Key West Blues

Pretty soon everywhere you look online people will be compiling year end lists. That and mangled Christmas Carols make this the hardest time of the year for me. Key West is an odd place to be in the last few weeks of the year. 

First of all there is no seasonal weather. You can put up all the wreaths and fake holly and icicles you want but its an even chance Christmas Day will dawn sunny and clear with temperatures over 82 degrees (28 Canadian for the poor bloody snowbirds). Some people moan about the lack of frost and brown withered leaves and the opportunity to wear a new wardrobe. Not me.

The other thing that is tough to take is the number of people who come to Key West in despair thinking about taking their own lives. 2016 has been particularly tough in that regard for me, and even though most suicides are a call for help there are enough truly desperate people who come to Key West to say goodbye world, and who pull it off, that one has to wish they wouldn't come here to end it all. For some reason, maybe happy memories or simply the weird terminal physical geography ("the end of the road" mantra)  people do choose to come to Key West to die. One of the advantages of taking 911 calls at night is that suicides are usually reported during the day, and that is a huge relief to me. There is something about suicide that gets to me more than any other way of death and I dread the end of the year at work.

This particular way of ending life leaves behind a trail of devastation with extra layers and extra grief on an already impossible situation. My own brushes with suicide in 2016 came first with a local character whose happy exterior belied the secret pain and his departure left many people I know in shock. A local lawyer, a well respected prosecutor took his own life, an event that shook his law enforcement colleagues. He was breezing toward retirement and even though the recent election was going to lay him off because his boss lost, he had other job offers in this town where everyone wished him well. And yet in that moment none of it was enough and he killed himself with a determination that makes your blood run cold. He left no room for failure. No one is immune to the false promise of release through death. A permanent solution to a temporary problem as they say.

The third suicide that affected me directly was when I was working the night it was discovered and I knew I knew him but I couldn't make the connection. Besides I had so little information to go on, a first name was all I knew him by,  so I could not put two and two together. And so outrageous was the circumstance why would I assume the dead man was the person I knew? But this is a small town.  I racked my brains until I got home and woke my wife to ask her to remind me if this was who we knew. We sat in silence and contemplated how it was possible. That he should choose to die by his own hand was so unlikely I had still trouble putting the equation together and understanding it was him. I still ponder that death. He wasn't an intimate friend but he guided my wife and I in making some life decisions and helped us see our path forward to retirement an exciting new adventure for us, and his advice was so clear and useful and understandable  it was inconceivable his own way forward became so murky he chose to end it all alone in a deserted parking lot.

I walk around Key West enjoying the details of a town that is always rebuilding itself. Money flows in, alcohol flows everywhere and visitors who are here to celebrate life, resent anyone who spoils the carefully cultivated image of stress-free of  "island time" which is how people in the Keys are supposed to live. Yet life is real here, and frequently harsh. I see houses being rebuilt: a statement of faith in a future where for some people the future is bleak they find it better to step off. In the end we all have to go, no matter how much we adapt to life's set backs. Yet one resents the choice of those who choose to speed the process up. They should have faith that things will work out, they should tough it out with us. 

For the first time Rusty gets to be indoors this holiday season, loved and cherished and walked a great deal. I wonder why dogs abandoned as he was never elect to kill themselves. Another lesson they can teach us as we ponder our good fortune versus so many who live with real daily problems that seem insuperable.

Bicycle Key West

When I walk Rusty early in the morning on the back roads of the Lower Keys I marvel at just how much I can have these empty roads to myself. Certainly in winter there are more joggers and fitness buffs in spandex on modern speedy bicycles but most of the time it's Rusty and me and long straight lines:

For most people who visit Key West the side roads off Highway One are a mystery and exploration is usually kept to the two square miles of Old Town.  A bicycle with basket and rental sign denotes not-a-local: 

No rental sign on the bike and a sense of urgency would lead me to suspect someone anxious to get somewhere to actually do something other than be on vacation:

I am no longer convinced a bicycle is best in Key West. Even on my motorcycle I seek tons of people driving with few skills or distracted by cell phones. So it is no surprise to me that Key West leads Florida in bicycle wrecks. 

Periodically the state gives Key West money to spend on bicycle "safety" which usually means increased police patrols and tickets for disobeying traffic laws or riding without lights at night. Riding without lights seems daft to me and were it not for the trauma to the car driver I'd say a cyclist run over for riding blacked out would be  a Darwinian improvement to the species. 

Some bicycles are articles of self expression and I find them surprisingly expensive ("You could buy a motorcycle for that!") and often oddly idiosyncratic: 

But a bicycle is  a means of transport and  a very efficient one at that. I just don't like being in traffic on these narrow streets  with distracted drivers and pedestrians. I prefer having an engine even though that invovles a loss of stout physical exercise...

Bicycles are everywhere so my point of view is clearly a minority. Some car drivers absolutely hate cyclists which I find odd as the more people ride two wheels the less the congestion for people in cars. 

Bicycles are easy to park and don't need to be registered though you can register them with the police in case they get stolen and your bike's serial number will be on file. But they remain paperwork-free in an increasingly complex bureaucratic world. 

Aside from the fact the streets are narrow and congested the city is pretty much flat and small so a bicycle can make it easy to abandon all idea of a car if you aren't into road trips. Some people in Key West prefer not to keep a car and just rent one if they need one. 

The rules of the road are pretty simple and cyclists can ride on the sidewalk as long as they make their presence known and  defer to pedestrians who have right of way.

Weather can be an issue as its rarely cold enough to require a shirt for a vigorous cyclist, though good taste and manners might indicate a shirt to be a good idea.

Hot weather and rain are much more likely to be a problem in the Southernmost City and showing up for work neat if you work indoors may need some planning.

Or, use a scooter or a motorcycle...sez I.  Which costs money, requires licensing and paperwork and all he concomitant problems of sharing the roads with cars.

Alone At Boca Chica

I don't go to Boca Chica Beach that often but every time I do I want to take a million pictures of a place that makes me feel better. Check this out: no horizon, sea meets sky and no clue where the join is: 

I needed to get away yesterday as I have been working non stop for as long as I can remember. On December 20th the police department changes it's entire computing system for everyone and in dispatch we are the point people on the new system using it to take calls and dispatch officers and fire/rescue. 911 calls will arrive as usual and we all have to know how to put calls in on a completely new, modern system. We will come into work and it will all be changed just like that! So now we are frantically trying to learn how to cope even as we continue to work with the old system which in its simplicity I will miss dearly. It only worked for dispatch but it was perfect for our needs. No one else in the department knew how to use it because it was incompatible with any internet based computing. Even many of the IT staff stayed away from our computers as our little network was so weird.

I know change is good and I know modern policing requires integrated portable computer communications as well as old fashioned radios but the old computing system was designed for dispatch and as hard as it was to learn, after a  dozen years using the AS400 now I am learning to use a windows based system and its hard in its newness. I wake up tired and I go to sleep tired and in between I'm trying to figure how to do this or that on the new system. 

There was a time there I wondered deep down if I was able to change and adapt and if I had reached the end of the road. Part of me doesn't want to change and part of me is just tired of change. I read how old age support is under threat from Republican members of Congress who think destroying programs created to prevent destitution is somehow a Good Idea. I read how Trump voters now find their health care under threat and hospitals fear for their futures now they have patients whose bills are paid regularly and who in future may have to go back to unpaid services and uninsured customers. Change sometimes seems like a really bad idea.

So I turn to my consolation who is always overjoyed to see me when I get home from work. And together we went off to the beach for a couple of hours.

It is kind of odd walking along a fence next to the runway of the Navy Base where they train fighter pilots to take off and land as though on an aircraft carrier. 

Thinking about something other than work caused me to spend some time pondering the meaning of jet fighters in the modern age. I think of old men in Washington ordering drones around half a world away and I don't really get the point of having men jetting about in a way reminiscent more of World War Two than 21st century computerized technology. Reality seems to indicate a move away from old fashioned technology like my work computers and jet fighters and into a Brave New World. But they still buzz around in circles making feints and passes like they are in Sopwith Camels. 

Birds seem to have it so much easier sliding silently through the air unnoticed, like drones.

It's getting organized around here with a trash removal system now in place, apparently, yet some half wit still managed to stuff some trash in the "removal only" bin...

Rusty got into the spirit of the thing immediately and shook off all those cares he deosn't actually have.

While he wandered around and chased seaweed I started playing with the telephoto lense on the Panasonic. It is quite powerful and it was while I focused on the birds and the channel marker I became aware that the log in the foreground was  a person taking a bath. Which surprised me as there were no cars of any kind parked at the beach when we started out walk...That I was alone yesterday morning surprised me of itself as the beach is generally popular. So where did this dude come from?

And out at sea the boats keep buzzing about.

The tide really was a long way out and it made it very easy to cross the breaks where the inland lagoons spill out to sea.

At regular tides these rocks are under water.

And watching over us the tower at the Boca Chica base. The Navy Base makes this whole strip of land possible essentially. It used to be a roadway to Stock Island but now it's a wilderness and lovely it is too. You follow little paths through the bushes and mangroves or walk the beach and to your right is the boundary fence of the Navy Base. Its that simple.

I strolled and Rusty ran, forming his own circles. I amused myself with the camera.

I am convinced by the trash I find that ending commercial boating would restore the oceans faster than anything. Fried shrimp chips from Thailand in an indestructible metal can? What cruise ship or long line fishing boat did that get dumped off? 

And then there are the Cuban chugs bringing refugees in weird craft across the Florida Straits. This one is styrofoam with gunwales made of wood planks through bolted. 

The gasoline engine had a Lada filter on it with writing in Cyrillics...That made me think about how much we have diverged with Cuba over the decades. Russia seems so far away yet their world has washed up on a tropical island just over the horizon.  And its all as alien to us as though it were from outer space. I hope business sense prevails over the crazy Cuban family feud between the Diaz Balarts in Miami and the Castros in Havana and things continue toi improve with Trump in charge.

It makes you realise how much they want to be here when you see the improvisational skills they deploy to get here. A car engine held together with bailing wire... 

The guy on the beach was dressed by now and poking around on the rocks. I met him on the walk back and said good morning though he just pretended I wasn't there. He was young  and thin though he appeared bulky as he was covered head to toe and across his face by clothing in an effort to keep the insects at bay. They were vicious and sought any scrap of my skin not directly doused with repellent.

The jets continued to buzz upstairs and the cormorants continued to glide downstairs. Rusty was still running in circles though not quite as fast.

He sat down to rest from time to time. I really am fond of this dog, he works so hard to meet my expectations, so he always comes when called these days and takes pleasure in every part of his life in a house. He is a quick study.

This was not a Cuban chug though it might have found a higher calling had it washed up on a Cuban beach as a solid fiberglass hull would be quite the upgrade for the refugees.

It was a really great way to clear my head, a couple of hours on Boca Chica Beach with Rusty.