Conch Life

The title of these photos is a little tongue in cheek, Conchs no longer can afford this life. Everyone loves a Conch Cottage, a wooden home built decades ago filled with character and small spaces while devoid of modern conveniences usually. The story is much of Old Town Key West was built by ship's carpenters using ship's timbers which accounts for rather odd angles and lack of structural integrity. It sounds a bit made up to me, like the fact that the chickens came over from Cuba alongside the human refugees, but that's the urban legend. 

 The awful truth is these homes are monstrous expensive these days, more than half a million dollars for homes barely a thousand square feet with no off street parking or frequently no central air conditioning. They are charming of course but it seems to me the charm would wear off pretty damned quick if your neighbors are renting by the week and partying while in occupation of your residential neighborhood. Or if your neighbors are calling you in to the parking police to complain about your car parking habits and so forth. Most Americans have not been trained in the art of close quarter living, so faced with the prospect of living cheek by jowl with people they may not like very much they fool themselves into thinking that because they paid a king's ransom to buy, they have certain inalienable rights. They discover they don't and things deteriorate from there.

 All this neighborhood angst hits hardest between January and Easter and the rest of the year the Conch cottages get rented (illegally) for short term rentals or slumber unoccupied. Their former occupants, plumbers teachers and office workers live in the outer darkness of the Lower keys and commute. The original inhabitants, those who were trained from birth to live cheek by jowl may have a few family homes still in their possession but most Conchs (pronounced: Konks) chose to sell their dilapidated wooden homes in forgotten downtown Key West to a new breed of entrepreneur in the 70s and 80s, gay guest house owners, and moved out to where the action was in New Town.

New Town offered Conchs the chance to acquire their American Dream, ranchette homes with a little bit of land and conveniences like garages and pools and homes that weren't riddled with termites. It seemed like a deal but then, it may well still be a deal if you like living in Key West out of the tourist trails, close to the modern stores on the Boulevard and with easy access to Highway One.  

I like walking Old Town and over the eleven years of this blog I think I have proved that clearly enough but I do prefer living in the suburbs, on Cudjoe Key with my canal to swim in and living on stilts I get views and breezes from my upstairs porch. 

For me the half hour commute gives me a chance to ride my motorcycle, and will again after I recover completely, and living out of town gives me easy access to the trails and open spaces Rusty and I enjoy so much. It's true we are also further from activities happening in town but I find the amount of time spent working overtime impacts my ability to enjoy my time off more fully. I keep hoping we will get fully staffed soon in dispatch. 

 Meanwhile as I get the use of my legs back I have a ten minute commute and easy access to streets and views downtown as I start to get used to restoring my life to what it was before my accident last August.

And no, most people don't have chimneys in their homes. Perhaps it is a function of climate change but I don't recall weather cold enough for a fire in the last decade at least.

Overhead the planes keep coming bringing more eager tourists ready to enjoy winter paradise on the island that is a peninsula, in the sub-tropics not the tropics, at eye watering first world prices with unfortunately third world service much of the time owing to the lack of continuity in staffing as finding a place to live sucks up all your income and requires more than one job leaving very little free time to enjoy life in paradise as a worker. So after a while you get fed up and leave. What an awkward circle of life. I'm lucky I have the job I have and every day I am grateful it allows me to live in paradise. 

Learning To Sleep

There are those times when you think you know what you know and there are times when you don't. Apparently I sleep badly, this despite the fact that I fall asleep easily, sleep soundly enough I don't remember my dreams and awake refreshed enough to take on the world.  But no, I sleep in a manner guaranteed to kill me, or something like that. 

Thursday  night I arrived at Mariners Hospital in Tavernier around  seven in the evening for an appointment to study my sleep. My pain doctor says I have an obstructed something in my throat which leads to me not breathing properly or something and the long and short of it was I found myself back in a hospital room for the night. Thank you Cigna for picking up the tab. Thank you Layne for reminding me to pack my green blankie, happy hospital memories under that warm woolly covering.

Sam the technician  got me settled in my  room with my stuff which I promptly dived into and ate my sandwich and fruit. When he came back he then wired me up with monitors all over my chest legs and head. The glue I will tell you leaves your hair matted in a way that could be embarrassing for people with filthy minds and the monitors come off peeling chest hairs like they're going out of fashion. But all that was for the morning after. I sat and got wired up around 9 pm and made the best of a grotesque situation. Never done this before, but as promised it didn't hurt:

My wife followed my progress from Key West and sent helpful pictures of the family enjoying a rambunctious night out chowing down on Cuban food at El Siboney on Stock Island. I much preferred my dinner from my lunch box  thank you. 

Then I was alone with my thoughts and the camera and speaker connecting me to Sam in his office next door where his machinery was set to monitor my sleep. Bleak about covers it. 

His voice sounded advising me to get some sleep and with the phone turned off I was in darkness with my wires and a red light from the camera on the ceiling. Fun. I slept. Until one thirty when Sam came in and took the probes from my nostrils (I told you this was fun) and replaced them with a breathing tube that pushed air into my nostrils. So I have sleep apnea I asked Sam and he replied he was only a technician and couldn't diagnose but clearly I wouldn't be getting the tubes if I didn't need them. 

So then I had the interesting task of falling back asleep after getting over the claustrophobic attachment of  tubes under my nostrils...and apparently I slept a lot better until my final wake up at 5:15 in the morning. No doubt a CPAP machine is in my future but I will let them decide that for me. And that is what a sleep study is all about. One more new and interesting medical procedure I had never much thought about before, just like all the others in my life which used to be hospital-free! 

In case reading about a sleep study is as unexciting as I suspect I am attaching some photos from a family visit to the Key West Wildlife Center yesterday. A good deal more exciting than one more hospital visit.

 Grandfather and grandson enjoying tropical fauna together:

Mountain People

Aidan on the left is almost thirteen and Connor on the right is a bit younger. They live in Asheville and are, lucky them, my nephews. They liked Key West the few days they came and saw the water -"Why is it so blue?" they asked me, their oracle. We took the ferry to Sunset Key and fed the whole brood lunch. It was a success.

Not surprising really. I like Key West and I live here and they came in a cool front that didn't overwhelm them with heat and humidity and respected their delicate mountain sensibilities more attuned to cold and frost this time of year. 

 The Pier House looked just fine under the sun as the waters of the harbor swept through on the tides trawling away impurities and leaving clear turquoise water to bedazzle our visitors. 

 The Coastguard base above, the former rail terminus for Flagler's Over the Sea railroad from Miami. Below we see visitors to the end of the road enjoying outreach beyond land buzzing aound like bluebottles on jet skis.  

I am a subversive soul and I suggested such a tour to my nephew, a fine upstanding father of two who does his part to combat climate change managing a  bicycle parts factory in Asheville while driving a suitable hybrid while living in a self designed home that employs nature for heating and cooling with minimal fuel consumption. However even his eyes lit up as the devil in me suggested a jet ski tour. "No one will know," I said using the age old formula to encourage deviance. What happens in Key West stays in Key West. Jet skis are scourges of course but tremendous fun and Jacob deserves fun as well as responsibility. I like him and his family a great deal.

We arrived at Sunset Key docks and I had my camera around my neck playing the crippled tourist with the walker. I ended up walking enough to make my legs scream by mid afternoon when I had to repair to bed and take a nap. I enjoy being mistaken for a tourist though.

You can understand why Latitudes restaurant was a hit.  The scenery was perfect, the food excellent and they even use cardboard straws to satisfy the Asheville hipster in all of us. My sister-in-law Geeta giving a passable impression of Her Majesty the Queen, Bevin and husband Jacob:

 Jacob:

 Bevin:

 Conner:

 Aidan:

Geeta:

 Brother-in-Law Bob:

 The fight for the lobster bisque:

Danger out sailing in a brisk breeze and looking good. I believe it started life as a Chesapeake skipjack hence the low free board to allow crabs to be brought aboard easily (and tourists to be rolled off if they get obstreperous no doubt!). A lovely ambassador for Key West:

I had a Cuban sandwich just for a change and regretted not sticking with my usual fish tacos which Jacob pronounced excellent. He also finished my sandwich which proved too much for me. The in-laws are a high maintenance crowd questioning the menu and adding things on the side so my wife was blissfully at home. I kept my head down and ordered. 

 And looked around and took pictures. What a day! You should have been there.

 My Cuban with turkey and mojo (Cuban garlic/citrus sauce)

The family was looking forward to a charter the next day, snorkeling and dolphin hunting and a picnic on an island and generally learning why we find it hard to consider living elsewhere. Mountains are lovely for a vacation and Appalachia around Asheville very much so as I have documented here (put North Carolina in the search function at the top to check it out) but, well, this...

 It wasn't  a day without clouds and indeed by the time my wife dropped me off at home to recuperate it was drizzling too but never cold enough for a sweater.

 The trip back...

 ...to Key West.

 Organizing the next event, a downtown walk ice cream and so forth, as you do. 

To be a tourist in Key West is a fine thing. I expect to be mistaken for one many times to come, I hope.