Talk Like A Pirate

You have to wonder at the vision and determination of the people who carved up the mangroves, blew holes in the rocks and created this:These developments came from the unpromising land I walk with my dog and illustrate in these pages: mangroves, pines, mud and salt puddles. And now, half a century later the postal service delivers six days a week, year round (long may Saturday delivery last!).I cannot fault them for their enterprise, else I would still be living in the fog and damp of Monterey Bay, but whoever decided to name these subdivisions had their eyes on the marketing aspects I suspect. Me? I would be embarrassed to label my letters with an address on a piratically themed street, however there was never any danger of that. During the boom years these were high priced homes and big houses at that by local standards. I was lucky to find a 700 square foot stilt house on a street as innocuously named as "Indies." Cutthroat Drive and Pegleg Lane would have me saying "Argh! Me hearties!" all day long and it would get tiresome.Nice homes though in a quiet neighborhood and Cudjoe Key despite the silly street names is as nice an island as any.

If you have a house on the south shore, along Jolly Roger Drive (I kid you not!) you get magnificent views toward Cuba: Just in case you were wondering Cheyenne was at home sulking as I rode the aforementioned Jolly Roger theme'd sub division:

See, I was serious:

This is what it looks like in summer, only more so. For a few glorious weeks it's hot and empty, then school gets out and boats start to criss cross the channels again. This has been a long winter for us all east of the Rockies (in Vancouver all summers are long winters).

This is not 700 square feet of house, trust me:

This house stained some dark color looked quite distinctive among the pastel and white washed homes littering, Blackbeard, Buccaneer and Privateer Drives. Argh, me hearties! (Told you so).

I am going to try to persuade my wife we need a cement wall coated in limestone or stuff like this around our house, to repel boarders naturally.

This is what it looks like with the camera on automatic exposure.

Can it be a pirate? A palm tree? Or is it just a Bonneville?

You don't need to go to Disneyland to see pirates of the Caribbean in action.
Argh, me hearties!

Enough of that.

Green Parrot Wheels

I wanted a café con leche and i wanted to take some pictures so I combined the two and took a seat outside Jeanna's Courthouse Deli and watched the show across Whitehead Street at the southernmost bar.The Green Parrot is a block from the end of Highway One so that at least makes it pretty far south and Jenna's was sold so is now known only as Courthouse Deli, but the benches are still there on the sidewalk and it's the shady side of the street, so for a man on his way to work on St Patrick's day it was a good spot to wield a camera.The Green Parrot has a reputation so it attracts tourists, and their scooters. In the background here you can see the Honda and Kawasaki dealer on Southard Street. I used to have a Honda scooter and would never waste my time there again. You'd get your Social Security check waiting on Victor for parts. I wish he would retire and let someone dynamic take over the concession:"Ooh," my neighbor on the bench squeaked. "They're riding in striped pajamas!" She speculated they must be working somewhere, and I retorted "One of three jobs probably." Which the good tourist found more amusing than I meant my remark to sound.
Most motorcycles in Key West are V twins and men like to stand around and talk their usual nonsense around them.A cyclist stopped at a traffic signal. Will wonders never cease!Some people prefer not to drive themselves.

White legs and a rental cycle, the white rental plate on the basket gives that away. A visitor I'm guessing.

I've never quite understood the Harley fairing that is all fiberglass and heavy on the handlebars but doesn't have a windshield for rider protection. I guess it makes a good place to park a radio. You know he just wants one. There it is, the release from responsibility. And this flash of thigh upholding the Triumph motorcycling tradition, heaven help us.

"Oh my Gosh," my bench neighbor from Wisconsin bellowed, "he's wearing a kilt!" She sounded like the Sheriff in the movie Fargo. When I remarked on the similarity she smiled and said they are from the same neck of the woods and everyone talks that way. I don't I wanted to say but the point would have been lost. After a short discussion with her husband about whether or not they wanted to get shit faced on Duval Street she got up and they pottered off up Southard Street.

This looks a bit like an MZ motard. When East German MZ still existed it had quite a following in Key West, home to many Eastern European transplants who remembered MZ as the best motorcycle manufacturer behind the Iron Curtain, in the bad old days.

And here, tucked modestly almost out of sight we see the bad V twin of them all, Yamaha's Virago still offered in 250 and 535cc versions. A nice classic motorcycle for those that can appreciate a long lived small package.

Not forgetting that other classic in green (not the babe), my new Bonneville:36,500 miles and not one failure to startand go, so far. A classic motorcycle for the busy daily rider. Unless of course you need to fit in with the crowd and ride a V twin. With tachometer.

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"Taxes Aren't Theft" is the title of today's essay at my wordy blog found here:

http://conchscooterscommonsense.blogspot.com/

Oolite Highway

Oolite is found in certain parts of the world and the Lower Keys is one of those places. It's not found north of Big Pine Key even though the term "Lower Keys" is usually used to indicate all the islands south of the Seven Mile Bridge. However because oolite, known as egg stone -derived from the Greek for egg- nestles among the limestone only from Big Pine south and it creates holes like these:The limestone rock that formed the Keys is similar to the rock that created the Bahamas which makes these islands much more similar geologically to our island neighbors than to the sandy mainland of Florida. Oolitic limestone looks something like this:
And I titled this essay the way I did because this is what one of several wide pathways through the pine trees looks like in the BPK (Big Pine Key) deer refuge:From Virginia Key, off Miami the barrier islands are sedimentary limestone, but down here something different happened when these islands were being formed. For some reason calcium carbonate got deposited on these limestone rocks, possibly owing to corals growing on sandy shoals on top of the limestone, then as conditions changed the coral died and became the calcium carbonate deposits. Pick your theory according to various sources I have consulted but the end result is rock that looks like petrified sponge. And where the rock forms shallow bowls rainwater accumulates leaving behind a mud hole during dry season. And some Labradors happen to find these mud holes inexplicably attractive. The dry season came late this winter and these holes were full of delicious tannic water a few weeks ago. Now Cheyenne could find nothing but mud:
She looked hard and long for water:

Entirely satisfying even though there was no water:
From small acorns as it were, above, do large oak trees grow. In this case mangroves and pines. If you needed a spare limestone rock you might find plenty here for your landscaping, except the Feds don't much care for people removing stuff from public land.
More stuff growing out of the oolite holes:
I stuck my camera into a particularly large hole and turned on the flash to see what I might see.

You could break an ankle in one these if you felt like it. People sometimes stick a branch down the hole to alert walkers to their presence. This was a red letter walk.

By the time we stumped back to the car... ...Cheyenne was ready for a rest. And yes, she got a bath and spent the rest of the afternoon in a sulk in the back of the car. I left the car door open and went upstairs for a well earned cup of tea. To each her own.