Through The Looking Glass

The city of Key West is urgently pushing the barn door shut even as Coronavirus cases have almost hit 1300. That news has pushed local leaders to act in a way that is going to upset a lot of people and in a  time when taking a stand is not very popular  my hat is off to the city commission. (LINK) We all know that we have a more stable population in the Keys as winter residents come and don't leave.  Thus when people get infected now  they don't go home after vacation but show up at the local hospitals. Concern is therefore at a high level officially speaking and the city commission has grasped that uncomfortable bull by the horns..

The city commission has passed another outdoor mask ordinance so we are back where we were this spring, masks on all the time, indoors and out when you leave home. I have been reading reports from hospitals in the Midwest where patients tell nurses they don't believe they have Covid 19 even as it kills them. It beggars belief but coronavirus has leapt out of the realm of science into the twisted up world of politics and wishful thinking.

So now the city decides to tighten up to try to stop the virus in little old Key West and predictably there are experts in the city who know better, prominent citizens no less. The newspaper reports a local restaurant magnate has decided masks are ineffective and didn't enforce even the previously rather lax rules. One can imagine that with his erudition on the subject of epidemiology he has decided the new, stiffer rules are pointless. Which about sums up how hopeless the situation is become. Eleven million cases nationwide and here we are, crashing around in a  fog of premature senility. I saw one suggestion online to ward off coronavirus with oregano. What I wondered do they put on their pasta sauce, bleach, perhaps? If oregano worked would not the Italians of all people, among the most hard hit nations, not be immune? However being rational in the face of essential oils and witchcraft has no place.

Facebook lit up this week with the news that the newly elected county commissioner, and former long time city mayor, and his wife are in the hospital with coronavirus diagnoses. This stuff must be hitting home when we hear this and you'd think that to see such a popular leader and his charming wife laid up in the hospital would be a call to action. Yet the whole concept of politicized mask wearing is the worst legacy of the outgoing administration's fight to politicize absolutely everything. So Facebook doesn't light up with recommendations to wear masks and stay socially distant: no we see lots of hands joined in prayer. A charming sentiment but prayer is proving to be about as effective as oregano in keeping the virus at bay. Prayer and a mask is much more indicated as the city commission itself voted,  but we are as a species incapable of being rational. Oregano and prayer not masks. 250,000 dead, so far, hospitals filling up nationwide, health care workers at the end of their tethers. And we haven't even had a Pearl Harbor or a Tet Offensive to test our mettle, and here we are trembling before the dreaded mask.

I have to say my ambition is to get through the next few months unscathed if I possibly can, and reach the place where secure vaccinations become available and put this ghastly episode behind me. In the hundred years since the Spanish "Flu, which originated in Kansas of course, we seem to have learned nothing as a species, We are living through a  time where expertise, education, science and kindness are on the backburner only to be replaced by a pervasive sense that lawlessness and cruelty and ignorance are the new currency. It does my mind no good at all to see how badly we have handled this crisis for our generation. Key West as a holdout for thoughtfulness is a consolation, but this one human family is a tiny blip on the face of a national epidemic..

I don't know what the point is of trying to pass laws to make people see sense if they don't want to. In California the governor is under fire for violating his own indoor dining rules by having a  dinner party under what was essentially a closed-in awning area at the very expensive French Laundry, apparently open only on one side. When the author of draconian Covid Laws actively works to skirt them, what is the point I ask myself?  If we don't want to wear masks, if we try to avoid the rules like naughty children reading under the covers what is the point in saying you must, you have to wear a mask which in itself has become a symbol of political partisanship? Never mind the fact that doctors and scientists tell us its the best way to end this disaster, because a prominent restaurateur disagrees. Who would you believe? The businessman, obviously.

Let sleeping dogs lie I say. Trying to save people from themselves never has worked and obviously won't work now. I never thought much of the lockdown which hasn't in retrospect served Europe well. I wish we had had a strong mask mandate from the beginning, with social distancing and intense sanitary rules such that we could have pulled out of this with a reasonably intact economy. Instead  I feel as though I should learn to play the fiddle as I wait with dread for my next appearance in the ICU. I did not like being ventilated last time and I am not looking forward at all to next time, especially as some people breathe by machine for weeks. I don't think I could bear it as I was stuck with the tube down my throat for less than a day. I couldn't talk but my wife said it was the maddest she had seen me after I woke up, during my months in the hospital. 

I should much rather wear a mask, stay distanced and wash my hands. I'll keep the oregano for pasta night, thank you.

Little Hamaca Interlude

Two years ago I didn't own a campervan. Two years ago I wasn't walking properly either. In the wake of my scooter wreck I was loaned a wheelchair friendly apartment in Key West to give me time to get on my feet. So it was that I would bring Rusty and my walker to Little Hamaca where I would totter after him, my grossly swollen feet in slippers as we shuffled around the park. He was I have to say a very patient dog as he slowed right down to accommodate my slow shuffle.

So nowadays to come back to Little Hamaca is to remember the winter of two years ago and to be glad all those hours of physical therapy, time in the gym and long walks to nowhere pushing that dammed walker have paid off.  I got to hate wearing wooly slippers instead of proper shoes and the heels of my hands grew thick calluses where I held on to the walker frame for dear life. The parting injunction from the hospital was to not fall over and i lived every waking moment concentrating on not wrecking my pelvis or the numerous nuts and bolts holding me together. It was a very interesting time.

I found the most annoying thing about being in the wheelchair was relying on my wife all the time to pull it out of the trunk and line it up with the door so I could lift myself into it. Even now every time I get in or out of a car I spare a thought for those days spent clinging to the roof, unable to rely on my legs to hold me up. I took lots of pictures of Little Hamaca in those days, my practice ground for learning to walk.

Aside from all the nostalgia stuff  Little Hamaca is a place to get away in the middle of Key West. 

You will see some dog walkers lots of bicycles, a few homeless people especially in winter and a few joggers. People wandering with cameras, like me, are few and far between. I met Mick sheltering from a shower and we exchanged a few words. I didn't mention it to him but I used the same walker as part of my recovery when I was able to walk a little better. I seem to keep coming full circle in Little Hamaca!

The old Hawk Missile Battery towers left behind after the Cuban crisis ended in 1962  make for for something different to photograph and I take advantage:

The mangroves and the salt ponds are of course everywhere, even here in the city, next to the airport.

Rusty likes it after all these years:

I find the mobile home an ideal spot to hang out and be by myself. With Rusty of course.

A new start in an old place. 

Glorious Day Off

Finally he got a sunny day on his day off. He urged the dog in his camper van with no effort at all and off they went to see the world on a lovely Tuesday morning.

That was me with Rusty yesterday in case you were puzzled. We parked twenty minutes from my house and soon we were walking together, more or less, around the Old Bahia Honda Bridge. Which as you can see is not doing at all well.

A kestrel was balanced on the remains of the old water pump house which was demolished by Hurricane Irma three years ago. It swiveled its head like a robot while I tried to capture it's rather disdainful stare.

Out to sea I spotted the low profile of the commercial fishing boat and a sailboat that perplexed me utterly. It was traveling downwind toward Key West bobbing around with its sails firmly furled. I know Webb Chiles, the inveterate sailor would have something grumpy to say about such lubberly behavior. I have to admit I was thinking negative thoughts about motoring downwind in a perfectly capable sailboat. 

No such issues with my camper van. I never feel guilty when I turn on the engine of the Promaster. Recharge the batteries, run air conditioning and get where you're going at an easy 60 mph.  I am enjoying travel by van and next week we are off to Pensacola to visit our socially distanced friend in that cool crisp climate on the Florida Panhandle. We are going to take a few days to make the 800 mile trip from Key West and I am looking forward to the break.

Looking pretty good for November and even though it is still humid the wind was blowing and it felt lovely to be out and away from my 911 desk.

Rusty and I were not alone.

After our walk I settled down with my computer in the back of the van and  while I wrote he kept an eye on things outside, his favorite place. 

Our compact and functional kitchen, electrical induction burners, a Berkey water filter, a sink with 35 gallons of fresh water and a storage tank for the used water and a splendid view.

A good morning's relaxation. 

Dream Walk

If you ignore the no see'ums and mosquitoes who discovered I had forgotten to apply repellent it was a lovely still evening.

The sun was setting as it was just before six in the evening and I managed to catch the last rays of orange light.

By my standards these aren't exceptional pictures but they have a dreamy quality to them that I like.

This was a large rainwater and high tide puddle reflecting the last of the light on a  cloud:

I really didn't feel like getting my shoes and socks wet so I persuaded Rusty to turn around and we walked the road instead, less scenic and more boring for both of us. 

I caught this shadowy image f the tyke rushing back to me when I called through the gathering gloom.

The last of the sun.

It was as pleasant as it looked, silent, no one around and dark.
 

Swimming Pompano Beach

The portents were not good on Thursday morning. Skies were grey and blustrous and there was no internet or cellphone service in the Lower Keys. I am a Modern Man, like it or not and I was disconcerted by the uselessness of my telephone, but nothing daunted I threw the dog in the van and set off on Highway One northbound with nothing but a paper map, a happy dog and my native good sense. I should say that even though I keep a road atlas above the driver's seat of the Promaster i can navigate much of South Florida with nothing more than my eyes. I was aiming for exit 69 on the Turnpike, traveling east two blocks and turning right toward Window Tint USA. Pretty simple three hour drive really. Portents be damned.

Cell service returned by Lower Matecumbe and was at full strength in Islamorada where apparently a waste truck had clipped some critical lines of communication throwing all the Keys south of Mile Marker 80 into communications blackout. It happens and more often than not thanks to human deficiencies not the weather. I arrive three and a half hours after leaving home so I had an hour in hand and we went for a walk. Whereupon Rusty took a seat in a retention pond full of rainwater, a pale imitation of his accident later in the day. I had noticed a nearby oil change shop with a  high roof (the Promaster is almost ten feet tall) and we drove over there, wet dog and I. I had to wait 15 minutes for an oi waste truck to empty their tanks, so once again a  waste disposal truck crossed my path...which in this case was good as I sat in the back at the table and ate my sandwich and soda like a civilized human being traveling in his mobile home. Rusty kept watch:

Window Tint USA does window tinting but that was not my goal. I had planned to come up Monday but Hurricane Eta got in the way so Thursday afternoon was the back up plan. I was going to pay them $400 to cover the vast great windshield of the van in something called Clearplex, which the shop owner told me he usually puts on the windshields of exotic sports cars. Apparently 200 mile per hour can do bad things to vehicle glass when it meets a pebble. My idea was to put the plastic film on the Promaster to protect the windshield on any gravel roads we might travel. It has the added benefit of being waxed to help rain run off and it keeps UV rays off the occupants. My cup runneth over! 

However the film application takes about four hours so rusty and I were carless and homeless and footloose on a  rainy afternoon. Very kindly they offered us the use of a car but I was loath to put dog hairs in it for no useful purpose so we set off on foot as the van was swallowed by the workshop. It was not actually rainy to start with as you can see below, but it got that way. I took the camera and the umbrella with me as a precaution. Just as well I did too.

I found a canal running along the rear of the business park, separating our paved parking lot from another ... paved over parking lot! Rusty scampered ahead and I followed. I had managed to twist my ankle last week stepping off the road in the dark (out with Rusty again!! His fault) and I was limping a bit so I was glad to be off leash and able to pick my way.

In the least promising of places I look for things and try to see things.

I have no idea who or why someone put a decoy in the canal but there it bobs apparently interested in a  leaf the same color as its backside. 

Not a charming vista but I thought in black and white it had a certain austere 20th century industrial look. I have noticed that in old photos that show up on my Instagram trash was everywhere in the years of my childhood. It takes looking back to understand how far we have come. Except here:

Off to the side I could make the scene more pastoral. We are wedged between the Turnpike and I-95 here, just off Sample Road. It doesn't get more urban in South Florida.

While I was admiring my skill at masking reality with the camera Rusty got too bold and toppled off a low cement seawall at the end of the canal. With a loud plop! in he went. As you can see my non swimming dog got the basics sorted out in a hurry. He was so panicked he ignored my instructions to swim for the closest patch of grass.

Instead he found an underwater ledge and before I could step forward and help him by grabbing his leash he had scrambled up the vertical surface unassisted. I don't suppose I should have laughed as loud and as hard as I did  but his dignity was offended and he scampered away from the canal before it snagged him again.  I had nothing to wash or dry him so I must suppose the water was cleaner than it may have at first looked. Environmental regulations worked in his favor!

We found a quiet spot where I could sit on cement and read my Kindle (Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, a scatological but overdue read for me) and he could catch his breath and dry off.

That was when the rain started and it did not stop. It came down in buckets which was as close as Rusty got to a rinse and he was pretty well cleaned off by the rain. We huddled in a doorway of a disused office sharing the umbrella to keep stray drops off us and we waited. Stray dog memories doubtless came back to him as we waited for the van to be finished at the appointed hour. I don't like to bring my dog into people's businesses especially when they know I have a dog and they aren't welcoming. This guy was not a dog lover but he was okay with Rusty in his office while I paid the bill. I just figured a luxury car tinting place may not be suitable for a wet stray and his equally wet dog. I probably should have  overridden my scruples and taken an armchair but we did fine sitting on the neighboring doormat and reading and snoozing for an hour.

From there, as dusk fell we went up the street to Costco where I bought a bunch of cold stuff that I shoved in the refrigerator of the van which my wife had turned on the day before. I had my second sandwich in the parking lot while Rusty rolled in the grass then we left Costco and drove home,  Three hours through more heavy rain and Rusty was hopping up the stairs to make sure his favorite bed was where he left it. I tramped up behind hauling bags of Costco Stuff.

Many people who live in the Keys hate road trips and driving and highways, but I am as usual in the minority and I don't mind making a drive up to Miami to get something done.  Really you just have to get used to it if you are going to live in an isolated place and complaining doesn't do you much good. Luckily I work twelve hour shifts so I get weekdays off at random and I can thus use days off to fit in my private errands. Speaking of which next February I am planning to go overnight to Jacksonville to have a front winch installed on the van. That one should take an overnight to accomplish but after that I will be able to pull the van out of soft sand all by itself when we go exploring deserted South American beaches. Meanwhile back to work, less dreaming, this stuff has to be paid for.