Taking up from where we left off yesterday with my arrival at work...
I carry a comb in my murse, which is less of a man purse and more of a back pack actually. It rides in my top case, locked and dry with all the odds and ends of daily living, including the brush aforesaid. A quick pass over the rug to remove lingering signs of helmet hair and in we go. 
The Police Department has been undergoing some paint and spiffying up which is nice for night shift as the painters are gone, leaving only the noxious fumes of modern paint gassing the building.
The front door to the Police Station is locked much to the consternation of people who watch TV and think the city of key West has money to spare to keep a sergeant employed as a front desk clerk. I always tell people who need an officer for a non emergency to call us and we'll send one to your home or hotel where you can wait comfortably. Unless it's a crazy night we respond within 15 minutes for lower priority calls. Losing your ID seems like the end of the world, but compared to people having heart attacks or getting fighting drunk it is considered Lower priority if your life isn't in danger.
Inside the corridors are wide and bland. We don't have cells in the police station. Sometimes prisoners are brought here to be questioned and the corridors are wide enough to walk three abreast but most police work boils down to paperwork and report writing after the action is over. You don't see much of that on TV, tediously filling out times, addresses and phone numbers.
The smell of fresh paint will linger for a couple of days but the fresh paint itself will look good for several years to come. This is my office with a huge plate window on the corridor so passing dignitaries can look in at the brains of the department, in a manner of speaking. Another reason to work nights: far fewer dignitaries in the building.
I like to arrive about ten minutes before six and I like to be relieved around the same time in the morning though technically there is no obligation to be relieved before six o'clock straight up. We each have a locker in the kitchen: 
In mine I keep some snacks, some magazines and books in case I forget to bring any (most of my colleagues read fashion magazines and gossip rags rather than motorcycle or sailing magazines for light entertainment). I hung up a map of the Dry Tortugas which drifted to my locker in some inexplicable way. It reminds me of happy times camping. In the yellow bag I keep my dress shoes. Our dress code requires a uniform of a polo shirt embroidered with a police badge, dress pants and dress shoes. Only women can wear skirts though none do oddly enough.
My Kevlar lined slider pants qualify as dress pants and I suppose no one would notice my motorcycle boots but they get a bit hot after a while.
Noel has been relieved already by Jessica and he has changed into civvies for his bicycle ride home.
Rachel hands over her position on the main police channel to Nelly...
...someone has to listen to the channel every second of every day in case an officer calls for help, so the changeover takes a matter of mili-seconds. Night shift settles in and we adjust the chair heights, open the blinds... 
...and watch a rain squall wet the parking lot and Garrison Bight Marina across the Boulevard. I am on Channel Two tonight so I have six computer screens to monitor as I run arrest warrant checks on anyone the officers come in contact with. Jessica dispatches Fire and Rescue and shares phone answering with me. Administrative and 9-1-1 calls are all answered here. And so the three of us log in to our various screens as darkness starts to fall outside. It's weird how serene and peaceful this room gets sometimes in contrast to the moments of controlled chaos when we find ourselves asking people the oddest and most intimate questions.
I am looking forward to a quiet night so I can get on with To Have And To Have Not, the community book reading project. However the department has my soul until six in the morning and if the night goes sour I could be run ragged for the next twelve hours with non stop warrant checks and phone calls. Keeping my fingers crossed...
I carry a comb in my murse, which is less of a man purse and more of a back pack actually. It rides in my top case, locked and dry with all the odds and ends of daily living, including the brush aforesaid. A quick pass over the rug to remove lingering signs of helmet hair and in we go. 
The Police Department has been undergoing some paint and spiffying up which is nice for night shift as the painters are gone, leaving only the noxious fumes of modern paint gassing the building.
The front door to the Police Station is locked much to the consternation of people who watch TV and think the city of key West has money to spare to keep a sergeant employed as a front desk clerk. I always tell people who need an officer for a non emergency to call us and we'll send one to your home or hotel where you can wait comfortably. Unless it's a crazy night we respond within 15 minutes for lower priority calls. Losing your ID seems like the end of the world, but compared to people having heart attacks or getting fighting drunk it is considered Lower priority if your life isn't in danger.
Inside the corridors are wide and bland. We don't have cells in the police station. Sometimes prisoners are brought here to be questioned and the corridors are wide enough to walk three abreast but most police work boils down to paperwork and report writing after the action is over. You don't see much of that on TV, tediously filling out times, addresses and phone numbers.
The smell of fresh paint will linger for a couple of days but the fresh paint itself will look good for several years to come. This is my office with a huge plate window on the corridor so passing dignitaries can look in at the brains of the department, in a manner of speaking. Another reason to work nights: far fewer dignitaries in the building.
I like to arrive about ten minutes before six and I like to be relieved around the same time in the morning though technically there is no obligation to be relieved before six o'clock straight up. We each have a locker in the kitchen: 
In mine I keep some snacks, some magazines and books in case I forget to bring any (most of my colleagues read fashion magazines and gossip rags rather than motorcycle or sailing magazines for light entertainment). I hung up a map of the Dry Tortugas which drifted to my locker in some inexplicable way. It reminds me of happy times camping. In the yellow bag I keep my dress shoes. Our dress code requires a uniform of a polo shirt embroidered with a police badge, dress pants and dress shoes. Only women can wear skirts though none do oddly enough.
My Kevlar lined slider pants qualify as dress pants and I suppose no one would notice my motorcycle boots but they get a bit hot after a while.
Noel has been relieved already by Jessica and he has changed into civvies for his bicycle ride home.
Rachel hands over her position on the main police channel to Nelly...
...someone has to listen to the channel every second of every day in case an officer calls for help, so the changeover takes a matter of mili-seconds. Night shift settles in and we adjust the chair heights, open the blinds... 
...and watch a rain squall wet the parking lot and Garrison Bight Marina across the Boulevard. I am on Channel Two tonight so I have six computer screens to monitor as I run arrest warrant checks on anyone the officers come in contact with. Jessica dispatches Fire and Rescue and shares phone answering with me. Administrative and 9-1-1 calls are all answered here. And so the three of us log in to our various screens as darkness starts to fall outside. It's weird how serene and peaceful this room gets sometimes in contrast to the moments of controlled chaos when we find ourselves asking people the oddest and most intimate questions.
I am looking forward to a quiet night so I can get on with To Have And To Have Not, the community book reading project. However the department has my soul until six in the morning and if the night goes sour I could be run ragged for the next twelve hours with non stop warrant checks and phone calls. Keeping my fingers crossed... 
Pretty soon the three quarters of mile of single lane road gets clogged with slow pokes in cages. I generally find it easier to pull off and trim my nails while I wait for the car to amble up to me.
Once out on the Highway I run up through the gearbox as I pass Boondocks, the open air fried food and beer emporium that is about the most famous place on Ramrod Key which is a mere blip in the roadway as tourists rush to the fleshpots at the end of the road. Ramrod is about two miles long and two miles wide so it doesn't take long to reach open water, crossed by the Niles Channel Bridge.
The bridge rises 40 feet (12 meters) above mean high water and though that may not sound very tall it is the highest point between the Seven Mile Bridge and Key West.
Of course when you know that Ace Hardware is the best store of it's kind for hundreds of miles, and Slice of Paradise has the best pizza, and the Wharf superb fish sandwiches and organic beer and so forth, the pain of ugly streets is lifted somewhat. I am also told that the Galley in it's latest incarnation makes eggs Benedict to die for, so I shall probably feel obliged to check that out too. It would be nice as the Lower Keys need somewhere good for breakfast between Sugarloaf Lodge and...somewhere else. Square Grouper looks like a barn but looks are very deceiving. We celebrated a friend's graduation there last week which just confirmed what a surprisingly good place this is to throw money. (Yes Rob, I know it's pricey but I am an old fart so humor me).
Mangrove Mama's is just past the Mile Marker 20. You'd think my commute is measured by eating establishments. I suppose it is really.
This is the wilderness section of my commute, five miles of nothing but bridges and causeways (and Baby's Coffee if the loneliness of the highway starts to get to you). Why they are called the Saddlebunch Keys I couldn't say but they are a collection of innumerable unnamed islets, most of which are just clumps of mangroves. 
And after Big Coppitt, Mile Marker Ten, the last five miles to Stock Island are on the Lower Keys' only semblance of a freeway, albeit held down to a staid 55 miles per hour, four lanes, a median and an actual on and off ramp at the Boca Chica Navy base. 
And on Stock Island, 23 miles from my home we are back in the land of intersections, traffic lights and pedestrians.
1604 North Roosevelt Boulevard, my home from home for the next twelve hours. To the left is the fire station at 1600 North Roosevelt. The story that was told to me was the main fire station was built first and they got 1600, and then the police station came later on the side of the fire station but nobody wanted to change their letterhead so the police are at 1604 and instead of going up the numbers then dip to 1600 to accomodate the pre-existing fire station. A little known fact with which you can astonish your nerdy friends and win impressive bets.
You'd think I'd be tired of the commute but Highway One, for some reason, never bores me.
I was thinking about a Bandit before I got the Bonneville, but I figured the new Bandit at 1250cc water cooled (with tach) was a bit too powerful for the Florida Keys, an assessment that Charles, a new Keys resident, seconds. I do like the Bandit, a well equipped inexpensive reliable tourer with a strong turn of speed, though the older models look much more classic which appeals to me, over the rather angular new models.
A dog's eye view of the Truman sidewalk. It's Spring, it's Sunday, go out and breathe some fresh air.
Of course wandering Grinnell Street with a camera isn't exactly normal though happily the noted local author and photographer Tom Corcoran told my wife, when he was speaking to kids in her classroom (very well done, she said), " a camera is perfect cover in Key West." Perhaps I looked like a tourist with a Labrador. It isn't exactly a classic Key West lane is it?
According to J. Wills Burke's compendium at my elbow, the Grinnell's were a bunch of merchants from Up North, and apparently they may have helped John Fleeming (sic) fund his quarter share of the purchase of the island from Juan Salas. For whatever reason the Grinnell brothers got a street named for them here, though Burke in The Streets of Key West has a fascinating story about Henry Grinnell who never came to Key West and funded Arctic expeditions, particularly to find the lost Franklin expedition. It seems there are pieces of land in the Far Up North named for the man as well as down here in Key West
If you need beer on the run there is a drive through At Don's Place. Drink and drive and get caught and you will go to jail and get a criminal record. I take pictures, for my amusement to record Key West as I live it today, and my eternal regret is that picture taking was so cumbersome and expensive in the days before digital, not to mention the hassle of taking color pictures and having them screwed up in the development process. There was the alternative of black and white photogrpahy in a do-it-yourself darkroom or of actual drawing by hand. I did not wish to intrude but I hoped that was underway here.
They really are everywhere: 
Dilapidated but lovely. Calling all rich persons of taste who will come to key West and not demand that everything be done as they did it Up North. A Key West palace needs to be made lovely. We will forgive you if your loot comes from the cursed Goldman Sachs.
My kennel has found a place in the sun. At last. I can't get over what a ghastly winter it has been. I fear that if climate change has been sending a message this might not be the last time I shall see 42 American Degrees in Key West (5.5 Canadian degrees).
Yum!
Not content with chickens we have pelicans:
Families.
Naked ladies frozen in a moment of intimate derangement. 
And one more perfectly good unused porch. 
Cheyenne just knows there is some delicious tidbit mouldering underneath the floor of this Conch cottage.
Not many people bother to put the word "please" on their signs:
A day without road works isn't a day in Key West. I remember when they were putting fresh sewers in around town to give the city the most modern sewage facilities, which was a good thing, but we had to go through hell to get there. This gives me flashbacks.
