Why Gannet 2

I can confidently state after a lifetime driving all kinds of machines I have never given a vehicle a name. I have unfortunately a severely practical state of mind, I attribute that to my Aspergers though it may just be because I am lazy or something. The Golden Van broke the rule and therein I suppose lies a story. I call it the Golden Van with a slight tip of the hat to my ironic self after Custom Coach Creations said this was the second such van they had ever converted. Most customers go for standard white as delivery is instantaneous whereas a special color ( I wanted maroon, nixed by my wife) takes up to four months to deliver. We were in no hurry.

A motorcycle rider I met years ago blogs frequently (in English) from her home in Germany whence she returned after years of living in Canada, where she rode and named her motorcycles. Sonja asked why then did I choose to name the Golden Van? She and her husband now spend their free time wandering Europe in their Volkswagen van from their home base in Southern Germany. Oddly enough we follow similar paths... 

So why did I break the habit of a lifetime and give the van a name? It goes back to sailing. When I came out of the hospital determined, now that I could walk again, to have one last adventure before the Big Sleep my wife and I pondered our options. We could always go back to sailing we thought, until we discovered Rusty hates the water; the poor dog isn't perfect after all. So he gave us the excuse to think outside the proverbial box. Besides we had a hankering for something different. With a van we thought we could see more stuff, go inland, park in the middle of places we wanted to see, tour the parts that could not be reached by boat. We are not Webb Chiles, clearly.

"Go to the edge of human experience and send back reports." That phrase set this thing in motion. I came across Webb Chiles as a young man, an aspiring sailor who read avidly as one does when one's young head is full of dreams. I never had Webb Chiles' drive to sail off into what he is famous as describing as "...the monastery of the sea."  But his books were compelling and his experiences extraordinary. The first American to sail alone around Cape Horn is the record that gets me especially as his boat was not suitable and conditions were dreadful but he bested that record in his own estimation by sailing almost the entire way around the world in an open boat. He wrote memorable magazine articles about living under snow in Boston winters and i followed along from my safe berth in the Santa Cruz small craft harbor in California.

So when he sailed to the Keys a few years ago I offered my dock to look after his boat. That offer did not work out but we met anyway and so it went. His boat for the sixth sail around the world was as usual totally unsuitable, except of course it wasn't as Webb Chiles was sailing it. The Moore 24 is designed for sailing downwind on California's coast and winning races in what is known to sailors as the "ultralight" class of racing sailboats. That they were nurtured in my former hometown of Santa Cruz is a coincidence. Gannet is 24 feet long, flush decked and yes, I repeat, it is called Gannet...

Hmm. Could that be why my Golden Van is named Gannet 2? Why yes it could, that could be the exact reason. If that satisfies your curiosity read no further.

I would never have dared to name my lumbering home on wheels after Webb's lithe fast torpedo of a world girdling boat, and the idea never entered my head. It was Webb who suggested it after I told him of our plans. I want to drive Gannet 2 a long way before we come back to Key West and while I hesitate to mention plans I talked with Webb of them and as usual he was entirely supportive and enthusiastic. He after all has gone far too far in boats that should never have made it in the opinion of armchair critics and the peanut gallery, so when I talked  airily of long distance travels his only comment was "You'll love South Africa, fascinating country." Ok then, now I have some commitments to live up to. And send back reports from those edges of human experience.

My wife chose the design, Tomasz at Key West Signs made them reality and Webb endorsed the job. I and my trepidations stood aside. Now he says to be done properly Gannet 2 has to take on a proper nautical identity and gain a gender. The Golden Van becomes a "she." That will take me a while to master but I shall do my best.

In sailing tradition one names a boat then adds a so called "hailing port" as well. The idea was two ships crossing paths would call out essential information, hailing each other across the water in the era before radios existed. "Gannet 2 out of Key West bound for Anchorage" for example. So we added a hailing port to the name as well.

Webb lives a spartan life at sea, one of which I approve as he spends very little time maintaining systems even though he has the essentials covered in the most modern way, electronics, music and a place to sit and manage the boat, He even makes videos and you can get the best idea of what sailing an ocean is like by watching them.  I love minimalism as I hate fixing things. 

I travel with a wife and dog and blame my level of luxurious frippery on their presence. I am a hardened outdoorsman you understand and would be just as happy sleeping on a  square of canvas suffering the miseries of heat cold and mosquitoes with nary a complaint. Which may or may not be true about me...Fortunately we will never know as my wife is in charge of living arrangements and I do as I am told. So we travel with mood lighting surround sound and a television, not to mention convection oven, insta pot and electric burners all powered by solar panels and a complicated inverter to create household electricity also generated by two alternators in the engine...phew! Apollo 11 had nothing on us!

That's the story of the naming. My Promaster Van is named after a 24 foot boat that has sailed around the world and could even do it again if her owner chose to do so. My Promaster Van has a lot to live up to, as do I. And let's not forget my long suffering wife. And dog; don't forget the chief security officer. I suppose we had better get on with it. Retirement in two years will put us to the test.

We travel not for trade alone,

By hotter winds our hearts are fanned

For lust of knowing what should not be known 

We take the golden road to Samarkand.

James Flecker

Face Masks In Key West

Because of the dramatic increase in COVID-19 cases, every person over the age of 6, while in the City of Key West and away from their residence, is required to wear a mask, regardless of whether social distancing is maintained.

It continues to allow restaurant patrons to remove their mask only when seated at a table and eating or drinking.

Individuals violating this directive are subject to a second-degree misdemeanor charge, which carries fines up to $500, and potential prison terms of up to 60 days, with higher penalties for repeated offenses.

“We cannot stress how important it is that we slow this infection rate down,” said City Manager Greg Veliz. “We have limited medical support on this small island, and the counties north of us are major national hot spots. Please, everyone, take personal responsibility and wear a mask.”

As reported by the Key West Citizen 

A Tale Of Two Highways

Described by some as one of the most scenic drives in North America, and by others as a very slow boring parking lot, neither description of the Overseas Highway makes much of a difference if you live in the Keys. Some days it is extra scenic even to a local's jaded eyes and some other days it is a nightmare of slow distracted traffic as newcomers driver under the speed limit to take in the mixed scenery of open water and strip malls. 

I don't want to spend too much of your time reiterating the history of this famous road that started as a privately funded project called the Over-The-Sea Railroad and after 23 years of no profitability was wrecked by a  storm which prompted the State of Florida in a moment of uncharacteristic socialism to take over the railbe. The State turned it into a road opened in 1938, a great period for public works in our collective history. In 1982  the travel time to the mainland was halved by the new broad road allowing for a less than three hour journey in relative safety and ease, though speaking as one who has been evacuated by air ambulance from US 1 I feel confident in stating not every driver knows what they are doing.

There are sections of four lane highway through the Keys, there are passing zones and the speed limits vary between 45 and 55 miles per hour with some 50 miles per hour and Key Deer nighttime protections at 35 mph. Those are the best as you can find yourself trying to get home behind some oblivious nipnunk who can't tell day from night. Better that than the anxious tourists passing on double yellow lines and closing the highway for hours as their victims bleed to death ( or get saved a sI did by the helicopter). Nine years ago they were wrapping up a major improvement to the Overseas Highway, a $3330 million dollar construction job that was an effort to make approaching the Keys easier and more efficient. The 18 mile stretch (known henceforth as "The Stretch") joins Florida City to Key Largo across the bottom stip of Everglades marsh and it used to be a deathtrap with two lanes, no median and wild passing efforts. The idea was to separate the two directions of traffic with a cement barrier and keep traffic flowing without head on collisions. Job done. However the major design flaw has led to some hairy driving on the stretch...

It's a 45 mile per hour speed limit as you drive through Florida City, an amorphous collection of chain restaurants and gas stations but as the center divider appears, painted an imaginative turquoise color at the suggestion of a Keys resident, the speed limit goes up to 55 mph but the unwary have no idea the two lanes will rapidly shrink to one. That's when the fun begins.

The Stretch was built as a single lane highway with two short passing places to allow traffic build ups to disperse. This creates all the road rage and impatience you can imagine. On the face of it why not create a four lane highway as the land is obviously available, and environmental reservations notwithstanding traffic is heavy as this is the main road in and out of the island chain.

Despite the fact the road passes through empty marshland there are a few turn outs, a state jail, some marinas, maintenance facilities  and cell towers create the need for turning lanes which in the helter skelter requirements of the impatient become illegal and dangerous passing lanes. The dark gray car below is pulling out behind the light gray car to get ahead of the slow moving boat in the picture below (thanks to my wife the  passenger for these photos):

The reason for this is political. It was determined that creating a  four lane highway would open up evacuation times in the case of say, a hurricane. The state safety regulations mandate everyone be able to evacuate the Keys within a certain time limit and this bottleneck has been used to slow and stall development in the Keys. Creating a  smooth fast four lane highway would have been the path to allowing more construction in the islands.  So we get passing in turning lanes, crowding and weird crashes as the drivers push to get to Paradise - terrestrial if they are lucky and celestial if they are less so..

The upshot is that during busy times I take an extra ten minutes or so and ride the other entrance to the Keys along Card Sound Road, a 55 mph road with passing places, light traffic usually and the superb conch fritters at Alabama Jack's. The other highway in the title is called Krome Avenue and that is a  totally different story.

Krome Avenue, also known as Highway 997 in Florida's confusing multi-named highway system runs from Homestead to Highway 27 (Okeechobee Road) through farm country with roadside fruit and vegetable stands and nurseries growing palms for instant landscaping in new developments. It's all rather appropriate as the man it is named for William Julius Krome is famous as the engineer who built the railroad to Key West but is not known for the botanist and agriculturalist he was, before he died unnaturally young.  It's also where dogs just like Rusty get dumped by people who tire of their animals. As you can see road widening is well underway. This used to be a narrow scenic farm road with two lanes, no barriers and lots of crashes and near misses as farm tractors mixed it up with 18 wheelers and boy racers. I never used to drive Krome to avoid freeway crowds on the Turnpike a few miles east of here. These days most of Krome Avenue is an easy drive:

Four lanes, turning lanes, barricades, street lighting with surprisingly modest speed limits, 45-55 miles per hour depending on the urban build up alongside the road. A road sign at the Highway 27 end of Krome announced zero fatalities so far in 2020. And why would there be? Slower traffic keep right and all is well with the world in a slow moving van. The best part is that once the highway is reconfigured to get through Homestead without killing anyone it will be an easy relaxing ride north around the madness that is the Turnpike extension which joins the fatally flawed Stretch. Card Sound to Krome Avenue and Sawgrass Expressway could become the easiest escape from the Keys. Not without traffic lights but still.

So every time I drive the modern safe highway that is Krome Avenue I wonder why The Stretch has to be the stock car race track it has turned into. 

Seagrapes In Summer

I read that a heat dome is descending over the middle of this country and many more people across the US will soon be enjoying temperatures well over 100 degrees. There is deep within me a rather unpleasant feeling that a misery shared is a misery halved. Long time readers of this excessively verbose page know that I go on at length about how I like summers in Florida with fewer people, more dramatic skies and waves of warmth.

Yes, well I have come to the conclusion that too much of a good thing is not so terribly great. I walked out of the house at four thirty in the morning to take Rusty to check the mail and was greeted by a wave of heat in the face, a damp blanket of warmth that had me breaking out in sweat before we had even started our walk. Rusty's mail checks consist of wandering around the streets near our house where the trailer park neighbors walk their dogs twice a day in unvarying patterns and leave scents for Rusty to pick up. For some people this heat is life threatening, for others it is one more economic burden in what is already a tough year. For me it is merely a  nuisance and I feel lucky. Over heated but lucky.

I try to walk Rusty at dusk or nearly in an effort to catch a break but my photographic exercises are rather limited if the sun has gone down enough to lower temperatures slightly so I have resorted to contemplating the seagrape which grows in abundance alongside the roads close to my camera and far from the muddy puddles that fill the backwood trails at the moment.

I used to live with seagrapes when we had a house on Ramrod Key but I grew weary of them. These vast green dinner plates which have the toughness and consistency of the hide of a large predatory animal turn red yellow and brown and fall to the grown in endless snowdrifts of leathery dead leaves. They are the devil to rake, impossible to sweep and fill garbage cans easily and completely on those  days for garden debris pick up. I got sick of chasing after the seagrape bushes shedding leaves faster than I could scrape them up.

Nowadays I have no seagrapes to call my own and they have  been restored in my fickle mind to their preeminent place as interesting plants.  The thing is you can eat them too and in my yard I was lucky to get a few purple grapes every year as most were gobbled up by the wildlife. They are that delicious. Well let's not exaggerate: they taste good once ripe. The fruit has a huge pip inside the  grape-like flesh so part of the pleasure of eating them is rolling the seagrape through your teeth stripping the stone of the clingy flesh. They taste a bit like regular grapes. Eating seagrapes is a mild pleasure so if you think you are missing out on some wild Florida hallucinatory experience rest assured you are better off buying cotton candy flavored grapes at the supermarket. I nearly choked when a colleague offered me a grape without telling me of the enhanced qualities of the fruit. I like my flavors traditional.

Actually there is a fruit called miracle berry and I've had that and what a wild ride that was. The cotton candy colleague brought some little red berries to work along with some fruit and we spent a little time amusing ourselves eating lemons like they were candy. It takes an act of faith to take a huge bite out of a lemon after you've chewed the little red Miracle Berry but what a mind bender it is to taste the sugar and none of the sour. I mention that by way of a diversion from seagrapes.

Seagrapes are so textured and come in such a broad array of colors I like trying to isolate the colors and shapes in their endless variety.

Happily for me but not for the roadside bushes Monroe County sent a crew to trim the shrubbery recently when I wasn't there so it came as a surprise to see lots of brown leaves. The result is a Fall spectacular of dead leaves shining in the evening sun.

I am terrible at cutting and pruning and prefer my plants to grow in abundance and confusion but hurricane season requires preparation and clearing of roadside obstructions and protection of overhead wires. besides no one wants an untidy roadway do they? I do but I count myself a minority of one.

Shreds of flame and color everywhere if you look.

One last seagrape...

One last glimpse of clouds pressing down and then its back to suburbia and civilization and comfort. 

Oh well.

Robert Is Here

The original fruit stand was built in 1959 and here it still is, open and selling coronavirus notwithstanding.

However the fruit stand’s owner Robert,  isn't playing games and the service which is usually a wandering around gawping at weird fruit experience is now a drive through order by name experience. And very glad we were for it too.

I imagine this place was bursting July 4th but a few days later it was a straight drive through for our van. 

There were three drive up positions with a menu but I already knew I wanted  a strawberry shake while my wife went exotic with passionfruit, a peculiarly inaptly named thing which is more tart than sweet in my opinion. 

Robert is Here in the linked magazine article is described as located in "Florida's forgotten farmlands" which orotund oratory as usual is a little light on the facts. The fruit stand sits astride the road to Everglades National Park, a road that is rather poorly marked oddly enough. You'd think Homestead would make a fuss about being the gateway to one of the oddest and least understood park in the system  (my opinion) but electronic mapping will get you to this iconic fruit stand. 

My wife pondered her tropical choices for a bang up fruit salad while I looked around. Normally she would be working over the staff at the tables while I would wander outside with Rusty but coronavirus has changed everything of course. We were happy the store was taking its precautions so seriously as that gave us the opportunity to stop by. It makes travel just a bit more enjoyable tasting the local stuff. Gratuitous Rusty picture:

The process took our ten foot tall van on a path winding through the business, tortoises to the left of us and fruit to the right of us, as they have an exotic animal rescue area in the back. 

Gloves masks and fruit. Excellent service. I heard on the cashier’s two way radio that Robert was packing our order. The Robert? I asked. She nodded. Ok then...

The stuff you like to wander around and look at as part of the Robert experience is off limits for now. Bummer.

The main attraction is what counts. A rare treat and perfectly delicious as you might imagine.

So then if you have a van with some Kermit chairs you can social distance on a  levee of your choice and watch the world go by. People miss a lot of Florida by racing to Duval Street.

Rusty the explorer:

All enhanced by Robert and his Fruit.