The Key West City commission has decided to change the parking rules in the city so we can expect some uproar come October when they take effect. In essence city residents in Old Town (west of White Street) have 1008 spaces marked for residents only but the current definition of resident is rather broad. If you have a car with a "Monroe County " tag you qualify or you can buy a decal at city hall. All that is going to change for a one year test period, they say. 
Starting in the Fall Old Town residents with all proper documents for their address and their vehicle will get a $25 annual decal to use residential spots. It sounds excellent but already there are voices grumbling about change. People who work in Old town but don't live there are upset. People like me who liv ein the county and have enjoyed residential spots only get to do so until October...change sucks...oh well.
Starting in the Fall Old Town residents with all proper documents for their address and their vehicle will get a $25 annual decal to use residential spots. It sounds excellent but already there are voices grumbling about change. People who work in Old town but don't live there are upset. People like me who liv ein the county and have enjoyed residential spots only get to do so until October...change sucks...oh well.Really the problem comes down to space. A small island, lots of cars, and not enough room. Plus you fill the island with people who expect all the conveniences of life Up North and you get impossible demands on a community unable to meet all the demands on the space. Honestly I view the changes in parking laws as a test of fortitude on the part of Old Town residents, New Town residents and County residents who are all going to have to adapt to change.
Of course the decal sales and the rules had better be followed scrupulously. there is a history of favoritism and the like that might engender some suspicion of ev eyrone's motives. I have high hopes the new parking Tzar is worth his money. The city could really use some streamlining of this impossible problem.
And they are still blinking their message of impending roadworks on April 25th, 2011.
I have seen no reason given in the newspaper for the delay, or cancellation, so I have no idea what happens next. Large trucks run the highway every day to keep our stores just-in-time inventory going and those trucks tear up the roadway better even than frost and freezing. 
I hope they do the work. Money has run out for sewer building so that project has stalled while the county considers a "public-private partnership" which based on the experience of Stock Island will be a corrupt disaster. Perhaps with Quantitative Easing in decline, supposedly we missed the boat for this shovel ready project. It wouldn't be the first time- not after the governor threw away 29,000 jobs by cancelling the (Medium) High Speed Rail project. That $2.4 billion was going to keep freshly unemployed NASA workers in the state when the space program dies down. Not any more. Oh well, at least we still have sunshine in Florida, even if there is no work.
One of the great things about living in the Keys is that even though one is a bit isolated from the full range of American Middle Class Mall shopping, no bad thing for a recluse like me, one can still get hold of the foods that have revolutionized American tastes since Julia Child started her campaign decades ago. I did notice that a lot of the more off the wall organics and frou frou middle class products (South Beach granola, Newman's Own cereal for instance) are no longer stocked now that Big Pine is inhabited by troglodytes and assorted primitives...It's nice the snowbirds have gone home for the summer but I miss their finicky shopping habits!
So he did just that. A perfect afternoon in the fabulous Florida Keys.
To be standing at the roadside in pure silence watching the sun break through the clouds is one of life's more perfect experiences. The little rain we have had has brought out a fine crop of mosquitoes in the Torch Keys, and the fact that I left a window open in the car while we walked, meant that I had a Mr Bean moment when I got back in the Ford.
I sat there for a moment wondering why there were so many insects in my car and then they started biting and I started thrashing. I might have looked very odd to someone outside looking in, but happily Cheyenne and I were still alone on the road. Like the late great Spalding Gray I try to have a perfect moment here and there and reality always manages to intrude. Fucking mosquitoes.
A waterfront home is a thing of beauty, a comfortable retreat and I enjoy my canal side home a great deal. It is not on the open water which comforts me when the winds reach hurricane force and it is but three quarters of a mile from the Great Trunk Road that connects the Keys. Highway One unhappily does not always look it's best as it passes through our wire hung, neon lit communities.
It was 1979 and I left home in the Spring aiming my Yamaha SR500 at Cape Town from my home in Italy.
I had the Euro-Yamaha with spoked wheels and a plain red/black paint job and no plan on how to repair a puncture, an oversight that leaves me gasping in retrospect. I tried to load canister for gas on home made racks on either side of the bike, and piled my saddle bags and rear rack high with unnecessary crap to comfort my loneliness in the heart of darkness. I carried too many books and not enough tools clearly, but I was 21 and ready for adventure. I found it. 
I bought a chain cover like the one shown above on the profoundly ugly diesel powered MZ whose picture I found on the Internet. It consisted of a black plastic box to cover the rear sprocket and two rubber tubes to protect the chain on it's run to and from the gearbox and the rear wheel. The idea was to keep abrasive sand from chewing up my chain. It worked- until it didn't. The early part of my trip consisted of taking a ferry from Naples to Tunis, crossing to Algeria just as I had done in 1977 on a Moto Morini 350 Sport (I excelled in riding small capacity motorcycles back then) and then turning south to cross the desert, an inhospitable place that Sahara.
The road had been freshly paved to Tamanrassett so the riding was easy. Back in Tunisia, camping in an oasis of date palms and sandy roads I met an intrepid German in a camper van. He was older, grumpy and probably retired with a world war two pension in part, no doubt.
After a week of building up my nerves I cast off from friendly, westernized Tozeur (alcohol was for sale, discreetly in government stores in Tunisia) and I made my way to Algeria In 1977 had got caught up in a riot in Constantine and had found refuge with an Italian engineer who came from my home town and spotted my Terni license plate in the chaos. I spent the night in his home drinking and listening to a city burn. In 1979 everything was quiet, the border was easy and I was soon rolling south. In the picture above I found a shot of some French travelers in a sandstorm, one of the big fears of a motorcyclist there. I never did have that pleasure, luckily for me. The picture below is Agadez, in Niger, well south of the worst of the Sahara and 800 miles from the end of the paved highway. My motorcycle was running fine, and I was doing okay, against predictions.
Mostly my thoughts turn to issues at home, getting the boat running or a new set of rear tires for the car, or some other mundane thing. These days i wonder a great deal about how it is the stock market is going stratospheric even as unemployment has fallen off the radar of the mainstream press. Gold is at $1550 an ounce, the Dow Jones is at 12,800 and the shadow stats site still reports unemployment and under employment stubbornly holding on at around 22 percent.
None of it adds up for me. Japan is forgotten even as they lumber on cleaning up an impossible fiasco, car production is 
I was talking to a police officer the other night who said her hospital bill for a recent surgery was $20,000 and she has yet to get the doctor's bills and the anaesthesiologist's bill and the aspirin bills and god knows what. She packs her lunch to work as does her state law