Sunday Lunch

The goal was to get out to Tarpon Belly Key for lunch, using Robert's power cat hauling the fixings for a grilled lunch under the Australian pines. 

 

The mission was successful. We grilled burgers, drank lemonade, swam, talked exercised Roberts dog, who unlike Rusty is boat trained, and then I napped on the half hour boat ride back to the dock.  Oh, and I took pictures. 

 

It was a lovely day for it, classic blue skies white clouds and crystal clear waters.  Check it out:

 

 

 

Dolly and Robert, our hosts.

 

 

Tarpon Belly comes in two halves, the private island for sale for two million bucks I'm told, and the publicly owned half where the shrimp farm was based once upon a time. In between is a deep channel bridged by concrete blocks.   We were all familiar with the island and as Rusty was home I felt no need to explore, so I ate and swam and enjoyed the views. Then we packed up and skimmed home.

 Soon enough we were back in civilization. oh well. 

 

 

 

Florida living, year round. 

 

Fire Station 2

The new fire station on Simonton Street remains a thing of wonder to me, and there it sits after three years, doing its job after so much controversy to get it built.

The parking lot has remained much as it was except tidier and there is no panhandling zone, a sort of free speech place for residentially challenged people to hang out. But the news paper comment encapsulated the fury of some people at the tought of a new fire station where City Hall used to be:

City Hall was wrecked by Hurricane Wilma, not by flooding but by leaking roofs that rendered the building unfit due to mold. It had to go but the invective rained down.

I miss the shady parking alongside the city hall building seen above but the new fire station is nicely done and give a dog a place a to rest in the shade...

...as well as a place for studious street people to pass the time. They get moved along at night but during the day this is a public space. Patience among the agreeably housed is running out though. They paid millions for their Conch Cottages and they didn't fork that lot over tos hare their retriement space with the brazenly poor. 

Rusty will hare his space with anyone no matter their wealth or status, gender, sexual identity, color race or creed as long as they are kind. Little wonder dogs appeal to me. Besides all that they never call 911, they deal with their own problems. Which come to think, may not always be ideal.

The hotel across the street was the source of much of the lamentation when plans were published but there seems to be a truce. The trouble with living in Old Town,never mind running a business is that buildings are very close together, and any minor change can have a huge impact. I wish changes could be made a little more gradually and with a lot more discussion because it's obviously easy for panic to set in among such tightly woven spaces. 

Not everything about the place is in the best possible taste, it has to be said.

Fire prevention is taken seriously in a town built of seasoned wood with structures standing cheek by jowl.

A properly housed fire department is an effective fire department.

Bike Path

I have been encouraged to see work taking place on  various  old bridges in the Lower Keys so it seems like the bike path alongside the Overseas Highway is closer  to becoming a reality the length of the Keys...one day. That thought put me in mind of  an essay I photographed last year on the bike path.

Florida Heritage Bike Path

You'd be astonished to see how many people ride this trail in the early morning darkness when I'm motorcycling home at 6 in the morning. Modern bicycle headlights on some bicycles are as bright as motorcycle headlights and as they make their way through the bushes they give the impression of a well off course motorized machine coming at you from the wrong angle.

The state is bury making a true Heritage Trail all the way down the Keys and soon I hope to post some pictures of a new bridge the state has built connecting Summerland Key to Cudjoe. I am quite surprised to see so much bicycle-related road work going on but it is welcome. Frankly I wouldn't mind a whole bunch of shade trees even ones as slender as hurricane resistant  sabal palms to make the path more bearable in summer. 

 I love seeing the winter riders out for a jaunt properly done up in safety gear and workmen's high visibility safety gear. This bright reflective stuff is everywhere part of the trend of passive "safety devices" designed to shift the responsibility for one's well being on others. When out riding I figure it's up to me to pay attention to look after myself and not to expect others to notice me, but I'm bucking all expectations there.

 The bicycle bridge is built on the foundations laid by Henry Flagler's railroad crew around 1911 which railroad was turned into a highway by the government in 1938 after Florida bought the right of way from the bankrupt railroad. And then World War Two require further upgrades as marked in the cement alongside the white water pipe on the "new" (1982)  road bridge. The first piped water from Miami was brought to Key West by the military in 1942. Prior to that residents of the Keys lived off cisterns and rain water which modern standards suggest is unhealthy. Who knew? About the only thing I miss from my house on Ramrod Key was the water cistern. I found it healthy and delicious.

A close up of some mangroves. Fascinating bushes are mangroves, sucking up salt water and expelling the salt to use the water. 

 It was a strangely alluring view across the waters. You can see why people would bust a gut riding a bicycle around here.

And when it all gets too exhausting they have the occasional bench facing the highway for a better view of cars passing in your face.

I really need to stop more often to enjoy this odd little spot.

Pastoral Keys

There are a great many pictures available of the Keys with the typical accessories. 

That is to say with palms and sunrises and beaches and oceans.

 Because I am a man with a perverse nature I enjoy different views.

 Mangroves, clouds and swamps.

 And sometimes storms glimpsed out and sea from the hard cement of civilization.

Summer rains, much loved by me.

Fleming Street

Hmm, I wonder why they call it the Mango Tree Inn?

Intriguing pause in the work:

Dog-eating leaves:

Morning at the library, surprisingly not besieged by street people waiting for refuge:

In the signs below only one place is real. Senatus Populusque Romano referring to the government of the ancient Roman Republic, and used as an official emblem of the modern-day municipality of 

Rome. (wikipedia).

Rusty loves Love Lane next to the Library.

My favorite church structure in Key West.

Eaton Bikes. Now for sale.

I tried the Cuban bagel, and I applaud myself for being adventurous but I did not like it. 

The coffee helped.

Monochrome Beach Babes

I wanted to post these pictures on my Instagram account. I liked the photos but I had no story to tell which is why I like Instagram, a  place to post pictures without commentary politics or drama. I liked the black and white pictures I took at Boca Chica Beach. But Instagram let me down.

Instagram messed with my artistic visions cropping my pictures every time I tried to group them into one post. Instagram knew better than I how to post these photos. Fair enough I said, I'll post one so it won't be cropped by the Instagram auto-editor and the rest I shall keep to myself. And a few select friends.

In photography classes they tell you to keep objects in motion in the side of the picture that projects across the photo, giving the moving object somewhere to go, as it were. In the picture below I did the exact opposite barely squeezing the yacht into the frame while just managing to get the navigation aid on the right into the picture also to give perspective. But I liked the unconventional result anyway.

Pictures that should have been without words...but all quite pretty enough for me on my beach.