Summer Vacation

Giovanni and I agreed that we had to make the summer ride good so that the memories would last.


We rode a lot. We hit mountains, islands, coast roads, winding roads, restaurants.


And we watched the summer fields go by. It was all as I remembered it so many years ago before the Internet and fuel injection and the Euro.


It was good and the memories are still there. I really did like riding that BMW R1200ST. It fit me like a glove. A great summer vacation for me and my wife. We rode like there was no tomorrow and now, in the Fall, one has to wonder if there is a tomorrow after all.


The news from Europe makes me sad, not just because there is far too much suffering but also because, for reasons of selfishness, I am sorry to see my world disappear into history. Paradoxically a world I voluntarily turned my back upon.


There was a sense when I was growing up that life had order, circumscribed by restriction, that thinking outside the box was not smart. We were all in it together, no one soared and the least among us didn't starve on the streets. It was a good social compact on a continent used to horrid civil strife. Except I couldn't stand my family so I ran for the border. I always felt the sense of liberation of being an emigrant of having a whole continent at my fingertips. I could go wherever I wanted, I had no anchors, no obligations, no family to answer to. I got to make my movie in California, epicenter it turned out of the world economic cataclysm born in Reagan-land and exposed 30 years later in Greece. Epicenter also of the entire world's imagination.


I miss the Europe of my childhood the security of what came before and the welfare state that was promised for ever and ever amen. I took a leap emigrating and it seems to have been a good idea for me as I found happiness. I've had thirty years of practice surviving without a welfare state. Giovanni hasn't and he sees signs of crisis everywhere. I wonder what Italy will look like when next I get to go?



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More Bloody Rain

We had a party at home last night and one of our guests, at the end of a very pleasant evening said, as she girded up her loins for a wet dash to her car parked in the next lot: They say it will be raining all day tomorrow.


Yup. It rained all damned day today. Cheyenne got no walks, my wife's arthritis was terrible and I had the prospect of a wet ride to work, which secretly I looked forward to.


The newspaper said a protest was to be held at Mallory Square, to join the other 99 per centers across the world rising up against the one percent pocketing our pensions and our children's futures.


I liked the idea of an Occupy Key West standing, not at the epicenter of Federal Power on Simonton Street or North Roosevelt Boulevard at the Homeland Insecurity building, instead protesting wildly at the tourists on the waterfront. In Rome cars and buildings were set afire, in London crowds gathered to protest the privatization of health care, Aneurin Bevin's great post war experiment torn to pieces, and in Key West, civility in protest.


Which must be why I live here. The reset button has to be pressed on Western Economies and the closer we get to that fateful day the more upset the formerly unaware citizens become.


Here at home it rains cats and dogs while Texas' rice crop burns up in perpetual drought. Here in Key West budgets are balanced, visitors keep pouring in, roads are repaved and calamity seems unreal.


The worst we can say is that rain seems likely every day through Wednesday. Gray skies, wind and puddles, and even through all that not cold, unless 76 degrees rates as cold.


I am not fond of prolonged rain, but let's face it, these days things could be a lot worse in the Fabulous Florida Keys.


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Colson On Cudjoe

Heading north on the Overseas Highway around Mile Marker 21 one passes the Sheriff's substation, a big green sign that slows nervous drivers to well below the speed limit. Then you come across a turn out on the south side of the highway.


Houses around here are quite fancy by local standards. They have yards, landscaping and all modern conveniences.


These are homes with a little bit of suburban Florida style and no Keys funk.


Imagine those stylish Mediterranean roof tiles lifting off in one hundred thirty mile per hour winds. Every summer is hurricane season around here.


Cheyenne loves suburban walks, I couldn't keep up here.


Do people really use these hoop things or are they just placed for stylish decoration?


Some homes are placed on low mounds which help when it floods but stilts are really the best way to go.


Color on a gray day!


The note to the right of the impressive Konzentrationslager gate says "Private Property." Was the any doubt?


Cheyenne quit before we got to the end of the street.


The indistinct red diamond marks the actual end of the street, out of reach on a muggy Friday morning to those of us on foot.



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Windsor Lane

Albuquerque in Key West, a Conch cottage disguised as an apparition from the desert southwest.


Cacti, small windows to keep out the burning desert sun and a paint job that looks like pure New Mexico. This lovely little home reminds me why I sometimes think that life in the Sonoran Desert would be quite fun for a bit. Until the dry heat crisped my hair and crinkled my fingernails and chapped my lips.


Back to reality, because I like humid heat as much as I like cacti.


And you don't get cemeteries like this in Arizona.


And though the high cirrus cloud could be anywhere,


...palms, porches and proper conch homes spell Key West, my home and much nicer than any desert anywhere.

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My Ride

There are people who consider themselves to be scooter riding fanatics yet who prefer not to rent scooters when they visit Key West because the no riding gear attitude makes them feel uncomfortable.


Too bad for them. I know I look odd when I arrive in town in long pants, mesh jacket, leather gloves and helmet. But my cool motorcycle makes up for my lack of style.


Bicycling in Key West is also a casual affair for most people. Jump on the bike and go.


Use a basket to haul your crap and you have an island stye station wagon at your finger tips.


Or...you can ride Conchscooter style, striking a pose that's says "I rode here from Ramrod Key with all my crap including the kitchen sink."


Or you can be normal and ride a big v-twin.


Key West accommodates all.



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The Mercenary

I was in the south of France in the summer of 1978, riding my Morini 350 twin and it was hot and sticky and dry and I was not ready to ride far. With frequent stops and a lot of lane splitting I got stuck in traffic in all sorts of exotic places, St Tropez heads the list of any self respecting tourist in the South of France, but I was not impressed. My bike had clip-on handlebars forcing me to ride in a crouch, while my tank bag kept flopping from side to side so that I had to hold it in place with my forearms which got sweaty from the contact. Thus it was that all I could think about was finding shade and water, trapped in the long line of cars inching to nowhere. Shade and water meant I had to escape to the hills, so I abandoned any pretensions of hanging with the rich and infamous on the beach and I rode for the hills.It was hot work even when I gained elevation and there were still slow poke cars on the roads to prevent me moving smoothly at speed, but I got more of a cooling breeze the higher I went so things improved gradually. Besides, even loaded with luggage the Morini was great fun to ride. Nowadays a 350cc V-twin on tires that seem no wider than beach cruiser bicycles tires would not appear to be much good for riding anywhere out of sight of home, but that Morini took me to North Africa and all over northern Europe over the course of three years that I owned it. Eventually a friend of mine rode it off the road after he nagged me to death asking to ride it and that was the end of that.

I found a campground much like the one pictured above, a bunch of camping trailers mixed in with space for tents and tons of people everywhere on their much anticipated summer vacations. I picked a spot and put up my bright blue two person tent. Inside I lay next to my belonging and everything was suffused in blue but it was not restful. It was hot and airless and bright under the southern sun under a blue plastic flysheet. I stood outside the tent and breathed in fresh,untainted hot summer air.

"Hey! You hot?" the man in the cool shady awning stretched out next to his roulotte waved a piece of delicious looking red fruit. Sure I said, sucked in to his orbit by the shade and his smile. I was young and innocentg and took everything and everyone at face value. We sat and talked while his wife, unseen, clattered dishes in the travel trailer behind us.

We talked about where we were from, me from Italy he from Paris. We talked motorcycles and I told him how bored I was by life down on the farm. "I escaped that," he said, "by joining the Legion." Huh? "I've been everywhere," he said. He talked about the Congo and Algeria, he talked of fishing in the Indian Ocean and driving trucks in jungles and deserts. He saw me looking at his hand. "That was never a problem," he said and I could believe it as I had not noticed his weird lobster claw fingers for the longest time. "I grew up like that," he said looking at the huge deformed pink thumb and the wadded up single finger that grew out of the stump of his hand. "The Legion never minded when they understood I could do anything anyone else did." He spoke in answer to my unspoken question.

His wife, a pretty, slim woman in a summer dress with the good manners of a middle class Frenchwoman came out and invited me to dinner. We ate at the table under the awning by the light of a gas lamp and the conversation continued late into the night. My host was what we call a "contractor" who ran his own company providing services and "personnel" around the world. I was fascinated and a little scared. "He isn't always so kind," his wife said smiling, as he told a story against himself of some close shave in as former French tropical colony. Implicit in her comment was the suggestion of severity if not savagery. he grinned the mirth of the amoral.

Had the Internet existed back then I could have looked up the hereditary condition called ectrodactyly which is caused in hands or feet by some chromosomal alteration. I could have looked him on faceboomk perhaps, under gunmen for hire, governments overthrown on demand... As it was I watched his lobster claw in open fascination and admiration of his ability to ignore daily complexity even when using a deformed hand. He was amused by my fascination at his stories of derring-do and by his dexterity with the hand. "You need to get out of the farm and see the world. Come and work for me." The suggestion shocked me.

He renewed it the next morning. "I'll show you the world," he smiled as he poured me a coffee. I got on my motorcycle and fled after thanking him profusely.

I wonder what might have happened to me had I thrown my customary caution to the wind. Probably nothing much as I never did see myself as a dog of war. On the other hand...who knows what lies within any of us and perhaps I would have made a bloodthirty mercenary with the best of them. How odd are the crossroads we pass, and ignore, in the journey of life.