Abandon All Dogs

Another drive up to Miami requires a stop in Florida City to get a seven dollar liquid lunch. Robert Is Here is five minutes off the entrance to the turnpike and worth a stop for tropical fruit and all their derivatives. Robert actually exists and works there. I find that slightly astonishing.

Florida City is an underrated metropolis, the last incorporated town before the Keys tends to get subsumed by Homestead. Every time you say "Homestead" you probably mean "Florida City" but don't worry about it: everyone does that. 

Robert Is Here was once an outpost of the many and vast agricultural fields of South Florida, and it was a place where you could buy fresh stuff surrounded by the fields that grew it, a true Farmer's market. Nowadays this is a destination and showing up on a weekday was an enjoyable change from the weekend crowds.

Layne shopped for lunch smoothies, passionfruit for her and strawberry for me. I enjoy tropical fruit but for some reason the old fashioned strawberry flavor works for me in this one place.

They call this area The Redlands because the soil is that color, and the fields are productive. The fruits and vegetables grown around here rival those of California and the palm forests are used to decorate the new suburbs springing up around Miami. Growth is coming to the fruit stand neighborhood:

Rusty was dumped around here in 2015 and survived hunting prey and avoiding becoming a victim of the famers who poison and shoot the dogs abandoned here. I have no idea if he associates this place with his experiences but he carries on as normal while we wait for milkshakes. This Is The Dog saved Rusty and I still give them money every month.

I don't know why I was surprised to see fields being converted into homes. Perhaps the surprise comes in the wake of the much discussed water problems of south Florida. The aquifer that supplies the Keys and the millions of mainland residents with fresh water  has been suffering salt water intrusion. As fresh water is sucked out it gets replaced by a  layer of seawater that comes in through the permeable rock that holds the aquifer. The more people living here the more salt water intrusion we get.

Slowly the orchards are giving way to indifference and are abandoned then torn up. Speaking as someone who ran away from a  life of agriculture I understand the impulse but one would like to think there is a cadre of people interested in growing food for the rest of us.

The 2020 census has issued preliminary numbers and the 75,000 permanent residents of the Keys from ten years ago have increased to 82,000 this year. That's a  ten percent increase which seems like quite a bit to me. I don't think they will miss me when I leave!

I got a jury summons which unhappily coincides with my colonoscopy planned for the third week of September. I guess the gods wanted me to have a crackerjack week. The doctor's office declined to send me a letter confirming my appointment on the grounds a colonoscopy isn't grounds for postponing a jury summons. The clerk of the jury was way more sympathetic and told me to send in the form and they would check it out (in a manner of speaking) anyway and probably give me a postponement.

I found the whole thing weird. I wasn't telling the doctor to order a postponement. I just wanted proof that I wasn't blowing smoke. I'm not much inclined to order a woman with a camera in her hand poised over my backside to do anything. On the other hand the clerk was really understanding in a small town kind of way that makes me feel somewhat reassured.  I never get picked for jury duty anyway as the defense attorney knocks me off with a peremptory challenge if I even get that far.  I just show up to make up the numbers. This will be my last one and I am sorry I will never have got to serve on a  jury. I don't despise civic duty.

Rusty was very patient as he had to share his bedroom with a pile of boxes on their way to an air conditioned retirement near the Miami airport. I wonder if in a few years we will even care about their contents, or if the old folks home will even let us use our own plates?  Still, Herself is reassured by the process of boxing up her memories so we are emptying our home into a storage locker...

Strawberry milkshake, light summer traffic and a new laptop computer for my wife to map out the forthcoming journey ("Dude! You've got a Dell!").  The Lord giveth Stuff, The Lord Taketh Away Stuff. Blessed Be The Name of the Lord. Blessed be the light summer traffic in Miami too while we are busy giving thanks.

Animals

My wife told me, a few years ago now in our 27 years of marriage, that her father hated to travel. The reason he gave was that he disliked seeing children living in poverty with no possibility of building a  future for themselves. I resemble my late father-in-law in several respects but on this one my sympathies lie with animals and dogs most specifically.

In this series of photographs I recorded a waterside death, a bird hunting for breakfast, darting into the water and flying away to kill and eat a fish. I suppose the whole incident occupied a minute or perhaps a little more and yet I spent a whole lot more time wondering about that fish. I cannot stand watching humans fish as it disturbs me to see them haul fish suddenly into the air, dump them in a bucket and allow them to flap and suffocate slowly to death. I was taught to knock the fish sharply on the head to kill it, a procedure that didn't endear me to the whole sport but that at least gave the fish a relatively quick death.

I know that on our travels the hardest thing for me will be seeing stray dogs, abandoned animals and yes I know there are plenty of badly treated animals in the US but the public indifference and shortage of neuter clinics in developing countries makes the situation if not worse at least more visible. My father-in-law Harold hated seeing impoverished children, a situation that hardly fills me with joy, but stray dogs keep me awake at night. I hold Rusty much closer, no doubt causing him increased puzzlement.

It has been brought home to me over the course of decades on this planet that human beings don't play well with each other, that kindness and generosity are tempered, even in myself, by fear of going short oneself. Were I to argue that the egret should not kill the fish I would in turn be condemning the bird to starvation which is no solution at all in the long run. 

Rusty has no generosity in him; he's got his and he isn't sharing with other dogs. He has no expectation of kindness, no rationalization about sharing. Rusty's harsh selfishness will save me from myself, he won't allow another dog in my life and the last thing I want to do is disappoint him

I saw a bunch of people fishing on the other side of the bridge and I avoided stepping in their excrement and their toilet paper even as I picked up after Rusty and dropped the plastic bag in a trash can. 

"I'm not an animal!" victims exclaim indignantly as they suffer some abuse or indifference at the hands of humans more powerful than them. I guide myself by asking myself if I would treat a dog like that because my gold standard is what would Rusty do?

Webb saw this picture and thought Rusty looked like he might be ready to snap at me. I took the picture by accident but I liked it. I saw love in his eyes. I dare say we are both wrong. 

Moose Pit Sandwiches

It is possible that the Moose Lodge may have arrived at the cutting edge of hip food trends, and how they managed that I'm not at all sure. The Moose Pit is at the back of the place, an actual hole in the wall that serves really delicious sandwiches.

It's simple enough, virus proof  outdoor tables, a  barbecue barrel and a counter at the door at the back of the lodge. This is the Moose Pit. They serve Maryland style barbecue, usually beef, called pit barbecue.

I am aware of the barbecue pride that drives people nuts between the Carolinas, tomato versus vinegar and mustard and all that versus Texas versus Kansas and on and on. I've tried them all and I like them all. I'm not just saying that to avoid getting flamed, I like variety so I was curious to come to terms with Baltimore pit beef.

Apparently roadside grills started appearing outside Baltimore in the 1970s and people learned to enjoy thinly sliced beef, crusty on the outside with horseradish on a  Kaiser roll. Their fame was spread by Key West's own Boog Powell who started his baseball career at Key West High and is properly famous for playing for the Baltimore Orioles. Apparently he owns several pit barbecue restaurants there and has made Maryland beef as popular as their more famous crabs. 

My friend Robert said this was a place to try and he was right. I had the giardiniera (above) with pickled vegetables and baked beans while Robert had the Philadelphia a recreation of a cheese steak more or less. They also have delicious Utz chips whgich my wife will be glad to know I turned my back on.

He calls himself Jersey and he makes a mean sandwich. He even had a pork special but we went traditional.  I think I need to get my wife a sample to go. It was good.

Keys Weekly gave them some ink shortly after they opened in March. Sandwich Master LINK.
 

Utila Honduras 1999

It has been a process of packing boxes, emptying shelves and not getting overwhelmed. We have been nomads most of our lives so we know what to expect but the work of preparing to leave a life of 20 stationary years takes effort. It takes effort not to stop and remember where we bought books or took photos before we stuff them in boxes and transport the boxes to our storage locker near the Miami airport. "I meant to take digital photos of these albums" I told Layne. "And I never got around to it." I lamented to my ever patient wife. Well the ever practical woman said briskly: "Do it now." So I have started.

The photo above shows the boat we sailed from San Francisco to Key West anchored in the Rio Dulce, Guatemala on New Year's Eve 1999. I am not a great fan of river boating in a sailboat but that river yields spectacular canyons, tropical lakes, historical monuments and subsistence indios living in huts on the river bank.  The stuff of Heart of Darkness so my literary imagination was boiling over.

We arrived in Guatemala after a pause of a few days in the Bay Islands of Honduras.  The oddly named Suck Suck Cay (check it out on Google maps) lies just off Utila the smallest of the Bay Islands and has one street of cement and a bunch of fishing families. Above you can see Debs and Emma, the well traveled California dogs meeting the locals. Below we see Layne on Utila's main street dodging the local traffic.

The Bay Islands are known to Europeans and Americans as a diving paradise and tourism is directed all that way. 22 years ago the Reef Cinema had just opened selling two dollar  (30 Lempira) tickets and it was great fun for an evening date. I checked online and it's still there for sale with a restaurant downstairs and an apartment upstairs all your for $350,000. 

I must have handed off the camera for a family portrait with Tom, another catamaran sailor on our path half in the picture probably taken for us by his girlfriend a Venezuelan wild woman, the oddly named Jihad. Tom was a San Diego businessman who retired early on a 50 foot catamaran which he single handed all over the Caribbean and chased fish with his mask and spear. He was totally self sufficient and driven, mechanically and electronically capable who taught us useful skills for sailing the Caribbean and its peculiar winds. He hated to run an engine and liked to sail smoothly and I learned a lot from listening to him. How he kept the wild Venezuelan half his age happy doesn't bear thinking about. We saw the new century in with him and Jihad, possibly the most memorable drunken celebration of our two year trip. If he is no longer alive I know he lived exactly as he wanted. 

How our dogs put up with the new places and the constant change I don't know but they thrived. Debs loved to harass monkeys in the trees who would oblongly throw us mangoes to shut him up. Emma the peaceable Labrador, a pure bred dog abandoned on a  Santa Cruz street was happy as long as she was in his shadow. I think coping with Rusty alone in the  van will be a piece of cake by comparison to the complexities of sailing with two big dogs.

Valentine's Day, 2000

In late January 2000 my wife, myself and two large dogs were living at anchor off the beach at Isla Mujeres in Mexico. We had sailed up the coast of Central America from the Panama Canal, exploring the buggy islands off Nicaragua's Caribbean coast and comparing them  unfavorably with the granite rocks that litter Panama's Pacific Coast where we had found ourselves six months before.

Our goal was to arrive in Key West before the money ran out completely, the money we had spent getting there from San Francisco. I think we left California with around $15,000 and a well found Gemini catamaran but our run up the Caribbean was a race against insolvency so we had to move more than we wanted to, as we didn't want to finish a two year cruise on bread and water. I drank a lot of tea off watch, which isn't free.

The sail from the Cancun area is three hundred and thirty miles to Key West and  is a complicated bit of water. It requires crossing the Gulf Stream, dealing with winter storms that blow the stream into piles of very uncomfortable waves, while not washing up into Cuba which was not a friendly destination that year. We watched the weather and pondered our chances.

They weren't great and things got a bit messy. We sailed accidentally in a  group with two other catamarans, most likely because each of us independently saw a decent weather window and we cleared out of Mexico at the same time. A 330 mile passage at an average 6 knots, hoping for a boost from the Gulf Stream would take more than two days. Finally we left of an evening and it was dark when we cleared the reef and settled down to a course as due east as we could against the wind.

I was ready to arrive in Key West and rest. Our plan was to stop for a couple of years, make some money and then tour the Caribbean before settling down for a bit longer. It was obvious the current cruise was over so I wanted to start work on the next one, never imagining I would be leaving Key West 21 years later...in a van no less. 

The storm blew up when we were still fifty miles southwest of the Dry Tortugas. Our loosely knit group split with Tom heaving to, stopping in place with his huge catamaran while us four on our smaller machines decided to run downwind and get out of the Gulf Stream slammers that were making life miserable. I wanted  to arrive in Key West but not like this. Perhaps we should have stopped in place like Tom but our decision to spin off downwind with Dennis on his Gemini sent us on a real adventure and it was all to the good.

The storm blew us into Cuba into a  vast bay filled with mangrove islands into which we ducked. We had no desire to go ashore officially as Cubans take a dim view of unexpected arrivals in towns not equipped to process strange boats. They might have kept us onboard in a harbor making life hard for the dogs and difficult for us trying to explain to Debs and Emma why they couldn't go for a walk on land. So we anchored among the mangroves and waited out the storm. Our boats were very shallow, drawing 18 inches and David taught me to enjoy sailing in two feet of water as we drifted like dinghies through the channel and reefs watching the thinnest of water slipping under our hulls. It was hair rising for cautious old me but I learned to love it as we picked our way through water that wouldn't cover our knees were we to walk in it. Of Cubans we met a few fishermen and bought all they had to sell: lobster tails. We feasted on lobster till we were sick of it.

Captain Ray and Rodolfo entertaining Arlyce, Dennis Layne and I

There was a lovely beach nearby and we sailed out to it and spent an afternoon in the sand, apparently far from civilization until a naked man came round the corner and startled our dogs, middle class creatures not used to men with dangling appendages walking into them. They barked, the French vacationer swore at us colorfully and with proper Gallic hauteur and we hastily got back aboard out of range of any Cuban authorities likely to be sent to investigate. A scrubby security guard duly appeared but we were sailing out into the bay and he was powerless to interrogate us. The nudist colony of Punta Jutia was secure once again and our dogs were tired from their exertions. We sailed for Key West.

The weather was perfect, and we sailed through the afternoon pointing north with the wind conveniently behind us and the current dragging us toward Florida.

Throughout our journey we had developed a technique for landing in foreign countries which went like this. On approach we would scout out a quiet bay with a beach out of sight of whatever community there might be ahead. There we would spend an evening prior to our official arrival walking the dogs and enjoying land for a while. In the morning the dogs would get a pleasant spell ashore and then with ourselves, the dogs and the boat washed and cleaned we would sail smartly to the customs post in the next town, arrive at lunch time and present ourselves for check in with sleepy exercised dogs on board.

My plan was to do the same in Key West. At first I thought of stopping at Sand Key, familiar to me as a large arc of sand under the old lighthouse seven miles from Key West. By the time we were sailing up the channel at dusk and Sand key Light came up close I realized my memory of a broad arc of sand was reduced to a handkerchief.  We pressed on, drifting in to Key West harbor after dark. I knew where I wanted to go and we anchored off Christmas Tree Island, more properly known as Wisteria, named for the ship whose remains lie to the west of the little island.

I dropped the dinghy into the water and the dogs ran swiftly down the steps into the rubber raft. I am a pansy so I had a small outboard to propel the clumsy Caribe through the water and we pushed up onto the pebbly beach. The dogs jumped out and wandered up the beach. I tied the dinghy off to a large piece of wood and walked toward a bonfire.

He nodded to me as I stood in the light of the flames. He looked up weighing me and the quality of my character as I watched the flames and listened to Debs and Emma scratching the pebble sin search of the exact right spot to pee. Wanna beer? he said. We manly men stood and watched the flames together. 

Across the water I could see the cabin window illuminated as Layne sorted dinner out for the dogs and for us. The sky was a deep dark blue and anchor lights were appearing around the anchorage. Where you from? he asked with another grunt. Mexico I replied unwilling to list my illegal foray to Cuba. Nice trip he said. Welcome to Key West. I drank some beer and then the struggles of wind and wave and storm and the uncertainty of smuggling myself where I was not wanted, all of that nonsense fell away. The naked guy at Punta Jutia became a metaphor for vulnerability, not a threat. 

Thank you I said. The silence persisted. A wet snout nuzzled my empty hand. The peeing was done and it was time for dinner. We had arrived.

A Weekend Off

The plan was to take a few days off, no overtime and rest after a three week stretch of dispatching. The plan fell into disrepair almost as soon as we woke up Saturday morning. By the time I was driving the van over the Sunshine Skyway bridge into St Petersburg my mood was as gray as the sky...

 Friday might was decision time in my household. I got off work and was home by 6:30 pm and Tropical Storm Fred was lumbering around the north coast of Cuba producing modest 40mph winds and lots of rain. My wife and I decided it would be best to bundle ourselves on the road and get to the mainland before the storm as modest as it might be, swept the Keys. 

The next morning we tackled the storage locker problem and rented an upstairs unit near the Miami airport. The idea is when we fly back we can stop by the storage locker and pick up anything we might want to haul back to our van life elsewhere in the world. We rented an upstairs unit in an air conditioned building with the hope that our sentimental few possessions might be storm proof...If not we shall be even less burdened than we plan to be as we start our travels.

My wife was strangely lethargic and forced me to do the paperwork (horrors! Me in charge of paperwork?). After we had cleared the back of GANNET2 of our first pile of boxes I insisted we go home. It isn't like Layne to show anything less than a type double A personality. She overrode me and insisted in turn that we continue to St Petersburg and our friend's pool house on loan for the weekend. I got behind the wheel and drove Alligator Alley while wife and dog slept in the back.

The owner of the house is away so we stopped to get supplies at Publix, and when I say "we" I mean I did. In another display if uncharacteristic disinterest herself pulled up extra blankets while I walked Rusty and then stopped in Publix all by myself to get dinner. I was very restrained and bought Useful Things like salad and soup but steered well clear of banana pudding and ice cream and alcohol.

It was a rather odd evening watching my wife droop as a nasty rash appeared on her forehead straying onto her eyelid. I got a bit grumpy feeling certain we should have turned back after the storage locker drop off in Miami and now we were six or seven hours from home. After a disturbed night's sleep I was on Rusty duty as usual and we wandered the neighborhoiod known as The Coffeepot for an hour, Rusty with his nose and me with my camera while the invalid tried to sleep.

It's an interesting part of St Petersburg, near the water  and north of the central downtown, streets of upper class homes covered by large trees with varied architecture and neat gardens on all sides. 

I followed Rusty as he wandered ahead and we were alone on the streets at five of a Sunday morning. It took my mind off my wife's rash, at least a  little bit.

Faced with the prospect of living and traveling in the Promaster  camper van this medical problem was an interesting exercise in how we might cope when away from home.   Certainly it was hugely convenient to have a bed and toilet and kitchen right there for the patient and for myself when she was in medical facilities being checked out.  If necessary we could always rent an air BnB I suppose. In this case we found a clinic and waited two hours beofre Layne could be admitted.

The primary care doctor was pretty freaked out and wanted her to see an ophthalmologist at St Petersburg General. So back in the van where Rusty and I had waited in the rain we called the hospital where a very apologetic nurse said the wait to be seen was at least eight and a half hours. Covid has swamped us she said. My wife looked a bit taken aback. We can get home before that she said, So I started back down the freeway toward Alligator Alley. 

I had been to the Dali Museum that morning, pushed out of the pool house by my wife to see an exhibit of photographs by Lee Miller. 

At the time I couldn't figure out why my feverish wife was so forceful but on the drive back toward Miami she confessed she had wanted to come to St Petersburg so I could get to see the exhibit I had been looking forward to for a while.

She knew if she didn't push I would never have agreed to take on this crazy drive with her showing every sign of a fever.

We had been concerned she might have been starting down a Covid path herself with her compromised immune system but the doctor diagnosed a nasty dose of shingles, so there was that sort of not terrible news. It was painful though.

I took these pictures in a light drizzle outside the museum sitting under the trees and just catching my breath after the sensory overload inside the Dali.

There I was, lurking in the shadows, wondering where my weekend had gone.

On the road to Miami my sick wife had a brilliant idea, and we pulled over to check it out.

There is an eye hospital in Miami called the Bascom Palmer Institute attached to the University of Miami, the preeminent eye hospital in the country. I wonder she said fi they have an emergency clinic. 

Sure enough they have 24 hour emergency services for people with eye problems so I recalibrated Google maps on my phone and got GANNET 2 back into gear. It was an inspired decision. We arrived at about 11:30 at night and I unloaded Layne so she could shuffle off to get help. Part of the joy of this Covid nightmare is the impossibility of gaining access to any medical facility unless you are the patient. This added little wrinkle engenders the sort of helplessness and distance that makes the whole process so much harder. There's no doubt the no visitor rule is critically important but it sure does add a burden. I took Rusty for a walk and then we settled down in the parking lot to sleep until the patient called back. Thank God we had the van and the air conditioning and the toilet all to ourselves.

My walk took me past a hellish landscape of urban decay, homeless lunatics squatting on the sidewalks mumbling to themselves, blanket shrouded lumps snoring under the trees, piles of trash and discarded fast food containers all along the sidewalks. Miami at it's least finest. It was a relief to get home to the van and close the door on the outside world.

Layne woke me from a  deep sleep with a telephone call around 1:30 in the morning with the good news that her eye was not in danger but the facial pain would persist for a few more days. I got behind the wheel, she and Rusty went to bed and we zipped down an empty Overseas Highway to arrive home at 3:30 in the morning. Rusty got his neighborhood walk to check the latest smells, and that was the end of a very weird weekend away. The van's contribution was outstanding; the rest of it sucked. Van life, from the files: