Backroad Virginia.

My wife goes to Europe next week to hang with a friend in Holland where dope smoking in public cafés will soon be outlawed for foreigners. Meanwhile I took Cheyenne on a road trip to see what mountains look like in Spring.


Virginia is known as horse country but in remote southwest Virginia bucolic little farms are connected by tiny winding well paved roads. I want to ride my Bonneville here, not walk my beloved dog.


A few commuters buzzed me as I took pictures but we were mostly alone in this wilderness on the road between Catawba and Blacksburg.


Abandoned buildings sink into the flourishing undergrowth.


Scattered farmsteads nestle among the rolling hills that remind me of my childhood in central Italy.


Everything was green and fresh and the air was cool and crisp.


This perfectly manicured lawn was attached to no building or home as far as I could see. It was like a movie set in the middle of nowhere.


I was entranced.


Everywhere I looked I saw scenes like this.


Houses are tucked in so deep they don't intrude, even these modern suburban boxes.


My massive set of wheels was dwarfed by the rolling fields spreading across the horizon.


A Key West sign warning the dim witted that collapsing old barns might be dangerous. Imagine that!


Dangerous for the unwary, but charming in the early morning light.


A promising start to the day.


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Strange Advertising

It's the time of year when local businesses seek local customers, their way of filling the gap left by the snowbirds and their expansive tastes. In order to keep busy during summer there are all sorts of special offers available if you have local ID and know where to look.


The newspaper boosts advertising with a special half page restaurant box, where members of the chamber of commerce can encourage under paid private sector workers to splurge on a meal out in low season. I was quite surprised to see one local eatery spending money on advertising. This is, I believe, a first:


The Greek Euro meltdown has yet to be felt on Main Street,U.S.A, and in an election year we are told things are just peachy. When Five Brothers feels the need to advertise for customers I wonder just how peachy things really are.

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Motorcycle And Chicken

I came back to the Bonneville and found a rooster nesting in the grass staring at my motorcycle, half daring it to run him down. The Bonnneville like my dog ignores wildlife. Good motorbike.


The chicken ran when I strolled up. Smart rooster.

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Rest Beach

Messing with signs is a local sport:


I actually pulled over, parked the motorcycle and walked back to take this picture. Some people are too inventive for their own good.


This guy was sitting there eating a piece of fruit looking quite morose.


Perhaps the view was inadequate. More likely he is alone and unloved and wondering what life is about.


I lime watching the shore birds.


No one messed with this sign. Leave the sea oats alone! Without vegetation the dune collapses and the ocean marches up to Atlantic Avenue which is good for no one.


This is my favorite spot at Rest Beach. Come here with a con leché and think about the meaning of life.


Low tide exposes a really huge expanse of seaweed and rock. These aren't the fabulous Florida beaches some visitors expect to find in the Keys. I like the view.


Jet skis bug some people but the comments have died down in the paper so I expect it was some snow bird who is now safely tucked up in the plains states somewhere and will forget these irritations until next winter.


Back and forth they go.


I wondered what the barge was off Smathers Beach. Later I rode by and discovered it was some sort of water slide


Not like anywhere else in Florida, these Keys.


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Power To No Name

I love industrial electrical power. Not everyone shares my joy in the convenience of unlimited electrical power available at the flip of a switch.


When a group of people gets an idea in their heads that money is to be made the idea won't die and such is the case on No Name Key, where a vocal group is demanding the arrival of remotely generated electricity.


No Name Key is famous as the place where Cuban exiles trained to fail at the Bay of Pigs, it's also famous as the only island in the Keys where homes are not supplied by the electrical utility. Now that seems bound to change.


Driving Cheyenne out for a walk there was a utility truck ready to plant a cement pole. It must have been lunch time for no one was working but the equipment was ready.


It looks like they mean business even though the legalities of powering up the island have been and are being debated by the county, the state, the utility, conservationists, and two groups of residents. One lot say leave things as they are and the other lot, widely rumored to be speculating that power will increase the value of property exponentially say it's time for change.


When we were looking at homes in the Lower Keys we checked No Name even though it's more than an hour's drive from the jobs of Key West. Also the homes seemed no cheaper than homes on the grid elsewhere in the islands. Fresh as we were off life on a sailboat, powered by the engine and a solar panel, I was reluctant to engage in a life ashore dealing with diesel generators, solar panels, batteries and home maintenance on an industrial scale.


So we went mainstream and I don't regret it. I have a small portable generator for prolonged outages and I have a cistern that supplies my house with drinking water, but I like the silence and ease brought to me by power lines.


There are plastic fences marking presumably the locations of power poles to come along Watson Road. The plans are coming to fruition which strikes me as odd. I mean, it's no secret there is no power on the island, though they do have buried telephone and cable TV (!) utilities wired to the homes. So why buy here if you want to have your home on the grid?


So why is it that a bunch of people who did buy here without utility power decided to screech for it's installation, if not to speculate on the value of a home attached to the grid? And here are the first two "test" poles installed by Keys Energy last year. I guess they are solid enough for expansion to continue. It is coming and it can't be stopped, it seems.


If I have out of town visitors keen to see Key deer I bring them here because they are always on view. Some say power poles will upset their rural seclusion though I doubt that.


Rainwater cisterns have fallen out of favor for some reason and many people are afraid of the purity of such reservoirs even though their widespread use would help preserve the South Florida aquifer which is being depleted and salt water intrusion is an interesting problem facing our not very distant future. I have been drinking filtered rainwater for years with no problems.


The thing is homes on this backwater are not any less suburban than those across the bridge on remote Big Pine Key.


They have solar panels, as we all should, but they don't deprive themselves of any modern conveniences here to live a simpler more frugal lifestyle, which I think is a little odd.


I mean if you want to live off the grid it's usually as a statement, not necessarily as a member of the tin foil hat brigades but simply in pursuit of a less involved lifestyle. Around here that stereotype doesn't apply, everyone is fully involved with maximum possible energy consumption.


This is a community that males little sense to me, it seems so incoherent. That said I see no reason why these homes shouldn't continue their eccentric trajectory.


I shall be sorry to see the island connected to the grid as seems inevitable.


Its nice sometimes to remember what the skyline looks like where utility poles and wires don't interfere with the views.


Of course there's a reason No Name Pub is on the Big Pine end of the bridge and not on the eponymous island. It would be hard to run a business without the grid. And maybe that's the point.


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B.O.'s Fish Wagon

My wife wanted to see one of her graduating students in town to say hi, but the kid had swapped her scheduled shift and we were left to order fried fish sandwiches.


They offer more than that on their menu.


The good bit is that this rough assemblage of planks and junk allows dogs. Cheyenne stayed home as it is getting too hot for her to be hanging around outdoors in the middle of the day.


It was white hot outside and the fans inside were the bare minimum needed to stay comfortable lacking windows and air conditioning.


Our neighbors over ordered and offered us their extra order of conch fritters which the nice lady pronounced "konsh" which confused me for a second.


I woofed them, to show appreciation and because I am a pig. Essentially konk fritters are hush puppies with bits of mollusk buried in the batter. How bad can a fried dough ball be even with conch in it?


Thank you ma'am, I enjoyed them! And off she went studying her street map.


It's a shambolic place, is Buddy Owen's restaurant.


Key West funk I suppose, whatever that means.


People come by and take pictures.


After 20 minutes our fried fish sandwiches arrived. I used to work across the street at Fast Buck Freddie's shipping warehouse and we could smell the French fries wafting across Caroline Street. It was nice to get to taste them and remember the 'good old days.' Ah, nostalgia!


At $13 apiece I figure these are downtown tourist prices.


What the hell it was fun playing tourist for an afternoon.


The sandwich was okay but Sandy's sells a similar sandwich with no fires and more fish for $7, with limited outdoor seating and easy access to waterfront picnic tables at Higgs. Still I had a good time at B.O.'s and once in a while it's worth it.


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