Bahama to Rose

An early morning walk looking for things to look at, places often visited and not always seen. A reflection in a window of the Key West Theater:

                       

Rusty looks down where I look up. Sometimes he finds street food.

Then someone puts out a bowl of water for dogs passing by and there he is, hours later at five in the morning. 

The story of Dave and Wendy, advertising I remember from my youth syill present in my mind. Pernicious salesmen!

Behind Wendy's the modern fast food place you can look across the parking lot at Old Key West:

Two bicycles for the price of one:

There has been an explosion of stores selling medical marijuana on Duval Street or some facsimile of it. I know not much at all about all of it except that these stores are everywhere rivaling t-shirt shops in their number. Just what a local wants to go shopping for on Duval.

Rusty on Rose Lane mooching about, walking away from the few drunks and the few cleaners on Duval.

                                    

The courthouse on Simonton Street, home of social security, federal judges, and all the apparatus of federal law.  Yes, Virginia, Key West is not abroad.

Clouds

So much pseudo hurricane drama needs a response. The Keys are as lovely as ever.

Summer is my time for cloud watching, moisture in the air produce spectacular shows in the air.

Sunsets over the mangroves, distant traffic on Highway One is ever-present but muted. More like the sound of water over pebbles or sand sliding down a dune.

Winter is the time for birds migrating so summer is the time of year for the holdouts, the year round residents, the ibis and the blackbirds and some heron and no one around to bother them.

Some days the skies are gray and overcast and give off a terrible flat light. Some days there is a fireball in the sky, exploding overhead.

I like the dramatic days of Florida mountains lit up by the setting sun

I think of mountain climbers on snowy slopes far above the sea.

Spiky buttonwoods framing the puffy white mass in the distance:

Trompe l'oeil, a cloud underfoot hiding among the red mangrove roots:

My escape from long days of working and dreaming of open roads and new horizons when I fear I shall miss these just a bit. Quite a bit.

Floods And Alarums

The unfortunate part about being swept by a tropical storm is that after it has passed you by some other underserving resident is in line to get swamped. That is the case with Tropical Storm Elsa now strengthening they say and moving on to the west coast of Florida where people are preparing according to people who know these things. In Key West you learn to cope with inconvenience:

Key West got its share of flooding, the usual streets where floods occur, no less annoying for being habitually flooded during "weather events." In the photo below, taken at Indigenous Park near the waterfront the electrical box on the left side of the picture is raised for the very reason illustrated by the flood waters of Tropical Storm Elsa's downpours.

It was windy in gusts but after the rain moved on people were out doing the usual after being cooped up indoors.

It's not often you get to surf in Key West as the reef tamps down the largest ocean waves. Some days the wind just pushes enough water to create an unusual scene off Higgs Beach:

The entrance to the pier was under water so I stayed on the drier land as i had several hours more work to do and doing it in wet shoes and socks did not appeal. However it was obvious, even from the yoga platform that the White Street Pier was getting pounded.

Smarter folks than I brought boots designed to wade floods:

Streets were closed but that didn't stop people from liberally spraying the underside of their cars with corrosive salt water:

I walked a couple of blocks back to my car and drove back to work to take more calls from people wondering if the Keys were evacuated- No- or of the highway was open -Yes- but when I saw video from the weather people I understood why the rest of the world thinks its worse than it was. Shock! Horror! Weather Drama!

Meanwhile the mails were getting through as normal, and the letter carrier when I stopped by to congratulate him on his perseverance smiled because we both knew people who think they have survived a tropical weather event have just been through some heavy rain and wind. Letters aren't delivered during true hurricanes, and life doesn't just go back to normal after the storm blows over.

I did not feel this lighthearted after Hurricane Irma hit the Keys in 2017. My first few pictures after Internet was somewhat restored: Irma and Higgs Beach.

In 2005 before smart phones or widespread digital cameras Hurricane Wilma flooded Key West horribly and in 2017 Hurricane Wilma blew 140 mph winds into the islands. Not much fun as I wrote then:

Irma exhaustion.

Higgs Park turned into a wading pool. There was a dog running around in the dog park too just as a reminder that outside the world of television, life is pretty normal here:

You'd think chickens would get wiped out but it is just a  passing misery for them. They all popped out quite happily after Hurricane Irma blew through town. They are survivors: 

All those preparations sometimes miss some detail. The hurricane drama spared this abandoned trash can which sat stoically through the devastation of a rain storm:

Businesses on Front Street were ready with sandbags because Front Street floods all the time when high tides and heavy rain coincide.

Not a post apocalyptic scene, just daily living in Key West. Just another golf cart leading a slow speed guided tour down a street:

Surviving The Rain

Urgent Weather Update: It Rained As Predicted.

I'd much rather have walked Rusty than come in to work, but I dutifully left home early, before five and found an empty open highway, not a power line out of place, not a leaf in the roadway. I knew the power was good because the electric clock wasn't flashing in the living room, so despite text warnings from Keys Energy everything worked as it should. In these islands used to tropical weather that was no surprise.

I had time to spare so I drove down to the Bight and stepped out under an umbrella with my waterproof pocket camera. It was windy and the rain was slashing, trying to get under my umbrella as I walked out on the docks.

It did not look to me like the old hands in the harbor had taken the time to prepare for the storm as everything looked as it usually does, just a bit wetter. I dare say this afternoon one could even go for a fish as gentle southeast breezes are expected to return, under sunny skies. 

If you hang around people debating the value of surviving a catastrophe you'll find some that really like the warnings you get before a storm and others who prefer to be surprised as by an earthquake. I've lived through both and am decidedly in favor of the hurricane survival mode. Lots of warnings, and in our well built world (mostly) it's hard for anyone to die of hurricane related weather.

In the past hurricane warnings tended to get overblown but this year the city and county managed to be alert and keep control and not force evacuations where none were needed. It was windy and I struggled to control camera and umbrella at once but it wasn't   enough wind to knock over but one tree on Simonton Street, which is cleaned up already. I blame the umbrella for some fuzzy pictures here:

I wandered around for a few minutes surprised to see dinghies still in the water but there they were in the water getting rained on.  

I talked to a friend of mine who went through Hurricane Irma as well and when I remarked how much better this is he said he was getting PTSD from the category four that caused extensive damage in the Keys. 

Rain wind and unpleasantness leads me to ponder the people who don't keep their dogs indoors, people who don't have waterproof homes and people who do but don't believe in climate change. Maybe I overthink stuff but I was never as relieved as when we moved from home ownership to becoming renters. To leave the  Keys we give notice, lock the door and drive away.  If I never have to speak to a real estate agent again it will be too soon.

To some extent anyone who lived through Hurricane Irma has to have some PTSD after that breakdown of society. It's a humbling experience not to have running water  never mind no electricity Internet or fuel. For days. 

I have heard the suggestion, from a friend who needs to remain nameless for exhibiting excessive commonsense, that we not name storms until they are hurricanes and possibly Category Two storms. We live in a world of hype, fear and gullibility so I suppose any attempts to suggest to people they learn to manage with the information they can gather themselves is open to the charge of snobbery or some such. 

It was a rainy day in Key West and happily I could not keep the umbrella still to save my life. So I accidentally made rainbows. I think that after the rain blows over, the stray dogs will I trust, dry out, and one former stray dog at least will get off the couch, stretch and go outside to great the proper arrival of summer. It's called hurricane season but there will now be a pause while we enjoy some swimming and blue skies and boring uninterrupted tropical living. Until next time when we will re-evaluate.

Tropical Storm Elsa

I am not one to underrate the power of a tropical weather system as I have seen enough of them blow over to know how bad they can be. But Tropical Storm Elsa has done not much to impress me.

After a fast gallop across the Atlantic the storm slowed down, passed over land masses in the Caribbean and after one moment as an actual hurricane, the tropical storm has stayed well under 74 mph. 

I must say I have been impressed by our community leadership facing off against this potential buzz kill. After a year of pandemic tourism starvation no one wanted to see Fourth of July wrecked by some rain so the response to the threat was muted. An advised evacuation of mobile homes they said, suggesting residents stay with people in more solid homes. 

Years ago the threat of a storm led to shut downs, evacuations and a loss of business. Then the storm blew through and nothing much happened. That got old. 

We've had some crappy storms. Wilma in 2005 followed Katrina which sideswiped the keys and destroyed New Orleans so when we had flooding later that year we were all bit freaked out. There was money in those days before 2008 and car dealers set up tents on Stock island to help replace the ten thousand cars drowned by Wilma. Trash was everywhere but it was nothing compared to Irma in 2017. That was a hurricane for the ages and that I don't want to live through again.

Tropical Storm Elsa is scheduled to arrive overnight between Monday, yesterday and today Tuesday. 50 mph winds over Cuba may strengthen a bit but the National Hurricane Center in Miami says the eye of the storm will slide westward and pass over the Marquesas Keys 15 miles west of Key West.

Tourists have been leaving for sure, RVs and boats on trailers have headed for the mainland but this isn't an evacuation situation. I worked overtime this weekend and we got a few calls from people wondering if the Keys were evacuated. Really? Gas stations have been busy but a tropical storm of these proportions didn't stop fireworks on the fourth (and Rusty was none too happy about that).

And yet we see people parking their cars on the approaches to the bridges on the Overseas Highway. This is a tactic deployed to get cars above potential flooding when conditions merit. Even if we get the full six inches of rain predicted this doesn't seem necessary to me. Whatever they want, hurricane preparation is more to make people feel better than to actually out-think a force of nature.

I looked south on my way home from my last dog walk with Rusty (we got soaked in a sudden shower which didn't stop us) the seas were flat as expected. Havana was getting the rain and we were getting a little wind. 

I had thought about spending the night at work so I drove in aboard Gannet 2 thinking I might hunker in the van and be at work for my six o'clock shift Tuesday morning. In the event the afternoon was so still and calm and utterly dull I would have felt like a total idiot setting up camp with a Lean Cuisine in the police station parking lot with my wife, my dog and a proper kitchen with pork chops and roast potatoes 25 miles away. I drove home.

I drove in to work this morning at five in the expected rain and wind and the Fiat 500 handled the conditions just fine. It was actually quite pleasant having the Overseas Highway to myself. Put some rain on the road and everyone starts to act like it's a snowdrift crawling along and peering through the windshield like modern tires can't handle rain . City offices are closed and most people get a post Fourth of July pause today. As usual the National Hurricane Center predictions came through, furthermore we never even had a power outage as Keys Energy has built a system designed to brush off mere tropical storms. They are now warning of floods on the mainland and I see pictures of people stuffing sandbags. Much fun no doubt.

I hope Tropical Storm Elsa is the worst we get between now and November.