Shades of Gray

I met a reader George who mentioned he liked black and white pictures of Key West. This is Fantasy Fest week, an otherworldly time in Key West, appropriate I suppose for an other worldly view of a Fall town filled with light and color, during the day.

I parked on Elizabeth Street and let my dog lead the way. She was having fun so I didn't get a huge amount of time to compose my pictures. Cheyenne having a good time makes me happy so I was okay with being tugged along. She did try to stop long enough to let me compose a frame but she was ready to walk, and two hours later she was done. That was when I should have been taking pictures, with my hairy Labrador stopped and panting for breath... A nice lady stopped by while Cheyenne was taking a pause in the alligator position, tummy down and paws spread in the gravel panting heavily. "Is she okay? " she asked anxiously. She must have thought I was a heartless bastard when I laughed my assent.

She's fine I said, just getting her breath back. The kind old dear offered to find water but I refrained from pointing out she had just lapped half a puddle. She's fine I insisted. I didn't think that explaining that she preferred to indulge in left over rain water would put either of us in a better light. Even at home she will only drink clean water out of her bowl when she can't be bothered to go down stairs to drink out of a muddy bucket of water growing pineapple shoots.

They say life comes at you in groups of seven years, as your cells take that long to completely replace themselves throughout your body. I read once how your personality changes every seven years along with your molecular make up. Thanks to the Internet you too can read this stuff, though it's a bit like a horoscope in as much as its so vague as to make it vaguely acceptable to anybody. A pinch of salt goes a long way. Every Seven Years You Change is a neat list of changes real or imagined.

While I am about as spiritual as a cabbage, the idea that life has a cycle, that we all end up living similar lives in general terms seems obvious, as unwilling as we are to accept that we aren't unique. My own life follows those cycles in broad terms. I'm closing in on 56, a number divisible by seven and I'm wearing a neck brace as my bones in my neck have grown spurs and are compressing two of my discs. It's manageable says Doctor Collins but arthritis is arthritis. The machinery of life is winding down, and it's the process we all go through, if we don't die first.

The baby boomer generation is my world, and I'm at the tail end of it. The X and the Y and the Millenials are all coming up after us, but I belong to the biggest generation of game changers in history and I can't tell the new generations apart. X versus Y? Huh? There's a new doctor in town advertising her photograph on the front page of the paper (as though her picture matters) and she looks so young I doubt she's graduated high school. It's not she that's young, it's me that's old.

I have made the best of a strange hand dealt to me at birth, an unwanted member of a family that has spent far too much time rewriting family history. For some people being a contender is a big deal, for others family matters but for some of us experience is what counts. I've enjoyed lots of that and I'm enjoying my settled life that I has come up on me unannounced. There are things I'd like to experience and I wonder if the time is there...

I had been planning a new Iron Butt long distance ride, my third on my Bonneville, until this neck problem showed up. Now I am focussing on fixing it. And that's a change for me, Mr Invincible. Cortisone and neck brace now, Iron Butt later.

I always thought I'd end up with a hack when unable to hold up a solo motorcycle, but a sidecar wouldn't do much good to my neck. I feel more comfortable on my wife's sit up and beg Vespa than the forward leaning Bonneville... Good Lord! Will I be a candidate for a cruiser?

The recent full moon has given me reminders of the pleasure I get from riding. I tried to get a picture but it was crap, when I paused on my ride to work Saturday morning before dawn. The moon was reflecting off a stream of silver water below, ducking between fast moving clouds overhead. The picture came out black with a white smear of clouds. Instead I found the La Concha hotel on my morning off work reflecting moonlight like it was day.

I wonder if the driver shown takes time to enjoy the beauty? I hope so. It's an esoteric question but I used to enjoy the views when I was driving a truck around San Francisco Bay. I don't miss the cold and the fog but I had fun humping heavy shit round The City.

The newest law of the land is slowly coming into effect and I take pleasure in knowing half a million Florida children will get access to affordable health care, even though our Republican law makers are fighting it like mad. Then they say it won't work after they have fought so hard to deny ordinary people access to what we lucky people tend to take or granted. I paid fifty bucks for the doctor's visit with X rays, and twenty seven bucks for the pills. Lucky well insured me. It seems so silly to hire people who hate government to run it. Might as well hire me to run a bank. I'd be happy to do to a bank what our law makers do to law making.

Duval Street in shades of gray. I hate to think what has been done to the flower bed to make Cheyenne so interested in it.

Time marches on, the sun is coming up, another day is forming.

Another chance to live life, bone spurs or no.

Key West on Dwellable

Posted with Blogsy

Perpetual Cleanup

No surprise that Cheyenne was thirsty early this morning after a long downtown walk through the wreckage wrought on party town.

Apparently a good few people were busy last night slaking their thirst after a walking dead ride from Stock Island.

My Crocs protect my feet but Cheyenne can pick her way through trash with ease and never comes to harm. I figure it's better she pick her own way rather than get distracted by my stupid concerns.

And then found the treasure trove, freedom fries and pizza such that on arrival at home she ignored her nourishing balanced breakfast and passed out almost instantly.

Luckily Cheyenne's heroic efforts to do her civic duty and clean up were ably supported by crews of workers with machinery ready to restore Duval Street to pristine cleanliness for another twenty four hours of more Fantasy Fest fun. This is the big Fall week in Key West and trash is the measure of a successful Fantasy Fest.

Getting there... mostly clean and rinsed.

Quality assured food service products were being unloaded from corproate trucks all over town.

I sure hope the quality is assured considering the prices when the food service products reach your table. I fail hopelessly when I try to imagine how Mahi Mahi can be worth thirty four dollars. I knew I should have worked smarter in my youth.

And here is the other side of the coin in the richest country in the world. I heard on NPR this morning that the average American is worth five times the average Chinese. Not so long ago the proportion was twenty times and soon it will be down to double. One has to suppose that more and more American children will need free shoes by that time. What a Dickensian future. I can only suppose most Chinese kids are a lot worse off, as though that were consolation.

I guess charity looks better than paying taxes. Checking Wyland Gallery on Duval one wonders at the vast space available for paintings. I understand these stores pay something around thirty or forty thousand dollars a month in rent. When local developers led by Ed Swift in the sixties came here to Duval they found shuttered store fronts and a town that was dying once again (bankruptcy struck in the first Great Depression), as the a navy withdrew and tourism waned. They rebuilt Duval Street and the rents reflect the work. Art galleries and t-shirt shops must make a fortune to survive here, if sales is what pays the bills.

All that aside silly parties populate the week, dressing up is the theme, color coded parties and costumes designed it seems to make the wearers look daft as a public spectacle. Dress in a tutu? Not bloody likely.

Dressing in tights? Even less likely. The theme of Fantasy Fest is super heroes which got them in hot water when their selected artist chose a design too close they said to well known copyrighted designs. A fifty thousand dollar error the newspaper said.

Barricades are a big part of keeping the Fantasy Zone in order. The Saturday night parade should be in good weather this year and the sidewalks will be packed to watch the floats travel down Duval.

I passed this dude breakfasting off a rather nice plate of to-go pasta. I was tempted to snatch it up but that didn't seem to be in the spirit of the required city clean up.

Besides he was nice to Cheyenne and that counts for a lot. And she was nice to him because she was full. Good dog.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Zombie Bike Ride, 2013

What else would you expect on Zombie Bike Ride but to meet a zom-bee?

They came in their thousands last night. As many as five thousand riders someone estimated.

There were so many zombie bike riders it was tough for the crowd to actually find enough room to ride. Don't have a bike? Rent one!

Don't have make up? Get painted at the start!

The zombie bike ride started in 2009 as a quirky idea. It has become so popular it may end up doing the usual Key West thing of losing its quirk to popularity.

It sure is popular, filling two lanes of Highway One from Stock Island to Key West.

It was a young people's party.

Mostly young people.

More or less made up:

 

It used to be the local's parade on Friday night that enjoyed a level of anonymity and simplicity which it has outgrown. We still go and I plan to this week also but it is hard to find a quiet corner of simple goofiness. Apart from the excessive numbers the Zombie Ride does a good job of do it yourself fun.

 

 

Megan and Fred above, Cathy below in the black dress. Occasionally people you know expose themselves in public.

Traffic control was busy trying to keep things moving. I parked the Bonneville on Cross Street and walked. Friends downtown said Duval Street where the ride ends was full of cyclists...

 

And then they opened the road...

I had a nice ride home in the gathering dusk, in the opposite direction.

Key West on Dwellable

 

Posted with Blogsy