Heat On Duval

Forgive me if I have been sounding a bit whiny about the heat this year but as you can see I really am not alone. It is hot and humid this year and we are as usual getting a  little antsy for relief. 

Five o'clock on Duval Street and the sweat is think in my eyebrows fogging up my viewfinder and turning my shrt into a limp sweat soaked rag. Walking past the Pegasus Hotel on the corner of Southard Street I saw a display of red and blue not previously seen, all Art Deco through the trees.

We've had a mild cool front which caused temperatures to tumble Up North. but gave us only a momentary relief from the humidity. We will probably have to wait another month for winter to set in around here.

The bridge into Key West has been repaired and completed months ahead of schedule which is great. North Roosevelt Boulevard hasn't flooded at all despite the heavy rains which shows the engineering project that tore up the main road a few years ago has been well done. Front Street is where the flooding seems to be worst though there are places all around Key West where streets can go under water. Not North Roosevelt though, the flooding there really does seem to be solved for now.

Construction on Duval Street is a good thing to see as many storefronts are closed. I was glad to see one building being gutted and got ready for new occupants.

The optimism of construction. 

I read about lock downs coming back in parts of Europe as they get more cases of coronavirus, a period they are choosing to call the second wave. I don't know how they do it, financially or emotionally. I wish we could get a handle on mask wearing and social distancing to get ahead of things. Aside from the financial stress lockdowns don't seem viable to me as the virus pops up after the lockdown ends. 

I get calls at work from people who want to visit the Keys and call the police to ask weird questions. Why they don't call the chamber of commerce I don't know and when I suggest they do they make noises like they don't know why I would suggest such an outlandish idea. Except I know nothing about the tourist industry, or where to stay and what to do except in the broadest and vaguest terms. That's the Chamber's job; my job is to send ambulances and stuff. Theses days travel is a more intimate choice than ever and if you can't go through life without eating our or drinking in a bar you have to make your own choices. I don't know what to tell you except that I'm ordering food to go and avoiding crowds and planes and indoor seating and gyms until the scientists tell me otherwise.

There is no secret code to going on vacation in the Keys. The roads are open, hotels are operating and bars and restaurants are open by order of the governor. In a month what will happen? I hope we have a strong cold front by then to cool us down and I hope everyone will  be wearing masks to get us out of this wretched pandemic. One seems likely, the other not so much.

 

Balloon Sunrise

I treat Fat Albert as my weather gauge. Not only does the blimp show which way the wind is blowing, but the balloon also shows when the weather is predicted to be gnarly. Those are the days the blimp isn't flying and is pulled down to the safety of sea level.

It is tethered to the ground and uses devices to monitor boat and aircraft traffic across the Straits of Florida. It is a small outpost of civilization set back in the mangroves of Cudjoe Key, an area filled with salt water and stunted bushes and any chance a nearby boat ramp.

I find Fat Albert's presence in the sky, visible from far away on the Overseas Highway, to be a reassurance that everything is as it should be and that is good. The blimp is its own reminder that we are on the edge of the country, an outpost pushed far out to sea, a corner in the traffic lanes of ships at sea. The blimp is a reminder of the reach of the US as much as little league on North Roosevelt Boulevard is a reminder that the flag and apple pie are the symbols stereotyped for all to see that this is America, a small piece, no matter how far out to sea we find ourselves.

You have time to think these thoughts as you wander aimlessly one more dead end side street, socially distanced, alone with your dog and your camera wishing the humidity would go down just a little bit and let some air into the atmosphere.

This is the first year of all the decades I have spent enjoying the tropics that I find summer to be just a bit too much. I'd like to imagine it is my resistance that has been beaten down but everyone seems to be saying the same thing. Even Rusty has been less energetic than usual and he doesn't mind the heat.

There was a Serious Photographer at the end of blimp road this last time I was there and he had not one but two expensive cameras on tripods aimed in the general direction of the pink tinted clouds that promised the arrival of the sun. He seemed rather reluctant to share good mornings with the guy with the dog so we steered a wide course around his expensive apparatus and I amused myself with the my cheap pocket Panasonic.

We wandered away, Rusty and I with expensive tripods unmolested and the silent photographer happily snapping away at the sunrise and I was thus reminded how lucky I am to see this stiff any day I feel like. 

I am also lucky that Rusty is smart and sensible and stays away from people that don't want him around. He seems like he cam read my mind sometimes, another reason to keep my thoughts pure when I am out with him.

Upside down reflected in the water, or right side up a firm speck against the wafting clouds there it sits, the blimp of Cudjoe Key.  So all is well. 

Joy On Eliza

 Irony, hope, or an order? Perhaps a reflection of my mood...

A couple of blocks from my work there are a few streets filled with Conch cottages, trees and shrubs and occasional quirky decorating motifs.

It's where I come from time to time to get some relief from work, where I have to sit and listen to misery and anger for hours at a time. 

On Eliza Street I find a different world especially at this time of year when there is no one around, no earnest winter cyclists in broad brimmed hats clutching sweaty maps of impenetrable streets.

The sign on the door said "Star Fleet" but I think of this place less as intergalactic and more as the brush house. I included a hint as to why that is in the lower part of the frame. I wish I had the nerve to live in a house so blue but my Pepto-Bismol home on Cudjoe Key has weathered to a more acceptable shade of fade. This one I liked not necessarily for the relatively sober colors but for the mass of rooflines:

Rooflines and palm fronds everywhere. I tend to walk around here with my head in the air.

Back to work. Coronavirus has it's usefulness as we are socially distanced at work and after a half hour wandering in this heat one needs a little time in air conditioning to resume normal bodily temperature. I can't wait for a proper cold front.

Duval Street Sunshine

I had a reason to be downtown, dropping off my ballot along with my wife's, ironically on the day the President went on television to denounce the peaceful voting process that brought him to power. The voting process that he now threatens to ignore. Well, that's two Florida votes for Biden. 

The bars are open, as shown by my decision to take a walk on Duval and see what's what. In case you are wondering I am of a strong enough constitution to walk while masked, even in 95 degree heat so that was what I did.   

Not everyone followed suit, though I was surprised how many did. If you feel the need to support a local business, a fresh air seat in an almost empty bar seems like a pretty good plan for a liquid lunch. I had work to go back to shortly.

I was reading my selection of online papers yesterday and the numbers are going up in Wisconsin and I have to say I am surprised it took so long. When we were there in our camper van in July the entire state was functioning as normal, that is to say as we used to live before this pandemic. My wife and I felt like time travelers coming as we did from a high infection state. We wished them luck and went to Michigan where precautions were in effect. Now Florida is banning a science based response to infection.

It was a hot afternoon on Duval and I was in long pants for work but there was quite a bit of traffic on the sidewalks, because whatever else is going on this is September, traditionally the slowest month of the year. Peak hurricane season, schools are open and the cool breezes of winter haven't yet arrived.

The solution to the Fall doldrums years ago was to create a carnival to draw people to the town where it was said a cannon shot down Duval might at best wake a dog sleeping in the shade. Fantasy Fest grew over the years and created a rather irritating name for itself as a magnet for bad taste in pursuit of tourist dollars.. The new organizers were slowly turning around the tits-on-display attitude where a week long street party in Key West was for elderly middle class pillars of their communities back home to pretend to be reprobates in secret far away.  However all that came to a screeching halt this year.

Or did it? The newspaper is reporting a  group of people from Tampa, exactly those who can't strip naked at home in public want to have their own tasteless display in Key West. I never have found the Tampa crowd particularly in tune with the event and this year they are apparently planning their own party in Key West crowing that thanks to the Governor they can ignore local reticence on the subject. 

I used to enjoy the week of Fantasy Fest and my friends thought I was stupid for sticking up for the week we spent in our own reality. I got overtime rather than time off and i am not one to dress up in costumes but I enjoy the good cheer of a downtown party and ignored the tastelessness that went with it. It was not an easy balance to find but in a  town where tacky and tourism have always seemed synonymous it wasn't that much of a stretch to enjoy the carnival and ignore the puerile humor.

And this year the silliness of the last week in October is perforce missing. I doubt the Tampa gate crashers will organize much of anything and to announce a Black Lingerie Matters bike ride to the newspaper is hardly a portent of good sense in a year when BLM are initials far too pregnant with meaning to be made fun of. The Zombie Bike Ride is just another casualty of our First World Problem and mocking a political movement that has everyone on both sides riled up seems to cross a bad taste line that is bad even by Fantasy Fest's loose morals. Bad taste is one thing but political hay making is quite another.

Next year, assuming the pandemic has run its course and all things are equal, should be my last Fantasy Fest at the police department so I'm keeping my fingers crossed hoping it will be brilliant and sparkle and make people happy, a portent of good times to come. This year we just keep on keeping on and wait with patience for things to somehow get better.

Bahama Village

Whitehead Street at five in the morning. Mask ordinances are finished by order of the Governor,  everyone has to use their common sense and social distance or use a mask based on their own intelligence level. I am rather dubious about that approach but I am resigned to this virus being around for far longer than I ever initially imagined. 

My neighbor told me of a friend of theirs, 40 years old who got coronavirus and was on a ventilator for ten days. Now she has stroke like symptoms that the doctors can't figure out, headaches, lopsided features and an arm that doesn't work, but only intermittently.  The reason I don't want to blunder into coronavirus is because I don't want to deal with the third outcome which isn't death or recovery. Its recovery with side effects of unknown severity, complexity and duration.  So I creep around Key West hen everyone else is asleep.

I used take night pictures for a change but I seem to find myself figuring out how to take pictures with not much light and that is most of the time. I wandered down Petronia Street which is actually quite picturesque even under sunlight.

Was thinking how in a normal year the city would be gearing up for Goombay in about three weeks. And Goombay, the Bahamian celebration which clogs Petronia Street for a weekend, is the precursor to Fantasy Fest.

Goombay, Zombie Bike Ride, Fantasy Fest...all gone this year.I fear if we don't get our mask wearing and social distancing organized we may not see them next year. I like the holiday spirit of the end of October especially as FantasyFest was being redirected away from stupid nudity to more of a costume public event. Perhaps by the time the pandemic is behind us and Fantasy Fest resumes it will be better placed to be a downtown celebration. I have one more opportunity to see fantasy fest before retirement. I Amy already have seen my last if next year repeats this year. The same goes for Goombay, a less riotous event with more music and food and less stupid drunks. To not see one last Goombay would be a real shame.

 

Checking The Mail

My alarm goes off at 4:25 every morning I work. I have a second alarm set at 4:55 in case I fail to wake up and that is about the time I have to get into high gear and get ready to go to work. That first half hour belongs to Rusty. We eave the house together and check the mail.

I read a long scientific article about a dog's sense of smell and thoughI came across it years ago the information I discovered has stuck with me. It explained a lot about the behavior I see in Rusty, his ability to smell in stereo, directionally and also his ability to separate smells by time, not only space. Dogs don't find smells disgusting in the same way we do, as they dissect smells for information, not for pleasure or to pass moral judgements. 

So it is that he takes great interest in the neighborhood, checking where other dogs have walked, noticing what's new and who might be new. He chooses the route, he selects his own stops and I trail along with a flashlight and a plastic bag always at his service.

We are alone at the hour, even the party goers have passed out and a neighbor's cat has got used to Rusty padding by at an hour when civil creatures are asleep. I don't know what the cat is outdoors by himself but I am forced to accept not everyone is as overwrought by their companion animal's welfare as am I. Rusty's freedom to operate is limited by my watchfulness and subsequent irritation if he does something stupid.

It is a walk that is only the preamble to my wife's more leisurely arrival on the scene and she takes him off in the car for a longer walk after dawn but before she settles down to teach at home. Rusty and I get back around the time the second alarm goes off and he goes off with a treat while I head towards the usual ablutions, uniform, lunch bag packing and all that daily nonsense.

He sits next to the ridiculously overgrown greenery at the top of the stairs and watches me go away to a world of unimaginable delights that won't release me back to him until 6:30 that evening when we get in the car and go off again to watch the sun set over the mangroves. 

I can't help but feel that we might all of us benefit from the simplicity and the lessons to be gleaned from an unambitious dog secure in his routines and not needing any great plans to keep him happy.