Decrepitude

Walking around Duval Street Saturday morning was a moment of time travel for me, a return to 2019 before the wretched virus took over our lives, a time when people came to the city to drink and enjoy a form of vacation that never much appealed to me, but pays my wages. I got to Duval with Rusty before the morning clean up was complete so you too can see the detritus of an active down town. In a time of pandemic that is hopefully over, I view the sea of plastic cups as a sign of a return to normal.

On the other hand the chickens taking over the center of Duval Street reminds me of the same time last year when there were no visitors, when everything was locked down, and chickens and dead leaves occupied the streets, It was eerie and gloomy even though we knew we were living through a moment in history that would end soon, it lasted longer than any of us I think, expected. I took pleasure in walking mask free, legally, without my glasses fogging up. At this point in Florida vaccinations are going begging so if you aren't vaccinated its not owing to any failure in supply.

Sloppy Joe's was closed owing to the early hour but that is how the building has looked for the past year.  The progress of the virus is now being measured in the developing world, where lock downs and death are the order of the day. Borders remain closed and the poorest of the poor are deprived of the fundamentals of daily living. It boggles my mind how disordered the world is, where supply cannot meet demand and where distribution of available supplies, food, medicine and sanitation defies the widespread availability of life support systems. We have abundance and they have scarcity.  

Cruise ships are nowhere to be seen yet and I think tat's probably a good thing. Far too many stores are closed and downtown has a scrawny abandoned  look that doesn't seem appealing to the kinds of visitors who seek jollity and cleanliness and order. I have debated in the past my preference for clean paint and uncluttered sidewalks with friends who say the rundown appearance of Key West adds to its charm. Sometimes I think they are correct as I am not by nature in pursuit of cleanliness and order, but when people are invited to my home I give the place a brush up and a vacuum to make it presentable.

Key West is far from presentable at the moment. Check the following pictures and see all the weeds and the dirty paint and general sloppiness. I'm not talking about the bottles and plastic cups scattered as they are cleaned daily by city workers before tourists wake up. But when I see weeds positively flourishing I ask myself if this town is ready for tourist prime time?

Scuffed paint, torn signs flapping and high prices seem an odd mixture of ways to entice tourists. The Mayor has spoken of encouraging wealthy tourists interested in Key West history and art and culture but were I that sort of visitor I'd stick to Naples and Palm Beach.

The Red Barn, one of my favorite haunts is closed till further notice as it has to be. Where as I have no interest in the return of cruise ship stores for myself, the possibility of live theater being curtailed would make Key West a lesser community in my opinion. 

The clock tower on Old City Hall was her target and I understand that. I've littered this page with pictures of it, including the slice torn out by Hurricane Irma, promptly repaired by the city. I look at the street and wonder what does go here in the evening while I am sntg at home with my wife and dog 25 miles away?

Urban forestry flourishing.  Weeds everywhere...

It is my internal contradiction, I'd like to see it clean and tidy, even as I acknowledge that the sort of tourist sought by the mayor doesn't sound terribly appealing to me the fact is that in the long run Key West needs to sort out a plan and a vision and attract weed loving tourists who enjoy a run down pirate town or people of wealth who want and expect clean efficient service delivered on time. And are ready to pay for it. It is a bit of a conundrum.

1981

I was a teenager and visiting a friend in Rome when she lent me a copy of National geographic magazine, a publication filled with glossy photographs and uncomplicated prose extolling the beauty of the world around us. You could only get a subscription by recommendation of another member of the National Geographic Society and she nominated me for membership. The idea grew in my head to visit the US as I started to receive and devour my own magazines.

I knew of an English language arts movie house in Rome and I happened upon a showing of Easy Rider, a movie that fueled my ambitions. I was going to ride a Harley across the US, though I was planning to fund the ride from my savings not by dealing cocaine. I also shelved plans to be murdered on my trip in imitation of the movie...I ended up making the trip, not on a  Harley Davidson which had a terrible reputation for reliability in 1980, but on a  modest Vespa which by chance was promoted as the ideal long distance ride by an Italian journalist who made his name riding a  Vespa to Tokyo in 1964. 

I rode south from New York city where I landed the day they shot the pope in Rome, the city I had just left. I arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed and negotiated my multiple entry visa  terms with an older cheerful Immigration officer. "How long do you want?" he asked "How long will you give?" I parried. "I asked first," he said smiling. "A year?" I was tentative and he gave me six months. Plenty of time for what I had to do, which was ride to San Francisco from New York via Mexico which was on my list of interesting countries to visit.

It was, as I recall one of the wetter Springs on record, endless days of rain that washed out the Shenandoah Valley but the sun came out in the south and I was soon riding in decent weather confounded by the differences so marked in the New World. Turning right on the red felt very alien to me, as much as it annoys me now when I drive in Europe and I am hamstrung at red traffic lights.

National Geographic showed a ferry running from Key West to Cancun and my plan in those pre-Internet days was to not skip New Orleans and then back track from the Crescent City around the Gulf Coast to Key West, board the ferry and ride up through Mexico back to the US. My first night in the Keys was at Long Key State Park sitting at a picnic table writing up my travel notes when a blonde sidled up and started asking about my spending habits.

We laugh about that encounter today but Denise was always curious about foreigners and travelers and me and a Vespa  were bound to be roped in as she made summer money doing a  tourist survey for her college course. She invited me back to her home in Delray beach after I was done with the Keys.  It was not enough to put me off the ferry but of course I agreed (in principle).

I rode to Mallory Square and asked about the ferry to Mexico. My question was greeted with guffaws and seeing my long face a beer in a brown paper bag was pressed into my hand. As usual no one was ready to believe I had ridden a Vespa from New York, but there I was and there was Key West. 

It was a nice enough town but it was a long way from anywhere and after years spent living in an idyllic isolated mountain village in Italy I was ready for the bright lights of a more cosmopolitan America. Key West in 1981 really was isolated. The road took five hours as I recall to ride to Homestead on narrow bridges and a highway that was nothing like the modern high speed road. It was picturesque but the outside world was far away.

I went back to mainland Florida for more road adventures. I found them too, weaving a path through Texas and down to Guadalajara and back to the Grand Canyon before touring California within my allotted six months. The n I flew to Japan, took a boat to the USSR and from there took a series of trains to West Berlin. The woman I met in California was waiting in Florence which made the homecoming much less of a let down. 

It was Valentine's Day in 2000 when we landed back in Key West, the latest arrival in a  series of visits we had made since we got married six years before. This time we were toying with the idea of settling down as we had found the tropical heat of our journey much to our liking. Layne's arthritis had been much less painful in the heat compared to the cold damp climate of the California Coast.

We arrived from a  long slow wet trip from Mexico and anchored at dusk west of Wisteria Island. I took the dogs ashore for a run on dry land which they appreciated which was how we came across a campfire burning on the beach. The guy tending the fire  asked if we had just arrived and I allowed as how we had. He had no curiosity and I offered no details but he handed me a beer to celebrate my arrival, the planting of my anchor, as though he knew the pleasure of rest after a  spell at sea. It was silent and companionable and I felt good.

A few weeks later a friend of mine confided in me that he was surprised we settled in so quickly. Usually, he said people arrive and talk about getting jobs but you settled down right away. We make a plan only when we intend to follow through and we did. 

I had never and did not plan to ever sit still for a couple of decades but Key West sucked me in. Most people come for vacation and we came to earn pensions, and Layne was quite clear about that.

My life in Key West has been rich with experiences and friendships and learning curves some far too steep for my liking. I learned to love and respect statistics here, and I went back to school to learn. I've never had a drink at Sloppy Joe's or Ricks's and don't plan to, though Captain Tony's I have enjoyed a couple of times. My Key West is a humble thing but it is mine own, mangroves, watery landscapes, mosquitoes and the perils of back country walks getting lost and enjoying it. 

It has not been a conventional vacation in Paradise but it has been great fun. This time next year I hope we shall be in Montana, passing through.

A Windy Day

Fun on a windy day at White Street Pier. 

Disturbance 1

Thursday's bulletin from the National Hurricane Center caught me slightly by surprise:

A non-tropical low pressure system is located about 800 miles east 
of Bermuda.  The low is expected to develop gale-force winds later 
today while it moves generally northward. The low is then forecast 
to move westward and southwestward over warmer waters tonight and 
Friday, and it will likely become a subtropical cyclone near and to 
the northeast of Bermuda on Friday. The system is expected to move 
toward the north and northeast into a more hostile environment by 
late Sunday into Monday. For more information on this developing low 
pressure area, please see High Seas forecasts issued by the NOAA 
Ocean Prediction Center and forecast products issued by the Bermuda 
Weather Service.
* Formation chance through 48 hours...high...70 percent.
* Formation chance through 5 days...high...90 percent.

Every it seems as though May a disturbance disturbs the North Atlantic and every year the feeling is one of wholesale rejection. This is normal, one storm does not a season predict and so forth. And yet the little voice wonders if Bermuda deserves to get clipped by a cyclone this early in the year. Now Bermuda and tomorrow...?

I was discussing my feelings this hurricane season with my wife and I told her that this is the first year I face summer storms with some trepidation. I overthink most things and in this case I suspect I am so close to ending my static relationship with hurricanes that I am gaining an unreasonable fear of getting whacked one last time.

In our first world of building codes and relative wealth hurricanes aren't perilous to life inasmuch as we get plenty of warning and buildings don't collapse on a whim. The 140 mile an hour winds of Hurricane Irma in 2017 caused plenty of damage everywhere but in the end 72 Floridians died and lots of them by neglect, the elderly condemned by power outages and no help.  That many are missing presumed dead in one shipwreck in India following a cyclone there this week.

Hurricanes cause disruptions, they ruin structures and economies, in vacation land evacuations are a nuisance. Survivors live in great discomfort if the hurricane spawned lots of tornadoes that tore everything up. Five days without water and weeks without electricity wore us down after Hurricane Irma. Meals Ready To Eat kept us going but it was a matter of surviving and plugging along.

Repairs take forever as there just aren't enough people and machines to put everything straight instantly. It's hard to sleep and tiring to think and boring to be stuck picking up trash all the time. It isn't deadly but it is dreary.

I have always accepted Hurricane Season as the price one pays, and our plans were simple. Schools close Layne and Rusty drive north, no hesitation, and they got out of the Irma traffic jam throughout Florida by arriving in Pensacola before the evacuations were even ordered. I sat alone at home cocooned by hurricane shutters pottering around putting the last few things away and hoping for the best. The house survived intact, but the trash piles and the rats and the smells impacted our neighborhoods for weeks.

Answering 911 calls and telling people in Monroe County there were no responders was harrowing, because when the storm arrived there was no help to be had, which is the reason for the evacuation orders. If you stay you are on your own and that is a horrid reality to face in a society where help is always to hand. You don't forget those moments.

I had hoped to sit this season out but staffing shortages make that unlikely. I want to store the van undercover somewhere on the mainland as the destruction of all our plans would break my heart. My wife is going to California in September and Rusty will spend any lockdown with people he knows and trusts as I can't keep him at the police station. 

These tedious calculations are the reality of life in the near tropics, and then when the National Hurricane Center wakes us up again the casual planning is made real. And Hurricane Season is supposed to run from June 1st to November 30th. As they are weather phenomena there are always outliers. 

Last year Webb Chiles who was planning a voyage noticed, because he watches weather closely, that hurricanes had developed a nasty new trick in these heated times, of becoming massively more powerful in very short order indeed. Today's Category One becomes tomorrow's Category Four with no warning.  That's a nice new wrinkle I shall have to keep my eye on. And with Disturbance One on the tracking map we shall have to start keeping an eye on the forecasts from now till December.