Eventide

The views across Key West Bight entice people to eat out over the water. It's winter now, the other Keys season and the sun has lost its summer strength. Sitting out feels nice these days.

My dog has found her sea legs too and she is quite ready to take on the cool evening air after a long hot summer of panting on airless sidewalks.

Cheyenne was pulling me like the little engine that could and I was dragged along behind protesting and trying to hold her on the inadequate leash. Part of the problem is that i view the walks as her time and I feel churlish about cutting into her walks with my requirements for contemplative pauses and photography while she has a super secret smell to hunt down.

So even though this was intended as a sunset meditation the headlong gallop through the neighborhood around Eaton Street ended up resembling a bolting horse pursued by a hapless groom.

Cheyenne, I implored, look at the sky. But Cheyenne kept tugging, nose to the ground.

It was a lovely evening to be in the city, even when taken at a fast gallop.


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Last Flight Out

Ah flight! Realm of dreams and fantasies and romance.

They call it the Key West International Airport which is a rather grandiose title for a piddly little regional airport with flights to Miami and Orlando but wait! The Feds have said they may soon fly some actual international flights to Cuba, no less. They will of course be restricted so we ordinary folk aren't polluted by contact with the Godless Communists but they will be international flights from an airport that will finally be international in scope, be it ever so limited.

One finds oneself sitting on the ground watching the more fortunate take off for parts unknown and thus left today dream of Macchu Picchu or Paris in the Spring. However finding myself walking my dog and observing the posturing on the runway I felt glad I was staying behind as another boatload of visitors got whisked off to someplace remote leaving me where I was content to be.

When I was a child my parents were a rarity in that they got divorced and split my vacations between two countries flying to and from Rome six times a year. My mother made friends with the immigration agents and ushered me through the formalities like a little diplomat in shorts. My friends asked me what it was like to fly and my answer that it was noisy and boring never seemed to satisfy them. I preferred riding my moped and liked to forget the tribulations of propeller driven flight through the skies.

I never did get over the abrupt transition airplanes force upon the traveler. We leave Miami on a warm summer evening in the tropics, all palms and dark thunderstorms and breathless humidity and by breakfast time you step out into a crisp spring morning half a world away. How is that possible?

A big fat slow old seaplane seems a much better proposition, a more humane way to lumber across the skies and yet, when compared to the ferry out to the Dry Tortugas this amphibian is a positive space rocket of speed and efficiency cutting the journey from three hours to forty minutes. And imagine the views across the shallow turquoise waters!

There are those who live to fly, whose sole ambition is to be in the skies, turning and swirling like a leaf on an updraft. Not me, I like the convenience of instant travel when I have no choice.

I dream of an old age filled with time when I could cross an ocean as a passenger on a cargo ship with the luxury of taking days, not hours to arrive where I was going. In that same ideal future which may never arrive I'd carry my Bonneville as deck cargo ready for adventures upon docking in some distant place.

Flying is for the birds, and humans in a hurry. Not for pleasure, and I'll let others disagree.

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Not The City

There are those who find themselves craving city life. I'm not one of them.

Sitting around talking yesterday with friends who live in the Lower keys we were discussing the problems that neighbors bring, principally noise in a quiet neighborhood. People sometimes ask me what is a "safe" neighborhood to live in Key west. My answer as usual is often more frustrating than useful to my interlocutor. They want me to quote chapter and verse on safe areas and "unsafe" neighborhoods, as though a city four miles by two miles could be so neatly divided.

My answer is that comfort and safety all depends on who you live next to, and if you find a nice place in a quiet neighborhood all it takes is one moving van to upset the dynamic of the entire street. Besides, in my opinion one's safety on the streets of Key West is dependant mostly on one's behavior. Bad luck always plays a factor but a resident who is home, tucked up well before the bars close, is never going to have a problem. A resident who doesn't go looking for drugs or hangs out with aggressive drunks is never going to have a problem. Don't piss off your ex, or your current squeeze's ex and you should be fine.




The problem of noisy neighbors is harder to deal with in a town where houses are piled on top of each other and most people who live in them have not been brought up to be respectful of close knit neighbors. I've lived for years in marinas and people who live on boats (and doubtless people who live full time in RVs) have developed certain protocols that make life bearable in close quarters. Old Town residents who are new to the game don't seem to catch on so fast sometimes.

I like living in the Lower keys, sensible though I am to the costs of commuting. I enjoy my commute too as it happens, working nights and finding a generally open road for my motorcycle ride.

Living outside the city one gets the opportunity to see the ocean every day and admire the changing seascapes. Woods and back roads and country paths are close to hand and tourist events, parades and crowds are options, not events to be borne in cheerful silence as the noisy drunken crowds swirl past the front door.

There again your average city dweller would find my life on the periphery of Highway One to be rather dowdy and withdrawn. Living far far from the city lights is a drawback when it comes to inviting dinner guests whose first preoccupation is the "long drive" a half hour of bridges and sweeping vistas and
islands dotted alongside one of the most scenic highways in the world. Then there is the question of a designated river to haul the alcohol besotted guests all the way back to the city.

If you live in the boonies of the Lower Keys you have to be prepared to meet people half way and happily there are lots of good watering holes in Key West and on the road where your friends don't have to drive so far.

I enjoy the chance to go to Key West and wander the streets, see a movie or a play or attend a performance and then go home to my silent palm forest, surrounding my moonlit deck amid the sounds of absolute silence. The streets and neighborhoods of the little islands scattered between Key West and the city of Marathon are backwaters of commerce, small businesses with civilized opening hours and no chains anywhere at all.

Fast food in Big Pine involves going to the deli section at the Winn Dixie supermarket, or picking up a to-go meal at one of many non-chain local restaurants or hauling home some Dion's chicken from the gas station(!). Its small town living the way I like it. Consider lodgings in Big Pine. There are no chains, just the Big Pine Motel, an old fashioned local establishment with all suitable amenities including a pool, several palms, plenty of parking and nearby places to get the necessities for an evenings indoor entertainment, notably liquor stores. as for peace and quiet Big Pine rolls up the carpet early. Cheyenne loves walking the neighborhoods in the predawn darkness when I'm not working and wake up early at home wondering why I'm not dispatching as usual before dawn. We get in the car and drive out here and go walkabout, my dog and I.

I enjoy the architecture of Key West as we all do who visit the town and marvel at its survival since it was founded in 1828. Key west is unique in a world devoted to franchising and rationalizing and uniformity at the expense of freedom and individuality. Take churches, for instance. I lost any pretense of religion years ago but I still enjoy the symbols of religious dominance in the architecture of past glories. St Paul's on Duval, the perfect setting for the winter concerts soon to come, and lunch time organ playing inside the hallowed walls and flying buttresses of classic church architecture. My other favorite includes the peace and Covenant Church on William and Fleming which I am photographing all the time, with it's sturdy square tower and battlements. Or St Peter's on Center Street, classic and serene. I really quite like them all ad their historic associations. But on Big Pine we have to re-dimension that pleasure for this is not the land of architecture or symbols of permanence. This is not a warehouse but a church and I'm sure it serves the purpose splendidly but it gives me no aesthetic pleasure, as though that should ever have been the goal.

Big Pine is the retreat for those whose appreciation of the world outside is jaundiced by experience or aggravation. "I'm a bitter gun owner clinging to my religion," the quotation attributed to our foreign-born Muslim President and quoted here by a free living resident of a trailer that would look palatial in a Brazilian favela.

That is what we are reduced to, bumper stickers and symbols and fifteen second television quotations taken out of context and used, in the words of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, for a high tech lynching. But out here where the sun shines on the just and unjust alike its not the sloganeering that counts. Its the wildlife sightings, and I don't mean my dog.

Key deer are all well and good but I also spotted some seriously industrious bees doing their thing around these long red things. They made me feel exhausted just watching them hovering around.

The other great thing about life outside the narrow confines of the Southernmost City is that you can spread out. If you have a couple of old lawn mowers they have room to rot gently in the sun and not get in the way. I like this sense of life lived slowly and expansively.

When I first spotted this for sale sign on an old truck I thought it read: "Rum Good, or $600 Cash" which at first glance sounded like a reasonable trade if you happened to have six hundred dollars worth of rum handy for an exchange on an older truck. On closer inspection it actually was more prosaic suggesting the vehicle runs ungrammatically well.

The bright orange sign shown below is not offering something for sale but is encouraging visitors not to trespass. What a surprise.

Out here in the backwoods there's not a person or vehicle to be seen.

Which you'd think might make this far distant neighborhood "unsafe." Not so far at least, and my friends keep telling me to watch out for rattlers and stuff but all I ever get to see is the odd albino alligator sunning herself, in the shade, like this:

After my alligator recovered from her exertions I stuffed her back into the car and we rode off to do run our errands. First stop was prescriptions at the CVS where I waited in the magazine section for the pills to be popped into a container for me, by a highly trained pharmacist. Actually they are looking for another such apparently but only part time which seems a tough way to pay the rent in these islands where costs are abnormally high and wages correspondingly low and the hours are apparently reduced. Offering health benefits is so 20th century! I am always glad I have such a civilized job.

Among the magazines Money was offering suggestions on how to "invest" any spare ten thousand dollars you might have lying around. This should be good for a laugh, I thought as I waited for my wife's pills. Buy this or that the magazine insisted. Expensive exercise gear was one suggestion, or a not too expensive kitchen upgrade in your home whose value is plummeting daily or even buy a better car as though cars are "investments." Is it any wonder I asked myself that journalism is such a crap profession. Nowhere did the wise investors suggest stashing the cash in the mattress a time tested method of surviving deflationary times. Or buy bullion even (gold not soup). Buying a car? As an investment? Better off buying guns and ammo. Ask my secretive Big Pine neighbors.

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Holiday Cheer

Call me naïve but I was a little taken aback to see Christmas for sale even before Thanksgiving was in the bag.


In the years of plenty the need to keep on selling in these manufactured holidays seemed obscene to me, but now that we have our economic backs to the wall it smacks of desperation. Snow days? In Miami? Chain stores' inventory sometimes manages to look ludicrous without trying.


Sometimes they want us to spend $6 to make our best friends look ludicrous. My wife really thought for a minute that I wanted to stick this piece of Chinese crap on my dog's head.


Champagne appears this time of year because bubbly wine is another cliché for the holidays. Done right it's delicious any time of the year, not that the advertisers care.


We're going North for a meaningful family gathering. I want to spend the first in this series of holidays doing what the holiday was first created for, and that wasn't shopping for nonsense. Buying stuff from local artisans to express a true sentiment is one thing, keeping Chinese oligarchs in business seems crazy to me.


I will miss t-shirt weather in November but the family will make it worth it. I am a citizen first and a consumer a long way second and the sooner we all realize the difference the sooner we will have holidays truly full of joy and hope for the future for all our family members and let Made In America be the next holiday wish.


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Dear Art

My wife calls her rheumatoid arthritis ’Art' and she's lived with him for 15 years. The irony is her specialist has his own form of arthritis and he like my wife is a triple A personality so they both work their backsides off in their respective trades. Check out the size of her file. That's years of trying to outwit Art.


We share a similar sense of humor and ironic detachment when it comes to politics. Dr Ritter no longer prescribes narcotics owing to new Florida laws aimed at pill mills which he is decidedly not. Ritter knows what arthritis pain is and he is reigned to the fact that his patients who really need relief can't get it from him. He sends them to pain specialists. As they discussed treatment options for a relentless evolving disease I looked out the window into the South Miami street below.


What does the flower seller do for his arthritis, without insurance? Does he rely on a home remedy? My wife tried those in her struggle to evade side effects. She tried them all when we lived in California: Indian, Chinese, diet, massage, herbs meditation on and on and on, every new age treatment that never worked. So it was back to chemistry and expense and side effects.


Thank god we have insurance. As messed up as the system is between us we can navigate the torturous paperwork, we find the co-pays and my wife keeps her government job. As discussion moves in right wing circles toward repealing Obamacare, as it is called dismissively, I wonder how many people with incurable expensive non terminal diseases would like to let insurance corporations cut them from coverage? Obamacare isn't much but has helped. Call it socialism, but for my wife who is uninsurable it is a lifeline.


There's money in medicine and for specialists in low demand fields like auto immune disease there aren't enough doctors, so there's too much work and money enough to expand the offices to try to cope with the flood of patients seeking relief from endless, crippling pain. I read about cancer drugs now going generic that are unavailable in hospitals, about drugs not being shipped to Greece in bankruptcy and I wonder how long before we start an adult conversation on these issues. Rationing? We have it already. Ask the flower seller, if you can stoop to speak his language.


We have tens of thousands of children not eating right, or not eating enough, deprived of access to health care and still expected to shine at school on empty stomachs. My wife and I have neither aging parents nor needy children and we are left to imagine the stress of those situations. We just have to live with Art and his impositions. Exercise daily in the gym and laughter daily with her husband help keep the joints from seizing up. And expensive drugs.


And if like this scooter rider I take to lane splitting (illegally) I run the risk of...well you name it. In any event the biggest risk is unmanageable medical bills if I survive the wreck. We're all an ambulance ride away from joining Greece in debtor's prison. Obamacare? Not enough, but you won't know till you get the diagnosis. Then you join the flower seller at the botanica.




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Triumph Tiger 800

We went by Triumph of Miami, where I ordered a rather fancy new helmet, when my wife and I were in the Big City.



Thus I got a chance to see the new Tiger 800 up close for the first time, even as Triumph has released the new 1200 Explorer to an eagerly underfunded public.



The base price of the Tiger is $11,500. Plus no doubt a few more fees and taxes plus saddlebags etc... So I'm figuring about $14,000 out the door as seen here.



I like the looks of the bike well enough but I was quite surprised how huge the machine is. I liked the Tiger 1050 but that bike was far too large and heavy for my tastes. I had hoped this machine might be on a more human scale but even with the low seat option I doubt I would feel comfortable astride this bike. And check out the width on those bags. Lane splitting? Forget it! In Key West it would take two motorcycle spaces to park this thing, so equipped, for free on the streets.



The Tiger's three cylinders produce 90hp, 50% more than my modest $8,000 Bonneville, not that I actually need more power. However the killer is my wife thinks it's fugly and she compares the rather cool green color to a bad taste 1950's kitchen appliance. Bummer. I guess I'd better stay focused on the Sprint GT which she compares to an oversized all plastic scooter. Sigh.



She has a point. There is no motorcycle as pretty as the Bonneville and mine is set up exactly as I like it.



I really wanted to like the Tiger, but for three thousand dollars less the new Suzuki SV650 seems a much better deal. I think I will stick with the Bonneville in any event as it works fine for me, but it was fun to actually see some of the bikes I read about.



My true fantasy machine is another P200E Vespa. But like all fantasies I'm sure it would disappoint thirty years after I last owned one.



I saw the cool French poster in the changing room at Macy's. Too bad I was there to buy work pants.

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