Sunday Ephemera

A collection of pictures...some appeared on my Facebook some in motorcycle fora I frequent, some just got left behind in my Picasa account as they didn't fit with any essay I was writing. Some of them aren't necessarily great pictures in the technical sense but they all speak to me at some level.

Obviously I have been enjoying my old scooter and that involves lots of night riding and I've enjoyed that too. Playing with scooter and camera...

This one I took from the car stuck in traffic on the Cow Key Bridge. Getting stuck in traffic lines has been a feature of Spring Break this year, so I was kind of jealous of the cyclists streaming by on the bridge bike path. Then I saw the local dude with headscarf and luggage juxtaposed with the carefree, luggage-free tourist.

Spring Break. I know I should have gone to the beach but I figure there's plenty of bikini clad young women online. Go find 'em.

Older folks there are aplenty, as always.

I stopped by Sandy's as a I do from time to time and I got myself a styrofoam cup full of Cuban espresso coffee. I guess I am man enough to sink a colada. I wasn't so tired after I dealt with that caffeine bomb.

I found myself in Marathon for reasons I cannot recall and I met my wife at her one room school house. It's really a three room schoolhouse but the concept is that of one teacher for many students, in this case adults. And one stranger gingerly picking his way across the lawn keeping a wary eye on the lion in the grass.

The deli next to the Marathon post office offers a remarkable selection of wines cheese and liquor and they also make sandwiches offering a place to sit on the porch out front. Unfortunately they also store empty boxes out front which my wife loves as she knows where to getboxes when she needs them...the things that matter!

And while I was there I spotted a motorcycle that wasn't a Harley for once, but a small Yamaha single cylinder bike in urgent need of luggage. I loved how it sounded and that he was making maximum use of the bike to carry stuff but what a pain it is to ride with a backpack...

This is me picking up my brand new Stella, an Indian built scooter, from the Miami dealer. Long ago I longed for a two stroke Vespa and I believed the advertising thinking this thing would fill the void in my life. I rode it home 130 miles from Miami and 2800 miles later the oil pump broke and the engine was scrap. Great quality machine, slow and constantly losing parts.

Amid great rejoicing I wonder if I might not have found at last a truly waterproof boot for less than a hundred bucks. Designed for hikers and said to be totally waterproof I am excited about riding through summer with dry feet. Of course they are also said to be quite warm in a hot climate so I may need to be prepared to have back up footwear available...$80 delivered and a pair of loafers in my locker at work. Not bad.

I saw this guy watching the young spring breaker come out of Dions and head to her Jeep. Nothing malicious, just youthful longing. And I thought of the old man behind him with a Coke and a camera and an old scooter.

Sunrise from Niles Channel Bridge, Mile Marker 26, taking Cheyenne for a walk.

I was lounging in my beach chair reading, my snoring dog next to me when a young woman came up and asked me to take her picture. She addressed me as "sir" which I thought was exactly how I'd like to be addressed by everybody from here on, but in the event the mark of respect unwedged me from my chair and I walked over to handle their phone for them. Then I dug mine out and took my own memento of these two young people who missed their flight home to Savannah and decided on the spurof the moment to buy a brand new Jeep and drive home. My kind of adventurers.

My pink iPhone matches my pink IPad which matches my Crocs. You have to be a manly man to pull off certain things.

I love my dog and sometimes I watch her stump up the stairs carefully and deliberately one by one. I get this overwhelming feeling of tenderness when I hear her thump-thumping slowly and steadily up to the house. Sometimes she accepts my offer of a lift and I carry her 108 pounds up to the top in an undignified lump in my arms but her tail wags when I put her down next to the potted plants at the top.

Buying the iPhone was a bit traumatic for me as I don't like change but it had to be done for business reasons plus the fact that Verizon can't get me a decent signal inside my house. AT&T has a much stronger signal over the Keys.

From Facebook this picture of Jack Riepe from 1975. I posted a. Comment to the effect "so promising- so tragic." He threatened to write about me in retaliation.

The picture below was taken a little later, our Christmas postcard from 1999 taken in the waters off Panama's Isla Contadora before we tackled the canal. Our dogs Emma and Debs ride with us all the way to Key West from San Francisco; they had fun but put up with a lot

That's it for this set of random pictures.

Enjoy your Sunday!

 

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Spring Is Springing

It's the time of year when folks Up North look for a new budding season. Down south we look for a little breathing room, less traffic, fewer lines in stores and restaurants and warm water swimming. And then there's the sport, not of Kings but of the people. Which, it turns out is not always a winning proposition.

The names of the authors of the two stories are Cooke, which resonates when you remember the local daily is owned by Cooke Communications. Baseball is huge among Conchs, the island's undercover passion. It brings out the best among youngsters and sometimes the worst among their over eager parents...I have no sporting pretensions in my blood but I am grateful the paper exists to support the baseball habit among its owners. Sorry they lost, but the front page is still worth reading.

 

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Safe Harbor, Stock Island

I had to take my lunch break earlier than I liked so instead of taking a nap I took a Vespa ride across town to Stock Island. It was rather disconcerting not to be the only person awake, but that was to be expected considering it wasn't yet midnight. Hogfish Restaurant is where tourists go to slum and you can see why.

The giant palm thatched building reeks of tropical ambiance, no walls, a  funky bar and a menu heavy with fish and frying and food served at rough hewn tables. Its a fabulous schtick especially for refugees from winter snows.

But its also a marina, home to equally funky and not-so-funky boats which in turn act as low income housing for people who live and work around here. Mixed in with the tourist ambiance is real life and perhaps that's why Safe Harbor is so alluring.

Humphrey Bogart could have been filmed here in To Have and To Have Not a film set in wartime Caribbean waters and shot in Burbank, California on a sound stage, they say.

The film has little to do with the book which was actually set in Key West in part and when I walk these docks I am put in mind of the book. They say its not one of Hemingway's best novels and certainly one can't argue as its choppy and oddly constructed but some its descriptions of Key West depressed are vivid enough to make it a worthwhile read.

I like Safe Harbor at night, and you would too if you like the dark corners and distant lights I show here, bathed in warm night air.

Houseboats line the docks and I wonder how long they will last. There is plan for Monroe County to buy the neighboring fish docks for seven million dollars to "preserve the working waterfront" and while I like the idea I wonder how useful it might be in the long run.

It used to be that Key West Bight was packed with commercial shrimping boats, so thick were they tied up you could walk on water across the harbor jumping from boat to boat. They got pushed out and now its all recreational craft docked between the Galleon and Dante's.

All the talk of Stock Island development puts me in mind of Key West's maritime past, a reality in 1970 and now mere history. How can these modest people survive here in the face of so much money?

It's all shadows and light, open doors, people watching TV shirtless while the world they left behind Up North is still covered in coats and mufflers, snow still refusing to melt completely.

It's an eccentric way of life worth hanging onto. But money breeds more money and the desire for more money so...

...these delightful archaic touches may be here now and I cherish them before they are not.

I have never quite appreciated as much as I do here the constant stress of change and development and growth and progress. There are so many small towns across America where communities decay and disintegrate and that seems like t would be bad enough. But this drive to build and change seems insidiously worse.

On the face of it who could argue with progress? Yet progress so often ends up as bland uniformity and when you see the crude liveliness of a place like Hogfish you know it couldn't survive gentrification.

Well, for now its all there waiting to be seen and enjoyed just the way it is.

They even have scoter parking. Very civilized, for such an uncivilized spot. 

Industrial Art

On a recent trip up north my wife went shopping and I was let loose with my camera, my ceaseless thoughts and my dog. Not necessarily in that order. Coming across the wreckage if a pay phone I was tempted by the gods of irony, a photo of the outmoded phone by the modern pocket model. A phone book? Hmm, Google works much better...

Target for Cheyenne is much less of an experience than your average small town store. Far fewer food particles for an inquisitive Labrador to hunt down. And these unconsidered trifles require much harder work.

I was amazed by the size and scope if this glass wall. These bricks used to be desirable collectors objects in some places I lived, cool symbols of a different era.

Target went to town with them.

Call me mad but the back areas of the mall looked Art Deco inspired to me.

All was not lost for my dog, never one to give up the hunt.

It's not Miami Beach, but the colors and shapes inspired me.

Perhaps I've been spending too much time in the Keys where fortresses like this are nowhere to be found ( happily).

Life sprouts in the unlikeliest places:

We took off across the parade ground to take the fort by storm...

 

Bizarre looking, toadstools of modern fire fighting utility, all properly labeled.

"Vision Drives Us. Passion Defines Us." When a mall management company uses this kind of slogan you know vision and passion have reached the peak of their over use, and soon management Gurus will find some new fake marketing emotion to drive us crazy with a new manufactured "passion."

Sometimes Labradors over do it and then they have to rest.

That's okay by me, I can enjoy sitting for a spell. I have a smart phone loaded with books; try reading a book on your pay phone.

 

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