting booze shy. The thing is alcohol knows how to sell itself:
Even at three in the morning sitting out in front of Damn Good Food looks tempting...a glass of wine a slice of bread and...my camera:
The boardwalk around Key West Bight is a good spot to pause and contemplate the meaning of life, especially in the middle of the night when no-one else is around:
And the effects of the rain create their own ambiance as well:
I was hurrying back to the car to get out of there and I saw what can only be described as the proper vacation rental:
Before you decide to over indulge on your vacation and lose what's left of your dignity throwing up in public places, you should probably be seen riding around in this converted golf cart. It is so absurd it is quite cute. But of course for hard core me a scooter is always the better rental option:
Wet it may be, cold it isn't, so its always the right time of year to cruise the city on a scooter. Especially in the middle of the night.
The question from a reader was: How is the palm weaver doing? I noted a couple of weeks ago that Michael Beaudet had had a little adventure floating off to sea in his disabled sailboat. The latest is that he is doing okay. 
Winter is coming and I can feel it, even though temperatures are still in the eighties and there is plenty of underlying humidity. The winds have been honking out of the east to fill a void created by a low over Texas and the winds have been cool and dry creating the illusion of a winter cold front. Winter is the time to go walking so that was what I did. All good walks start with a ride on a Triumph:
The old highway on the south side of Sugarloaf is now a wildlife area and they don't want Bonnevilles rumbling around there. Imagine that.
However this being the Keys it would be entirely possible to roll a motorized bicycle onto these miles of deserted roadway. There is a by pass to make it easy to get a bicycle onto the trail but motorbikes are out. 
It turns out you need wheels to explore this area as it is enormous. The road itself may have been abandoned but it's in excellent condition, even the gravel bit:
The first half mile or so leads up to a bridge which spans a canal which leads to a group of houses to the north, clustered near Highway One. The bridge itself is a solid structure covered in graffiti of course:
And anywhere there is a body of water in Florida there is someone dangling a hook in the hopes of snagging a fish. And there in the distance are the open waters of Hawk Channel more easily seen from upstairs:
At this early stage of the expedition it was sunny and breezy, with a little humidity in the air and it was a perfect afternoon to be out exploring. Looking north from the bridge the mysterious canal carved out of the living rock stretched away through the wilderness:
I was not alone either as there was a family enjoying a splendid afternoon romp with their dog:
But before I reached them on the horizon I found a wide junction in the road with a paved street leading off to the left, that is to the north. I decided to follow the paved road and see where it lead. The mangroves and scrub palms and buttonwoods were growing tall and wild on either side:
It was really quiet out in the roadway and I got a rather apocalyptic shudder down my back, walking along a perfectly serviceable road with no traffic, no sounds and no other signs of human life. I did find an old speed limit sign which was not applicable to my walking pace:
It didn't seem very fast to me, 35 for such a wide sweeping road but then I remembered the modern new straight-as-an-arrow highway across Sugarloaf Key is as broad and deserted as a runway, with a speed limit of just 30 miles per hour:
I had been trudging for the best part of thirty minutes when I started to wonder if perhaps I should turn around and head back. Clouds were starting to close in a bit overhead and the road kept just winding its way through the scrub, endlessly:
About the time i was ready to start bugging out, as unsatisfactory as that would be I saw a break in the bushes, which was my cue to follow a diversion. Boredom was banished and I started down the rabbit hole.
This VW Microbus was sitting there melting into its component parts, fading into the surroundings, like an icicle. It reminded me of my old '64 Bus that I drove all over California and Mexico when I was taken with the desire to go RV'ing on the cheap. Mine was a six volt model which meant it never wanted to start in anything cooler than perfect summer weather but it never actually stopped running. This one did, and its block and cylinders were scattered all around in the bushes. I wonder what happened? An orgy of frustration perhaps, or exhaustion at having to travel everywhere at an uncertain 54 miles per hour...They tell us metal trash will be around for hundreds of years, but not if that VW's rate of decomposition is anything to go by.
I kept going past the Bus and the skies seemed to grow increasingly wintery and cloudy as I strode on through the shrubbery.
Then I came across the canal as I was pretty sure I would. That meant if I turned left and headed south I would reach the bridge and the road back to the Bonneville. I started walking again. And I walked. And I walked. And I walked. And then I walked some more. It wasn't unpleasant, on the contrary I was enjoying the solitude and the outdoors after a long summer away from the back country.
It was almost like walking down a desert watercourse along side the canal. The ground was dry and dusty crunching underfoot and the going was easy. It was getting cloudier though and gave the impression it was going to rain soon. Had it been 50 degrees cooler it might have looked like an imminent snowstorm out of the low cloud cover. I kept walking. After about a half hour of this I expected at some point to see the bridge but it never appeared. The canal seemed to be in the rising tide stage of it's day as the water boiled along like a fast moving river, and I was walking in the opposite direction. Other than that there was no movement. Then I came to the bit I had been dreading, finding my path blocked. I came across a small lake that stretched from the canal all the way to the impenetrable mangroves to my left. I scouted around and could find no way around it. Well, bugger. Either I turned around to go the long way back, a 45 minute walk at least. Or... nothing else for it but to keep going; so I did: 
Luckily the water was warm, and I suppose I could have removed my shoes and socks but I had no idea where I was walking. The water rose up to cover my knees but I kept going and managed not to fall over. And wouldn't you know it, as soon as I got through the lake I saw this:
I got back to the bridge leaving a trail of muddy wet footprints and the fishermen were still out there killing fish, totally unaware of my perilous lone expedition facing all sorts of dangers:
And after a brief break in the cloud cover the clouds closed in again overhead, but I was off the bridge and heading for the barn like a Clydesdale smelling oats:
And then as I was closing in on the barricade at the entrance I caught another sign of winter lying by the side of the road:
This guy was sunning himself at the side of the road and didn't seem nearly as excited to see me as I was him. He was the second snake I'd seen out catching some rays in two days so I'm thinking it's getting cooler in the bushes for our cold blooded neighbors. For those of us with wet feet and and home to get to the time was good for the getting. So I got.