The Coasties were on hand, always ready to help out any boaters in this absurd race who might have bitten off more than they could chew.
However they also had their own dog in this hunt, a spectacularly powerful and determined paddler flying the Semper Paratus flag to victory in the first heat.
His boat was properly built and properly equipped with an anchor on the bow, ready to be deployed! The Minimal Regatta is in it's 20th year as a Veterans fund raiser on Memorial Day weekend. the rules are pretty simple: build you own boat from the same identical inadequate supplies, plywood, two by fours, duct tape and some screws... This was boat racing taken seriously. There are huge crowds traditionally at this event, ostensibly to watch people show up in silly costumes with silly boats and proceed to sink them. In reality it's an excuse to hang out and talk and drink.
Schooner Wharf Bar hosts the fun event http://www.schoonerwharf.com/11minimal.htm and supervises the entries. Results are reported in the paper, as all top flight sporting events should be. But the Minimal Regatta is a place to see and be seen.
The crowds are thick and the heat is oppressive for some, in others it just brings out their peaches and cream complexion. 
For Cheyenne it was oppressive and she ducked between legs to find a shady spot away from the action.
Like so many charity fundraisers in Key West this one is a chance to find a really silly costume and pose for the camera. I had left my hard hat at home and was thus obliged to keep my distance.
Cheyenne did her bit for the camera attracting some healthy interest.
I found an available corner at the Shrimp Sound building overlooking the melee. The dock in front of Schooner Wharf was like hot sticky pudding, filled with sweaty bodies rubbing off each other and the air was like custard and just as hard to breathe.
There were actually plenty of free seats with decent views of the boating if you looked for them because the commentary of Evalena Worthington and the DJ Hoebee was broadcast far and wide across the waters...
The pleasure of the racing and the sinkings will be paid for later by some incautious souls. 
And whenever I wonder why people discriminate against big dogs I see a pooch in a crate on the back of a scooter or in someone's arms...
And don't let's forget the pirates keeping an eye on things.
I just stood there in the sun pondering the slow start watching people rushing hither and yon on Lazy Way Lane looking for the best spot to watch or perhaps to meet a friend or perhaps, as I was thinking of, to go home.
There was a lady passing through the crowd selling poppies for Memorial Day, a reminder of the purpose of the event.
And the first boats got going to much acclaim.
One sank, one didn't...
...and it was time to go home and get some rest before the all too imminent start of a holiday night shift for me.
However they also had their own dog in this hunt, a spectacularly powerful and determined paddler flying the Semper Paratus flag to victory in the first heat.His boat was properly built and properly equipped with an anchor on the bow, ready to be deployed! The Minimal Regatta is in it's 20th year as a Veterans fund raiser on Memorial Day weekend. the rules are pretty simple: build you own boat from the same identical inadequate supplies, plywood, two by fours, duct tape and some screws... This was boat racing taken seriously. There are huge crowds traditionally at this event, ostensibly to watch people show up in silly costumes with silly boats and proceed to sink them. In reality it's an excuse to hang out and talk and drink.Schooner Wharf Bar hosts the fun event http://www.schoonerwharf.com/11minimal.htm and supervises the entries. Results are reported in the paper, as all top flight sporting events should be. But the Minimal Regatta is a place to see and be seen.The crowds are thick and the heat is oppressive for some, in others it just brings out their peaches and cream complexion. 
For Cheyenne it was oppressive and she ducked between legs to find a shady spot away from the action. 
Like so many charity fundraisers in Key West this one is a chance to find a really silly costume and pose for the camera. I had left my hard hat at home and was thus obliged to keep my distance. 
Cheyenne did her bit for the camera attracting some healthy interest.
I found an available corner at the Shrimp Sound building overlooking the melee. The dock in front of Schooner Wharf was like hot sticky pudding, filled with sweaty bodies rubbing off each other and the air was like custard and just as hard to breathe. 
There were actually plenty of free seats with decent views of the boating if you looked for them because the commentary of Evalena Worthington and the DJ Hoebee was broadcast far and wide across the waters...The pleasure of the racing and the sinkings will be paid for later by some incautious souls. 
And whenever I wonder why people discriminate against big dogs I see a pooch in a crate on the back of a scooter or in someone's arms...
And don't let's forget the pirates keeping an eye on things.
I just stood there in the sun pondering the slow start watching people rushing hither and yon on Lazy Way Lane looking for the best spot to watch or perhaps to meet a friend or perhaps, as I was thinking of, to go home.
There was a lady passing through the crowd selling poppies for Memorial Day, a reminder of the purpose of the event.
And the first boats got going to much acclaim.
One sank, one didn't...
...and it was time to go home and get some rest before the all too imminent start of a holiday night shift for me.
Memorial Day and one's thoughts turn to hot dogs and summer fun when actually we should be thinking about some other more grounded stuff. It has always struck me as odd, coming from a world where Armistice Day was celebrated in the cold and leafless dreariness of a fast approaching winter, to mark death with the advent of summer. I have had my own unworthy thought: It's big paycheck time tonight as I'm working on an official holiday, and frankly I've earned it considering how much trouble the drunken celebration of summer has had me paying attention night after night in police dispatch this holiday weekend. And finally on the subject of death and resurrection a light note from Ace Summerland Hardware, the best ironmongers in the Lower Keys at Mile Marker 25:
What possesses them to make passers by laugh I'm not sure but they are a cheerful helpful lot inside. I have a sneaking suspicion they will be open today to lend a helping hand. Some of us have to work.
I probably put many more miles on the Triumph motorbike than does the impeccably turned out heffalump above, and the House of Saud thanks me. But here below is the true Key West Buggy, and I don't mean the exhausted Cheyenne. 
The old moggie (Morris Minor) was built between 1948 and 1971 as one of those post World War Two means to get Europeans mobile, much as the Fiat 500 did in Italy. A Morris Minor was in fact the first car I ever drove at a friend's farm round a rather bumpy field when I was young enough that seeing over the steering wheel and reaching the clutch pedal simultaneously was a bit of a problem. I envied him enormously a father who would buy my friend an old banger to romp around the farm in.
This curiously eccentric old car with steering on the wrong side and still respectable fuel mileage today really does represent in my mind the perfect Key West Buggy. Scooters are always respectable even if renters frequently fail to use them correctly. Like this lot at Garrison Bight Marina Friday.
My proclivities as a dirty old man come in for much scorn from readers who think staring at young women who wouldn't look twice at them in real life is a macho thing to do, so I offer this taste of what's to come with all due humility for the undoubted shortcomings. 
These absurd pork pie hats are appearing everywhere on top of young touristas, so I am forced to think they look more suitable on Madison Avenue and in Beverly Hills than they do at Schooner Wharf Bar.
Speaking of Beverly Hills I rather enjoyed the babes of Big Pine Bay Watch. 
The actual boats themselves were of less interest to me and in any event despite the rumored presence of CNN the race took an age to start. I'm working tonight so I couldn't even drink beer to assuage the boredom. I went home and took a nap instead. 
It's all about useful services is Virginia Street including the mini storage building. It never ceases to amaze me how businesses and people in Key west adapt their plans to the lack of square footage on the island. On mainland USA a storage business typically is huge, here it's a secure building which would look especially good when hurricane season is upon us (June 1st is the officially start day for that).
Failing solid storage one could use a shrine I suppose for hurricane season. This rather attractive one was empty and unloved when we walked by, Cheyenne and I. I couldn't help but notice the yellow bike and yellow flowers in some sort of psychic connection. So I took a picture.
This place used to be El Rancho, an elderly survivor in a town filled with hotels and guest houses but time wasn't kind to the old place and it had become a flea pit. There is no other name for it. Now it is a rather smart and cleverly designed new building on Truman Avenue and packed for the holiday weekend.
The offspring of the El Rancho owner built this hotel to a 21st century vision. I remember them announcing they were going to build it as a green hotel, lowering energy use and the hotel's carbon impact and create hypo allergenic rooms. They got their Green Lodging Label.
From the exterior it looks nicely done, filling the footprint, spiriting guest's cars off the street and surrounding the building with landscaping that makes it look entirely unobtrusive.
