Webb Chiles Land Locked

I spent last weekend with Webb Chiles and his wife Carol in a leafy suburb outside Chicago. It was a short getaway that involved flying, my least favorite means of travel but the flights were easy and seemed to be over before they started much to my surprise. After I arrived I parked the rental car and such was the hospitality of my friend when I drove it back to the airport the Chevy Malibu barely took three quarters of a gallon to fill it. Three quarters of a gallon of gas that cost seventy cents more than here in the Keys, around $2:90, and it was a salutary reminder that though we think we live in an expensive place there are plenty of places with higher taxes and more driving and of course places that require that Keys anomaly: expensive winter clothing.

I don't know how it was but the weather for my day and two halves was well nigh perfect. A little rain while I slept, a little gray in the morning but fresh perfect sunny afternoons and on my last morning, Monday, we went for a walk Webb and I in fog. I really enjoyed that as it was a complete change. I saw green trees, brick homes of all descriptions and city traffic managing to keep moving and be polite at he same time, and the energy when I got home to Miami was completely stressed and unpleasant. Or perhaps it was all in my mind. Lake Michigan:

It was a soft gray nothingness looking out across a lake barely wide enough to contain a circumnavigator for half a day's sail heading East. Webb spoke of a sail he took across and back after he bought Gannet and my mind started boggling on the thought that the little 24 foot ultralight had spent two summers here s far from tidal waters and then completed a flawless circumnavigation and is still in fighting form ready to take on any body of water. Uncomfortable it may be for the rest of us, yet Gannet is a remarkable means of transport. Even I who enjoy my comforts might prefer a journey aboard rather than in those damned commercial planes.

Walking to dinner in town we  passed many colorful flower beds of all descriptions, a feature of life in Chicago and surrounding communities apparently where summer is all too short and to be enjoyed. Wasn't I surprised to see a tropical fruit growing in its own cloche. Webb and Carol both were patient with my camera so I took a second to point it here as proof that pineapples do grow in higher latitudes. I hope it gets finished before the first frosts.

In between sightseeing and walking we ate and ate well, and talked and I slept the sleep of the just. It was a profoundly refreshing place to sleep, quiet and undisturbed. Webb, despite his recent rib injury was as active as ever and thus I had to put him to work and try out the man's infamous uncooked oatmeal. My very smart wife, when she heard of the experiment called it muesli, a Swiss invention.

I stood there trying to imagine myself in a small rolling cabin, the sound of waves sloshing against the hull, the horizon flipping and flopping this way and that. My imagination was helped by the videos you have too have probably watched of his latest journey, his sixth time around the world. The videos on YouTube as I have mentioned before, give the best possible idea of what it is actually like to sail a small boat a long way out of sight of land and if you get any romantic notions you should check them out. Webb's cold oatmeal breakfast is legendary and I have eaten it.

Uncooked oatmeal, protein powder and a mix of fruit, fresh or dried, nuts and milk. Contemplate and then taste. And be surprised because it tastes good. Because I have a sweet tooth I'd add sweetener and that highlights the beauty of this food inasmuch as it is very filling it also can be made with petty much any ingredients you have to hand. Aside from the basic oatmeal itself you need a liquid but that could even be water if that was all you had. Mine tasted fine and despite Webb offering to throw it out if I hated it I found it to be really good and I finished it. No cooking needed is a bonus. It has put commercial heated oatmeal into the shade. Curiously Webb didn't invent it, but got the recipe form a health conscious fellow sailor with whom he shared a transatlantic passage decades ago. A German of course as muesli is popular in those  parts.

Sunday was a day devoted to being a tourist in a city that has its icons and respects it's history. Both Webb and Carol were kind enough to tell me they enjoyed being tourists in their current hometown and I understand that feeling as I do the same in Key West when I have visitors. However Carol works full time Monday through Friday and consuming her day off gave me pangs.  Her work is far more all consuming and stressful than mine and I hesitate to say I'm enjoying working days but I am. We both look forward to the benefits of retirement which Webb has been enjoying already for far too many decades, the reprobate. No idea what was going on but I resisted Carol's suggestion we stand behind the man and make faces at the interviewer's camera:

 Chicago is one giant flowerbed. They were everywhere.

Apparently they didn't make it in time for the turn of the century but it opened shortly thereafter and I had a grand time wandering through it my head swiveling like a country bumpkin on his first visit to the metropolis.

 Outdoor concert arena designed by "the most important architect of our age" according to that noted critic of architecture Vanity Fair magazine. Frank Gehry is actually Canadian but lives in the US as so many of our northern neighbors do.

The pavilion is named for a Hyatt Hotel heir who presumably handed over the loot to get the over sized band shell built by 2004 and it is now a much appreciated free concert venue in the heart of Chicago. I thought it looked really cool and I hope I have caught some of that atmosphere.

 Seen from a distance it curls in astonishing arcs over the abundant flower beds and trees:

They also have a wildflower garden in the middle of the park which created in my undoubtedly overheated imagination a city in an apocalypse. No it's not civilization collapsing it's actually Utopia, a place where nature can live and work in the middle of the city undisturbed by lawn mowers or shears.

And then there were young people voluntarily getting soaked on a  warmish but not too hot afternoon:

 It is all deliberate.

Weird doesn't begin to describe these two huge faces overlooking the shallow pool. he photographs move slightly giving the faces of "ordinary Chicagoans" a strange Oz-like property.

 And then they turn the fountains on.

 It was entrancing, interactive Art in the park. 

Oh and then the piece de resistance, known to city residents fondly as The Bean. That's me staring at the camera. I really was there.

 Cloud Gate Plaza they call it in the guides but The Bean makes a lot more sense.

 You walk under the bean and get weird views in a form of  endless wavy mirror images:

 Double selfies, back and front:

 The people responsible fro opening my eyes to the possibilities:

 The Bean is Brilliant. You have to see it.

Carol mentioned this fancy outdoor seating area becomes an al fresco ice rink in winter. I stared at it appalled. Ice outside a freezer sounds unnatural.

I found downtown Chicago on very brief acquaintance to be civilized and  pleasant. Phones keep heads down but the sidewalks were wide enough to make them easy to avoid. I want to go back in a hurry.

There are quite a few residentially challenged beggars on the sidewalks, but then again this is the principal tourist zone so this would be where they would go. But there are performers too and this lot were considerably more adept than Key West's sole bucket drummer on Duval Street who seems to generate more complaints than cash.

 Crowds but not crowded:

Then there was the architectural river tour.

An American Street

"The Americans" was a photography book published in 1958  by the photographer Robert Frank who died recently and has thus launched attention on his life's work with a camera. Wikipedia repeats the frequently made assertion that Frank struck an hisotric note with his photos taken across the country, apparently at random. The Americans was a seminal work as they say which Wikipedia says ".., earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society." 

Of course I wouldn't dare compare my modest pictures of my home town to anything as seminal as a de Tocqueville circling photographer, but over the past dozen years I've collected quite a lot of pictures from around here. And though lots of them are crap and others aren't brilliant and early digital cameras were pretty peculiar I still enjoy wandering and taking pictures.

Key West has so much stuff to look at, small street side stuff of no consequence and yet in the end I see the consequence of all these nooks and crannies and they make up an interesting town. Oh by the way the picture below was a little joke. They all say "...of the dog." So I wanted to leave a little doubt about this one. It was of the dog in this case too, I confess.

This one put me in mind of a recent auction extravaganza:

David Hockney's picture of a swimming pool rendered in rather simple lines and colors was sold for better than 90 million dollars. The sort of money that would go a long way to restoring Great Abaco which is getting about five million dollars so far for their  Hurricane Dorian difficulties.

Angela Street alongside the cemetery. September is the quietest month in Key West. Eateries close and European visitors don't make up in numbers for the crowds who show up in winter. Like they say you can shoot a cannon around here and not hit anyone.

Bicycles in color...

And in Robert Frank moody black and white.

Catholic Lane in glorious sunshine.  It's so named as it is placed about the height of the Catholic section in the cemetery. 

Shade and sky and white clouds: that's September in Key West when the rest of the country is watching the leaves change color.

I stood in the shade feeling the breeze and taking pictures of the still life:

And this? I have no idea. Perhaps a new way to reserve a parking space for all I know.

September Walk

It was a breezy day and naturally the palm fronds would cooperate as I stood hunched up trying to get the camera and motorcycle and palm in one spot all properly lined up. The good news is I can stand hunched these days something I wasn't sure would happen again as I lay in my hospital bed this time last year. I wanted to call it Tropical Harley and so I did. It's an older model Harley Davidson Road King I've seen parked around town, well used.

The black arrow pointing across the street straight at the opposite corner. This one took an age too with bicycles scooters and cars ruining the effect by having the temerity to actually drive down Southard Street!  

It was a hot day mitigated by a  strong east wind created by the latest tropical depression in the Caribbean. They come and go and sound frequently more fearsome than they are, and instead of wreaking wholesale destruction they drop rain after wind and move on. But the pre- strom front breeze is often delightful.

I saw a poinciana tree still blooming on Southard Street and it looked lovely. The twenty mile an hour speed limit looks idiotic but that's because I pay attention when I drive, but I suppose the theory is that those who text and drive or drive without seat belts will do less damage if they are trundling at wheelbarrow speeds.

Breezy  yes but still hot.

Sometimes people like to "reserve their spots" in front of their homes so they fill the space with garbage cans or scooters or anything that comes to hand. While a garbage can isn't legal; a scooter is, though it is still pretty cheesy. If you live in Key West parking in front of your house is a remote possibility. I'm glad to see electric scooters gaining acceptance though. 

Shadow art. Pretty slick huh?

Flower art. Not as slick but fun to stop and struggle to photograph. I have to use manual focus to get this close in, and manual focus in 100% humidity ends to produce sufficient concentration to fog up the viewfinder. I think I nailed this one though:

White picket fences: the all American town. Southard Street toward Duval:

Southard Street toward White Street. What a pretty town.