The World's Oddest Public Loo

I have wanted to photograph the loo at Higgs Beach in a  very long time. However every time I have tried I have ended up skulking around like someone loitering with intent to commit acts of gross indecency, and have thus found myself unable to show off the really unusual architecture of this modest structure.

Why anyone sat down and decided the best possible shape for a combined men's loo and a women's loo would be circular I cannot possibly say. However it was an inspired choice as the interior accommodations have required some inspired angular compromises.

Photos rapidly snapped in here end up looking more like cubist abstract  art with lines going off at angles apparently randomly.  Yet each rounded corner, each flat surface is used to maximum effect to best use the awkward spaces.

The sad fact is that Higgs Beach, a county park within the city, is a hang out for bums especially in winter when the snowbird residentially challenged show up to enjoy a frost-free winter, and the rest rooms have been known to end up functioning as showers and changing rooms and even parking places. The beach is patrolled by a Sheriff's Deputy most days so this place's proper function has been restored.

On the whole county staff do a decent job of keeping the place clean and usable, a Sisyphean task if ever there was one. 

I  went to the loo to use them but found they were unusually deserted partly I suspect because the whole area was fenced off for another of those tedious spandex sporting events that block portions of the city and highway periodically in winter as active people from Up North come down to show off their spandex covered bottoms in feats of endurance that in my opinion violate the ethics of a properly enervated tropical lifestyle.

 Anyway finding myself alone I got the camera out and took surreptitious photos right and left like Aldrich Ames on a busy day at work.

As you can see from my spy shots this bathroom is a positive warren of cubby holes and dead ends, the nearest thing you will find to a proper maze in Key West.

 Yes, I know it's just a public bathroom, of which there aren't enough anyway in Key West, but I love the weird rounded walls, the whirring of the giant extractor fan...

 ...the peculiar shade of battleship gray paint, left over it seems like from some military project.

 Skirt the bums, step decisively and check out the world's oddest public loo.

At last, pictures taken, a project on hold for at least six of the last seven years. And no one even noticed me. Thank God.

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7th December 1941

President Franklin D. Roosevelt: Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our secretary of state a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese government also launched as attack against Malaya.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Wake Island.

And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As commander in chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. . .

Five Years Of Cheyenne

Last night while I was at work they held my favorite Key West event, the Holiday Parade, without me.

In 2009 that was where I first saw Cheyenne stumping along in the parade with an "adopt me" jacket on. My wife dived into the parade and was told to come by  the SPCA on Stock Island on Monday. Which I did as soon as they opened. "I want to adopt Cheyenne," I announced to their surprise. That was that.

 It's been a long journey including side trips to California,  Canada and all points in between.

I wish there were another five years to go but as healthy and youthful as she is...realistically, she is already 13 years old. 

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Why They Don't Vote

A column by Martin Dyckman in Context Florida Magazine pondering why so few of us bother to vote. Often with good reason he argues persuasively, noted on this the anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day:

It was on Nov. 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery, that President Abraham Lincoln expressed the purpose of America as we like to think of it today, pledging himself and the nation to honor the fallen heroes by ensuring that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

In the voting a year later — which Lincoln had doubted he would win — the people rallied to his challenge. Not only did they re-elect him; the turnout of those eligible to vote in the North and the four Border States was 73.4 percent. It puts to shame today’s summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.

The government that Lincoln idealized, and for which he gave his life, is in grave danger again. Its survival is in doubt.

In the eyes of many, it has ceased already to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people. It has become a government by only some people for only some other people.

Barely a third of the eligible voting-age population — 36.4 percent — voted in the midterms this month, the lowest since 1942, when millions were at war or working long shifts in defense plants. This estimate accounts for all who should have registered, not simply those who did.

These days, the non-voters include people in states like Texas, Indiana, and Wisconsin, where voter ID laws are diabolically difficult to satisfy. According to the United States Election Project, Florida performed better, at 43.1 percent, than the national average. But even in Florida, some 75,000 people who did show up at the polls cast no vote for governor, a number greater than the winner’s margin.

“Low turnout is more than a set of figures to lament; it is an indicator of deep problems within American democracy,” writes Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, who forecast the low November turnout based on apathy in the primaries.

“Contributing factors to the decline in motivation are not hard to find,” Gans writes.

Among the reasons: “campaigns that are run on scurrilous attack ads that give the citizen a perceived choice between bad and awful; one major party situated far to the right of the American center and the other without a clear and durable message; a decline in faith that government will address major societal needs exacerbated by those whose politics seek to accomplish just that… increased inequality that has the collateral effect of reducing hope for those at the bottom….”

Some people don’t vote simply because they’re lazy. Others are satisfied with the status quo, or willing to accept whoever wins. But that hardly describes very many people these days.

In my view, the major reason people don’t vote is that they don’t think it will make a difference. That does make a difference by leaving the choice to those who are motivated because they are angry. In this election, that faction consisted largely of white men.

Sad to say, there are sound reasons to think voting won’t make a difference.

In many cases, it really doesn’t. Most congressional districts are drawn to determine the outcome. If you’re a Republican in Corinne Brown’s district, or a Democrat in Ander Crenshaw’s, why bother to vote? Indeed, no Democrat saw any use at all in running against Crenshaw. The same manipulation has rigged the perpetual outcomes of most state legislative districts.

Regardless of specific elections, Congress and the legislatures in the long haul respond primarily to the big lobbies rather than to public sentiment on such issues as tax reform or corporate liability. I wrote not long ago on a scholarly study that documented how the United States is already, for all that matters, an oligarchy in the form of a republic. The public gets what it wants only when it coincides with what the Koch brothers and other plutocrats want.

One of the authors of that study, Princeton Professor Martin Gillens, is the author of a new book Affluence & Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America. In his introduction, he quotes the prescient warning of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times. He lives near Waynesville, N.C. Column courtesy of Context Florida.

Care & Feeding Of An Old Vespa

Sometimes in life you just have to get on with it and I confess the prospect of not being able to ride for any length of time even at 45 miles per hour has made me rather leery of the idea of regular commuting on the newly re-powered P200E. However, living where I do there is no alternative so I have planned out a few general tactics to avoid getting mown down in the 45 and 55 mile per hour sections of Highway One between my home and the shops, and my home and my work. Apparently I did well, as I made it to work intact:

The main Vespa fuel tank holds one and a half US gallons of fuel (6 liters) roughly which should be good for 90 miles (150 kilometers) before reserve, which is half a gallon, or 2 liters, providing one hopes another 30 miles range before dying completely for lack of fuel. My plan is to keep fuel at home, ready mixed with oil so I can fill the Vespa without having to fiddle around at gas stations. This is more important now during break in as I am supposed to use ethanol-free gas for this tedious period of operation. American Vespas came with a plastic gas cap and a separate oil tank with its own pump measuring oil flow to the engine. My European spec scooter has a single tank with the original screw down gas cap. All fuel goes in here with 2 percent two stroke oil. Hmm...

Mixing gasoline and oil is an arcane subject not much known these days when four stroke engines rule and the few two strokes around have separate oil tanks. I have found the trick for filling up at the pumps is to add oil for one gallon first, two and a half ounces, then buy the fuel in the usual way and add oil for anything more than a gallon of fuel. This mixes the oil with the gasoline and makes it easier (for me to calculate) how much oil to add. Too little oil will be fatal to the engine which needs the lubrication, too much oil will foul the spark plug and make it run rough...a knife edge! The man who rebuilt the engine wants me to use a particular oil and I have put a few ounces in the smaller bottle to carry on the scooter in case I am caught short and need to get more gas on the road. With this scooter if you have no oil you can use no gas...

In case I suffer a brain fart at the gas station I have written up a table of tenths of a gallon of fuel and the proper oil ratio in fractions of an ounce. If I add 0.4 gallons of fuel I add one ounce of oil. Easy, especially as it's taped under the seat.

My wife sacrificed one of her measuring cups to keep me happy. 2.5 ounces is in the cup when the oil covers the top part of the white label. One measuring cup to one gallon of fuel. Fractions of an ounce of oil are harder to measure.

So there it is. If you find me at a gas station with the lid of the tank open and the seat up with me studying the entrails you will know what I am doing.

Something like this, below, except this was Roberto Patrignani crossing Afghanistan with his Vespa on his way to the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964 from his home in Milan. I think he was supposed to be studying a map in this picture. Vespas are hardy machines.

One other mystery of classic Vespas is how they shift. The idea behind the original design was to enable people to ride without damaging their footwear as happens with motorcycle foot shifters, so the gearbox is operated using the left hand side of the handlebars. The clutch is the lever (usually the rear brake on modern automatic scooters) and the grip itself is twisted to shift gears. Originally Piaggio wanted to build a 98cc four stroke automatic Vespa but the prototype Paperino was going to be too expensive to build as the originally envisioned cheap transportation so the company fell back on the tired and tested gearbox with a two stroke motor.

The mysterious shifter is a tube inside the handlebar grip and is connected to two cables. On the original 1948 Vespa the factory used tubular handlebars with rods instead of cables for shifting. In the photo below you can see the left handlebar ends in a grooved ring with a cable running through it. One cable pulls in one direction (change up) and the other pulls in the opposite direction (change down) as you twist the grip.

And there is a box under the engine where the cables end up. Its called the selector box as it selects the gears. Outside it looks like this:

 

Inside it looks like this where the cables from the handlebar shifter end up:

The hardest part is keeping the cables properly tensioned and I have been testing the clutch cable to get the simplest possible shifting action at the handlebar.

 

The only other regular maintenance worth speaking of is changing the gearbox oil every couple of thousand miles. About 8 ounces of 30W non detergent oil, available at auto stores hardware stores, even the supermarket I've found as it is dirt cheap and designed for gearboxes like this. All you do is drain the oil from the lower plug:

Then add oil through the hole left by removing the upper screw, until the oil flows back out. Zip it up and that's done. Other than that replace tires which is easy as the wheels are on split rims and no tire irons are needed. There are no belts, filters, variators, weights or electric fuel pumps to replace here.

Thanks to Vancouver Scootering for the last three pictures. A good resource page for scooter stuff north of the border.

The running in period is supposed to last 600 miles or a thousand kilometers, the longer the better according to Gene my guru. It is tedious though putzing along like I'm riding a moped. I keep varying the speed on the throttle, occasionally pushing up around 45, then back down and pulling over for cars who deserve to go 55 in a 55, though not many of them seem to go even that fast. I hope the running in will be done by the end of the month and then I hope to keep up with them comfortably. I have to say the faster this scooter goes the smoother the ride. Above 40 miles per hour, in the short bursts I have done it positively purrs along. I am smiling all the way to work.

 

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Perfect Morning

Walking Cheyenne another sunrise. Cool and breezy, as winter should be in Paradise.