R And R

I am finding my life is circumscribed by work, exercise and sleep. I am rather surprised to find it so. 

I find my morning walks the most calming and meditative part of my day. Rusty is my companion but he runs back and forth as I walk and because he's a dog he leaves me room to think or not as I wish. I talk to him but unless I'm asking him to reassure me by putting in an appearance he pretty much ignores me.

Then he pops out of the bushes in front or behind me, tail flying like a banner behind him and he trots off with all the confidence of a well loved and much trusted dog.

I wonder how those dogs walked on a  leash on the same paths day after day don't go out of their mind in boredom. Some do of course barking and pacing all day. On days when I'm not working I take him out in the afternoon as well when the sun is setting and we do it all again. 

 He spends the middle of the day, after he has spent some considerable time running...

...snoozing on the brick driveway or secure under one of our cars watching the world go by:

Our neighbors marveled at the dog, not fenced but free to go where he pleases who stays tucked up at home, drifting in and out through his dog door, wandering downstairs for a bit, napping on the chaise longue on the deck, taking in a little sunbathing perhaps or snoozing on the bed

 And then I go to work.

Getting Around

It was a rainy  day in Key West, a sudden thunderstorm dropped rain and all units returned to base to park their patrol motorcycles under their roof at the Key West Police Department. I the intrepid Vespa rider pulled up to take cover while I pulled on my waterproofs, my Frogg Toggs for my ride home. The Vespa had to stay in the rain as the Road Kings were all neatly in their spots, their riders in cars to get through the tough weather break. I rode home 23 miles. In the rain. 

 

I have noticed that Rusty accepts me departing the house if not willingly at least with forbearance when I do it on two wheels. I suppose he sees no place for himself so he sits at the top of the stairs and watches me pull on my helmet and get astride my bike and leave. When I leave in the car without him he sits on the top of the stairs but with his back turned after he sees me climb in the car without him. "He looks angry" my wife said one day. I guess he doesn't like being left behind.

I go to exercise most mornings at eleven and return close to two o'clock. On the way home I might go downtown to take some pictures,

...or sometimes I take a  side road and look for pictures for myself or perhaps for a scooter tag forum. This one at the end of Blimp Road was tot snag a tag posted in Idaho showing  a"hill billy ventilated road sign." I knew where we had one of those and it made an excuse to ride three miles up Blimp Road to admire the whitecaps and snap a picture.

I then took a picture of the Vespa 150 on Spain Boulevard and tagged it "Your scooter on a dirt gravel or sand road" which didn't last long as someone in Virginia  got his Suzuki scooter in the dirt right away. By then I was home.

It's been windy in the Keys for a while now which is a nice way of keeping summer at bay. The temperatures are cooler and mosquitoes are somewhat suppressed and it was blowing so hard they even pulled Fat Albert (in the background)  to earth.

These bright windy days are lovely to look at. I am riding my Vespas much more than my motorcycle these days because they do 60 miles an hour, enough to keep up with traffic but not so fast as to tempt me to pass or speed and thus earn more tickets. And any long distance trip I might be tempted to do with the motorcycle these days I'd rather do by car to enjoy Rusty's company. 

So on the Vespa I race downwind gaining a handful of precious miles per hour -what fun!- and upwind home I ride a machine that struggles to hold 55 mph into the wind and I take advantage of every hedge and building and cringe as I cross the windswept bridges that slow me down...Util I get home to himself:

There he sits in the driveway sunning himself, grazing on grass, un-fenced free to come and go inside the house and out as he pleases. Rusty he wonder dog.

Highway Dawn

I took this picture without adjusting the white balance for the dark morning skies, and I liked the result looking at the Bahia Honda bridges, old and new.

Thew bridge with traffic:

A slow cloudy dawn in the distance:

Seaweed pushed into the shore by the wind:

The rising sun shining on the branches:

Another great start to a new day in the Florida Keys.

Wildlife

I ended up watching rapt as a group of wading ibis snacked on some abundant water borne food in the rapidly shrinking mud puddle. I hope they are as fascinating to look at in pictures which I snuck through the mangroves as they were in person.

Rusty waited a few minutes for me before we took off again together.

At the end of the street we met another of his neighborhood buddies, Pablo, who came out and played for a while. Rusty the formerly shy and scared stray now has friends on several different islands where we walk.

Pablo's Dad told me about this trail which I had not previously seen so we added it to our rotating itinerary of places to walk:

It got to be quite warm as the sun was up and we were waiting for the cold front that would cool temperatures off very nicely in another twenty four hours.

I played with my Lumix camera while Rusty checked out the surrounding bushes in person.

And at the very limit of the camera's 600 mm telephoto with some digital telephoto magnification added I got one last bundle of feathers perched on a branch:

A two hour walk that sent Rusty to his bed when we got home, to sleep, perchance to dream.

Taco Truck

I live in the Lower Keys so I'm not sure what is happening in the World with food trucks, whether they are still fashionable or are they just accepted or are they forgotten? Key West got really annoyed by these food palaces ostensibly on wheels arguing they took short cuts to serve cheaper food than established eateries in proper buildings...But here we have a prime example, Taco Express, tucked away between a pawn shop and a tire shop on North Roosevelt Boulevard.

My wife has had her eye on Taco Express and we stopped off on our way home last week from downtown and ordered up some food to go. It is actually a truck on wheels offering limited seating. It was a cool breezy evening, well not that cool but not oppressive by local standards and we were happy to wait for our food.

The menu is pretty expansive and we tried a little of this and that, a quesadilla, a burrito, a couple of tacos and took the food home.

The crew we were told consists of three men, funnily enough one Mexican, one Guatemalan and one Nicaraguan who happened to be on duty when we were there. The food though was very Mexican and my wife, a California native pronounced it authentic by West Coast standards. She wasn't completely fond of the ground beef  as she is of the school that authentic Mexican requires shredded beef but some adaptation to palates trained by (gasp!) Taco Bell is to be expected.

I thoroughly enjoyed the assorted dishes we took home and plan to stop by again and soon. Once again cheap eats in Key West come through on the street.