Running On Empty

I was riding into work this past Thursday evening and it occurred to me as I approached Key West my odometer on the Bonneville was reading 128 miles. I had a few minutes in hand after a relatively brisk ride into town behind some fast moving cages so I pulled into the Key Haven Shell station (shown below) to fill up. My Triumph has a four gallon (U.S.) tank and it tends to hit the reserve portion of the tank, the last  full gallon, close to 134 miles so I figured to fill up as I could make a quick stop and not be late for work.  I should never have bothered. The pump squeezed 0.15  of a gallon of unleaded into my gaping tank and then dried up. I looked at my watch  and figured if I was futzing around too long trying to get gas out of the pump I might end up late to work, and I'm too anal for that to happen so I got going and figured I could simply get gas on the way home in the morning. Then a weird thing happened.

Twenty minutes into my shift as I was  busy explaining how to dispatch rescue to an eager new trainee, my colleague Shannon (a former trainee of mine) called across the communications room to tell me my wife was on Admin Line 4. Grr I thought to myself doesn't she know I'm...."Help!" the feeble voice cried into the phone, " a weight machine broke at the gym and I got knocked to the ground. I'm covered in bruises that hurt. A lot." Well, that shut me up as I abandoned my post, left Nick in charge and told the trainee to study her manuals. Sooner than I would have expected I was back on the Bonneville riding out of town which was when I remembered I was still low on gas. I actually hit reserve at Mile marker 7, so then I was calculating that the gym is at Mile marker 21 so I had 14 miles to go which should be a piece of cake. Of course half the reserve fuel is stored in the wrong side of the  tank so effective range on reserve can be 30 miles or less. Once I ran out on my way home and had to lean the bike over to slosh fuel into the side of the tank that has the petcock...I pulled that trick for the first time on an Iron Butt ride when I was sucking down the gas far faster than expected at 80+ miles per hour.  And now I was absolutely certain the last thing I needed to do was run out of gas on my way to rescue my wife. Sigh, better stop for gas, I said to myself.

The Big Coppitt Shell is on the south side of the Overseas Highway at Mile Marker Ten making it a good stop on my way home for  a quick refill. I pulled into the forecourt and saw vehicles refueling at every pump except the far one, which became the one I aimed for immediately. I soon discovered why there was no car  at that pump: it was out of service as denoted by the sign and the big gray trash can upended in front of it with two orange cones. In the picture below it would be the pump nearest the camera. The 24 hour Big Coppitt Circle K convenience store is  major shopping center in this community and there is always a line for groceries and beer as well as gas so I figured this was not going to be a quick credit card stop and I had better press on. I wasn't really worried about running out of gas but to get this low was annoying, especially after two efforts to fill up.

I found my wife feeling rather sorry for herself at the gym, her ankle encased in ice and ready to go home. I figured a trip to the ER was in order, more for peace of mind than anything as she was able to hobble to the car, but her shoulder that had been operated on previously was unable to raise her arm very high at all. I immediately decided that to drive 15 minutes further was the better choice and I aimed my wife's car for Marathon, not Lower Keys Medical Center a dismal apology for a hospital on Stock Island. We've been to Fisherman's Hospital before and the Marathon staff are always helpful and cheerful and take you in immediately. We've sat in the waiting room at Lower keys for forty minutes the "receptionist" glowering at us like we were an intrusion and being completely unhelpful.

Certainly the receptionist at Marathon's Fishermen's Hospital was kind and made herself available immediately but the heat in the reception area was appalling. It took me embarrassingly long to realise that the front doors were open for a reason, and that reason was that on this stiflingly hot night the air conditioning system was broken. How the staff remained as cheerful as they did I don't know because summer has arrived with a vengeance and being inside that ER was like being underwater. I grew gills to keep breathing the hot humid air as my wife filled out the admission form. She had to hand over her insurance card and we haven't yet received the gruesome co-pay bill but the idea so far is the gym will kindly take care of out of pocket expenses. The sign on the wall was a reminder of the uncomfortable truth that our capitalist system is here to fleece us not to serve us, especially as it is the insurance companies making the money not the doctors and hospitals anymore:

I doubt there are any discounts for broken air conditioning. The evening went much as you might imagine, with an arrival well before dark and a departure around nine pm as I recall. My wife had an x-ray (ka-ching!) - nothing broken, and a the nurse installed a sling (ka-ching!)- and gave my wife a couple of pills to see us through the night (ka-ching!) and the doctor went over the various bruises and joints to make sure they worked and then we were off. And very glad to get back into a chilled car we were too. As is the way with the medical profession no costs were mnetioned at the time, billing is mysterious covert and unanswerable. Supposedly all that will change next year when the Affordable Care Act kicks in.

My wife spent a sleepless night next to her ever snoring husband, I'm not quite sure why she needed me at home instead of at work Thursday night. I sleep the sleep of the just and can hardly be roused from my slumbers, nevertheless on Friday I was pressed into service to walk Cheyenne and pick up her prescriptions for muscle relaxers and steroids. Those tickets cost less than six bucks between them, oddly enough. I figured they had misplaced a decimal point and the pharmacist agreed but I scuttled off with my loot before the error was noticed. I then tried to fill up the car at the Big Pine Key Shell (Shell is everywhere around here!) and would you believe the pump wouldn't dispense gas with a message about the pump battery being low and see the attendant inside. I was mad as a wet hen what with all these issues buying gas so I just left in a huff. Gas could wait! I try to keep my tank more than half full to avoid running dry though these gas stations were making it hard with all their issues.

By yesterday evening, thanks to better living through chemistry, my wife was well enough to sit up and have dinner with a friend while I got a ride back to my bike to ride on in to work.  I was heading toward Key West without a care in the world happy to be back on track and in my usual routine when it suddenly occurred to me...I was about to run out of gas! So I made a  quick u-turn, figuring I was at least 11 miles from gas on the direct route and only three miles from the Shell station on Summerland Key, pictured below, which was heading the wrong way, but oh well.

Of course wheh I arrived at Summerland Key, half way back to my house the gas station was packed with not only cars and a giant truck towing a huge boat bit with the crew of the boat scattered around filling a bunch of fuel jugs. I like this Shell station as they sell ethanol free fuel but I was about ready to give up and try the station up the road when I finally got to a pump, and it worked. Miracle of miracles!  I finally got my gas. What a saga, but at least  I got to work on time.

And to wrap up this extra long tale of gasoline woe I decided to add a gratuitous pretty flower picture. Just because.

The Longest Day

Next week it will be the longest day of the year when the sun gets as ar north of the equator as it gets. In Barrow Alaska they continue t enjoy all day sunshine and freezing temperatures... Richard's Page. In Lotus Land things as usual are a little less extreme. We get sunrise close to six-thirty and darkness around 8:30pm and temperatures are lately feeling quite summery, hot and humid.

My wife is changing jobs in the school district next year to Adult Education and her Vespa will come back into play as she'll need wheels to get to around various sites around town. For now I get to ride it from time to time to keep it fresh. The 27 mile ride to Wor charges the battery and a drop of Seafoam in the tank keeps the carburettor clean. Of all the new Vespas my favorite four stroke ride is this old (2004) ET4, 150ccs of commuter glory. It's low tech, air cooled and free of fuel injection and it never gives trouble. It wears out tires in a hurry and they aren't terribly DIY to change while the belt drive is a pain, two reasons I like the idea of my older geared Vespa and its split rim wheels which is currently being restored.

But this thing is a blast to ride and on a warm summer morning my commute home invites me to stop and take pictures here and there. Above I just turned out of the police station ont North Roosevelt where construction has shown no progress at all for months. Even the mayor got publicly pissed off at the contractors for stalling this massively annoying job. The one way inbound Boulevard means outbound traffic has to take Flagler which at five to six in the morning is pretty much empty. At five in the afternoon traffic gets back up for half a mile.

The single bridge in and out of town over Cow Key Channel looking west into Key West. The view north and south is of water meandering through mangroves, to dark to photograph on the fly at this hour of the morning.

The dawn looked much brighter facing east! That's the view looking down the Cow Key Bridge looking int Stock Island.

This is a town filled with murals. These sandal stores advertise on large expensive bill boards along the highway. Cheap sandals must generate huge amounts of money. Why pay Key Awestruck prices te billboards ask in the modern style of posing rhetorical questions at every turn... Why pay Key West rent is I suppose the answer, so we did a mural on an unlikely sandal store on Stock Island's business drag on the highway.

The's a series of three traffic lights on Stock Island and of course they snag me coming and going. I love that there is a growing movement to take lane splitting national. Can you imagine how excited these dopes in cages would be if I pulled alongside them and took off while they were still engaging their brains as the light goes green. Never happen. I like the idea of lane splitting but in Florida where bad driving goes hand in hand with a bad attitude and widely available guns life would become even cheaper on our roads with motorcycles getting to the head of the line "unfairly."

I'm going to Italy in Spetember and I can hardly wait to cut to the head of the lines of cars...why? Because I can and because it's expected. The other morning I was leaving Big Coppitt on the Vespa and I got stuck behind two cars doing forty in the fifty five. The SUV had a wide open chance to pass the black Nissan with a Maryland tag but didn't take it. I passed the SUV on my "moped" and waited for my chance to pass the dope in the Altima. I needn't have worried, as soon as the driver saw the moped suddenly in his mirror he took off like a scalded cat. It was one of my fastest rides home as he tried to lose me and swept down the darkened highway far enough in front for me to get plenty of warning if he spotted a cop. I love how threatened people get when there's the possibility of being passed by a Vespa...

I talk airily about getting home but so would you if you had bee sitting up all night working. That doesn't alter the fact the views are pretty damned nice this tIme of the year as thunderheads hide the sun and it's attempts to put in an appearance.

When the wind dies down the sea gets to look like a mirror. Some people enjoying rocky cliffs and headlands with huge waves breaking on them. I saw that for twenty years in Santa Cruz as the Pacific tried to wreck California. I like these pacific views better.

Public chickens I don't like and they are everywhere in the Lower Keys including the Shell station on Big Coppitt Key.

There is a Shell on Summerland Key where they sell ethanol-free gas ostensibly for boaters but I like to put it in my bikes. However the Vespa has a tank that holds less than two gallons and even at 70 miles per, it gets difficult sometimes to time the refill to be salty on Summerland Key, fifteen miles away.

The sun is coming, the pink streaks are just a preview:

By the time I get home these days, around 6:30 the day has started in ernest, My house illuminated through te mangroves. You'd think there would be a big yellow furry face peering down looking for me.

Stopping to take pictures delayed me by half an hour so I actually arrived at seven in the morning. My wife took this picture of Cheyenne who lives her life like clockwork and knows exactly when to expect me home. Hmm, you can see her thinking; where is he?

Oops, there he is! She's looking under the house because that's where she expects me to be but I was coming out of the shed in the "wrong direction" when she clambered down the stairs. Happy reunion!

So we take a walk together to start our day. That's how it is commuting on the longest lightest days of the year.

Happy dog. My reward for another night at work.

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Key West Commerce And Advertising

They used to call them tailor's dummies, but they evolved into a new line of work known as mannequins, and in Key west, rather than showing off clothing in an effort to make a sale they are used to show off...themselves? ...beads? It's an odd way to entice people to part with their money, this Key West way of closing a sale. Alcohol, puerile naughtiness and over the top advertising promises. It works, which leaves me even more puzzled. People love this stuff.

I know I don't have the mind of a grocer because every time I find myself in despair in an aisle at the grocery store looking for some not necessarily obscure condiment my wife put on the list I cannot fathom where the store management might have decided to hide it. I would imagine UHT milk would go in the milk dection; not a bit of it, they put UHT milk in the cake mix section. Why? Possibly because they want me to shop less and by extension eat less. I refuse to become a starving artist all the same and i battle the uphill supermarket aisles until the list is done.

The offer of a free blow job at Willie T's is a healthy reminder we are living in peculiar times. In a nation rendered fearful of its own collective shadow posting phone numbers as part of a silly joke seems somehow less than funny in itself, and allying it with the bad taste of the text of the joke itself is just a reminder that education, civility and taste have taken a back seat to a lack of imgination, or humor or original thinking. Practical jokes need a spark of brilliance to be funny, a touch of wit or even elegance. "Free Blow Job" scrawled on a dollar bill fails on all counts.

Oh and the t-shirt shops...they just lower the tone even more.

I never have been a fan of Salsa Loca . I went to try the Mexican place several years ago and the waitress inveigled all customers in some sort of raffle giveaway and customer participation amusement. I have a horror of audience participation, and the food wasn't much so I never went back. Then they moved to Cowboy Bill's and were unceremoniously separated when Cowboy Bills closed momentarily. Salsa Loca has quite the following in town and I expect that despite the absence of parking it will do well enough on Petronia Street. After all Better Than Sex, a restaurant that only serves puddings has gone from strength to strength moving from location to location with absolutely no parking.

What? Parking? Check out this novel written and published below, a paen the woes and joys of parking your car in Key West. Get a motorcycle and reduce traffic jams, reduce consumption of resources and enjoy life more on the road. Or drive a couch with nowhere to leave it.

Here is another southernmost establishment at 900 Duval I have never visited McConnell's Irish Pub and Grill and where you can start drinking at nine in the morning. I'm not at all clear why the southernmost is an asset to a business but you could spend a day looking for all the southern,out everyone in Key West. Google the southernmost point in Hawaii and rejoice in the complete absence of commerce. Anyway I like Finnegan's. I don't think James Joyce used an apostrophe but he didn't run a pub either.

I have no great fondness for dust catchers but I find painted coconuts are quite well received. Especially by people who live whe coconuts do't grow. Astonishing that isn't it? coconuts don't grow everywhere. Mine are producing massively following the rains we have been drowning under. Perhaps I should plastidip some?

Barbed clothing must be high fashion for anglers I suppose. I guess you wear it very carefully while chasing the elusive fish. Barbed Apparel | LIFE MEETS STYLE, where they are "passionate" about comfort and the outdoors. Ho hum. T shirts (apparel?) presumably made in collapsing Bangladeshi warehouses. I wonder when we will get passionate again about human rights.

I walked past Bobby's Monkey Bar reviews, photos - Old Town - Key West - GayCities Key West and I wondered if perhaps it had closed. It doesn't look terribly prepossessing does it? I suppose I don't have to point out that I have never been inside Bobby's Monkey Bar. That it is a gay bar isn't the reason, that it is a drinking dive is. I am terrible at small talk, being seduced by drunken strangers holds no appeal and alcohol is cheaper at home in the company of my dog. Remind me- why do I live in the Lower Keys again?

A colleague who lives nearby and really does believe that it's always five o'clock in Key West assured me they are still open. I breath easier knowing that.

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Bonneville Black by Plastidip

I bought my Triumph Bonneville on the 12th of October 2007, and I confess when my wife asked why I didn't buy another Suzuki to replace the one that had given me trouble free service for 20,000 miles I was at a bit of a loss. It was with trepidation I paid $8,000 for the brand new motorcycle and set off on a new adventure. 73,000 miles later I can only say it was a inspired choice, led by physical beauty and sustained by perfect performance.

Yet all is not well, every Eden has its serpent, and my Bonneville shows signs of corrosion despite my best efforts. It is inevitable after all that life under my house in essentially open air surrounded at close quarters by salt water will lead to this:

And this:

This bike was sold as a Goodwood Green standard Bonneville, lacking the chrome of the upscale T100 ($2000 extra!) and not equipped with the black powder coated engine cases that I craved, so it came with what they call brushed aluminum engine covers.

I had the thought of buying factory fresh black powder coated engine covers for $375 plus taxes etc...or on my mechanic Jiri's advice I could have taken the cases to be powder coated next to his motorcycle shop for quite likely far less money. That was when I read an entry in the Triumphrat website, for Bonneville owners and fans.

Triumphrat is one if those nerdy websites devoted tI spending money on motorcycles, but not riding them much. It's filled with threads about how to add everything except miles to the bike, not least because resale value is terribly important to people who buy motorbikes, give them cute names and then park them out of fear of wearing them out. I read it periodically to see what I can glean and occasionally I contribute if I have an experience to share rather than simply an opinion to pontificate about. And then I read about something called Plastidip. I surrendered to plastidip - Triumph Forum: Triumph Rat Motorcycle Forums

There was no experience reported using plastidip on the engine so I paid a visit to the ACE shop on Summerland Key and came home with a twelve dollar aerosol (including tax) of matt black Plastidip. Hmm.

Let me say here and now I am a fourth rate painter. I have no patience, no interest in prep work and every interest in getting the job done and going riding. All of which makes me terrible when it comes to paint and brushes and getting the best finish. I did my best, secure in the knowledge if it doesn't work I can peel the plastic coating straight off the metal and all I've wasted is some time and a very few dollars.

So far it looks not too bad at all and the heat generated on my commutes hasn't abused the paint to peel as was suspected by those too fearful to try it.

I cannot say it looks perfect or even close to good but I can say it looks a lot better than the corrosion it covers and in the hands of a proper dedicated painter it could look superb.

Much as I love my Bonneville I spend money to keep the internals perfect and for all it shows signs of age miles and corrosion, hadi the time I would ride it to California to or row without a second thought. It's that solid and reliable a bike.

It looks better in photographs than it does in person and I am sure time and road grit and the scuffs of daily riding will not improve the finish. I may yet do the job properly and powder coat it but for now...resale value is zero anyway, in a world of six year old Bonnevilles with five thousand miles on them (how is that possible?).

There she is, made ugly and cluttered and purposeful by bags and windshield, thus supremely capable and also comfortable with my custom Sargent's saddle, Motorcycle Seats - Sargent Seats - Aftermarket Motorcycle Seats The Bonneville is easy to handle and fun to ride and soon I shall try my hand at painting the exhaust pipes to hide a little more evidence of miles and corrosion.

It's the least I can do for the best motorcycle I have ever owned in 43 years of riding, not named, ridden hard in storms floods and winds mountains and freeways and enjoyed every day of these last six years.

 

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