Eaton Night

Walking the streets before dawn, walking the streets during the day the only difference is I take pictures in the dark and I do chores during the day! These photos from the days ago illustrate my thoughts about yesterday's. chore day in my retired state.

Rusty and I chauffeured Layne around town to deliver a piece of furniture, to deal with a couple of banking issues, to mail packages, all the daily dreariness. I used to be at work while all this went on, cool in the air-conditioning at my desk handling other people's routines for them. Now I walk Rusty while the offices reverberate to my routines. My wife's routines really as I am not much given to bureaucracy.

While we were away Maria cleaned the house which is always lovely but right now the interior has the spartan appearance of a traditional Japanese interior. Places to sit, tables to eat at and a bed surrounded by white walls. I always enjoy this stage of the move, the simplicity and ease of nothing much to take care of except the daily needs. 

I was walking Rusty past Mattress Firm in the heat of the day. My hair got cut faster than Layne did the grocery shopping and I had forgotten my medical card at home so the vaccine booster was going to be for another day. So I walked Rusty, who vacuumed from shade to shade as I walked and thought.

We have a little more than two weeks to go before departure day as planned. As we walked I was wondering what else should we be doing? Have we left any stones unturned? And the answer kept coming back no. I think we've sucked the Keys dry.

Yesterday was Friday and as I stood outside Baby's Coffee waiting for breakfast, and walking Rusty in the heat, I watched a long endless line of cars driving slowly toward Key West on the Overseas Highway. An endless line at ten in the morning. People coming to Key West in October. 

I got a call from a friend on the mainland on Thursday calling to congratulate me on retirement. We talked of this and that and somehow the conversation wandered around to the shortage of workers services and things. The lack of employees is nationwide, containers are in short supply, cars and their spare parts have gone AWOL in dealerships, and oddball grocery shortfalls strike at random. It was a good thing to remind me its not just in the Keys.

Reporters tell us its a side effect of the damned virus but to me on my good days I see it as a sign of resilience. We learn how to do without even if it is just a favorite name brand. I hope it doesn't last, I want. return to normal, but for now we hang on and make do.

Closing down our bank safe deposit box was a trial. The new employee had no idea what to do and feared making a mistake (another mistake she told the senior clerk). The senior clerk was doing the work of an assistant manager I guess and it felt like things were hanging by a thread as usual.  Mailing our parcels was the same trial at the packing store, one slow client sent the room into a long line and the single employee. had no one to help. We the customers waited in line with no expectations. It's the new normal. Thank goodness for Kindle on my phone!

Retiring and driving away is a new normal for us but all of us in our own ways are living in a new normal that has taken over all our worlds. Life is full of surprises.

Guatemalan Highlands January 2000

Layne and I have been debating whether we want to drive Central America after we visit Alaska or if we want to ship the golden van from Florida to Colombia in Central America. If you don't know why the road ends in Panama you might want to Google the Darién Gap. On the con side we have already sailed and driven much of the area, including this trip down memory lane from January 2000. The pro side of driving is because we remember Central America so fondly.

We parked our Gemini catamaran in a marina on the Rio Dulce and rented a compact car wherein we put Emma and Debs on the back seat and took off for places already fondly remembered by my wife who explored this part of the world in her twenties.

The interior of Guatemala is a world unto itself, a region of high granite mountains, volcanoes, pine forests and amazing lakes. The roads twenty years ago were very easy to drive, well paved and winding like Alpine roads in any mountain range you may have driven. The dogs loved the cool weather and as long as the sun was up we enjoyed the change as well.

Pardon my crappy camera but take my word these places were lovely. The British writer Aldous Huxley, author of a book for our times titled Brave New World, a dystopian novel, characterizes Lake Atitlan as too much of a good thing while the explorer Alexander von Humboldt called it the most beautiful lake in the world. 

Let us accept that this overblown praise sets the lake up to fail but it was beautiful. There were ferries to isolated communities across the lake but with two large dogs in tow the idea of an expedition was a bit overwhelming.  We were running out of money and already we had a place to stay in Panajachel so we remained on our side of the lake, which was plenty.

Driving through the mountains was tremendous fun, stopping to walk the dogs, do a little roadside shopping or to take in the views. So very different from the coastal areas we had admired from the deck of our boat.

We stopped in the market town oc Chichicastenango a place fondly remembered by my wife and the four of us explored the market and did some window shopping. 

The dogs were expert navigators by now and we kept an eye on each other as we took in the sights. The locals weren't in the least perturbed by the sight of these huge animals loose among them. As I have explained previously it was fatal to leash them as then they inspired terror- why else would you leash a dog if it weren't dangerous?

And indeed they accepted the attention with good grace.

Central American street food is always a draw,  roast corn with cheese and chili peppers, shaved ice, green mangoes with salt and lime juice, there was always something to snack on as we walked.

Bear in mind a lot of these people don't even speak Spanish as they live isolated lives in the mountains. In those days they were lucky to have electricity and cold running water in their villages. Never mind a Spanish speaking teacher to educate their children in the ways of the outside world. Quechua is a language from the era of the Inca and the Maya and the world smashed by the Spanish invaders.

Even then the locals hauled tons of stuff on their heads just like their ancestors. Workmen carried a bandana and could be hired to put a preposterously heavy load on their heads and walk slowly and steadily to wherever the load needed to be carried. They were quite amazing, especially as at those high elevations we youngsters had to pause to catch our breaths. 

Nights were absolutely awful. We shivered under inadequate blankets in hotels that were dog friendly and we piled the dogs on the bed with us in an effort to keep warm. 

You will hear a lot of nonsense spoken about travel in Latin America, about violence and robberies and so forth but we never worried. People were cheerful and kind and I don't suppose it hurt to have an 80 pound Labrador and a 60 pound Husky type dog in tow.

Here is a Quechua with a modest load walking his prize home- a pig.

Many years have passed since we drove here and progress comes to all parts of the world, with cell phones and Internet and improved communications by road and rail but the fundamentals stay the same. Get up, go to work, look after your family and avoid drama. Americans who fear these places have a tendency to forget the basics are carried out the world over.

This was January and you can see the views were lovely even poorly reproduced by a dying film camera. Just looking at these pictures makes me want to go back...We stopped in one mountain village at a small restaurant where we hoped the owner spoke Spanish and he did. We sat down with the dogs laying in the sun outside, always keeping an eye on us and our well being.

It soon became apparent to us that the chef/waiter/owner of this small establishment was queer as a coot, absolutely flaming. And remember this was 2020 when being gay was no public thing even in the US. He had talent that man and cooked us meat and rice and spiced the vegetables and served course after course, cheese and fruit and absolutely delicious all of it. We staggered from the table stuffed to the gills, one of the most memorable meals of our trip.  It was delightful, accompanied by his happy patter and cheery questions. I guess his village had accepted him because he made no attempt to play it straight and I wondered and still wonder how his life played out in that remote village along the highway. I like to think cooking fulfilled him as plainly he was happy making others happy.

We stopped by the Taj Mahal of tourist sites in Guatemala, the old capital city ravaged by time and earthquakes. La Antigua Guatemala was founded in the 16th century as third capital of the Spanish province in Central America and is today a UNESCO world heritage site. We found this old nunnery knocked down by a quake a few short months after they spent ten years building it - I kid you not - in 1700 and something. 

We did museums and restaurants and walked around.

Our dogs lived the life of first world dogs everywhere we went.  They loved the life of travel oddly enough and were entirely happy exploring the world with us. Hopefully Rusty will do the same.

Naturally we managed to fail to take a proper picture of the archway that shows up in every tourist guide of this most famous Guatemalan city, though I have to say my persistence with a camera photographing as we went surprises me even today. I was into street photography before it became a 21st century fad. Clever me!

Layne took a picture of me in front of the tomb of an important historical figure  of Guatemala and this Spanish speaking couple were doing the same thing. Actual local tourists. They didn't rob me so we chatted and went our separate ways. People are just living their lives everywhere you go. I just went with a massive Eeyore Labrador in tow...

This ancient public laundry reminded me of the public fountains I grew up around in rural Italy in the 1960s. It is quite surprising how colonization transports cultures all over the place.

The freedom of Central America was refreshing, a place of color and confusion where everything seemed allowed or possible. Need a ride? Jump in to a pick up turned taxi.

And soon enough we were back on the river among American and Canadian sailors in the familiar world of traveling by boat.

After we motored down the river, checked out of Livingston at the mouth of the Rio Dulce we sailed 16 miles across the bay to Belize and checked in to Punta Gorda. The Belize customs were dreary and detailed and required long lists of crap no one was interested in and most of which we had to guess. How many tins of jam did we carry? On and on we hand wrote reams of paper missing the simplicity of the breezy in-and-out of the Latin American countries surrounding the former British Honduras whose flag we flew from the right hand side of our mast. We were in English speaking Central America now.

Our goal was Key West and we wanted to get there before the money ran out  while at the same time seeing what there was to see on the way. Punta Gorda from the approaches:

Rusty's Life

The changes are moving into the van this week, a few desultory furniture sales, overstuffed garbage cans, such that we gave the pick up driver a $40 tip to ease his twice weekly pain. He seemed grateful. This week we are organizing our paperwork and restowing our voyaging preparations as the stuff in the van shakes down. There it sits awaiting our 3 am departure in about three weeks. Three am to avoid traffic naturally!

I took Rusty downtown early yesterday morning as part of Layne's plan to have me do some light shopping when Publix opened. It was a good plan but I have been forced to the opinion that Rusty is growing as bored with his limited walks as I am. I've photographed these spots for more than a decade and he's walked them weekly since 2016 so between us we have seen sniffed and photographed every nook and cranny I think.

We walked in circles, Rusty leading this way and that and back again, and after the third such circuit we moved the car to his favorite spot at Eaton and Duval and he did the same thing again. After my third pass of Wendy's breakfast "baconator" and one more saunter in front of a peculiar silvery bikini stuck on a lily white mannequin and I made the executive decision and we headed to New Town against the ever increasing commuter traffic into town.

I met a family when we were selling stuff and they had just moved into the Keys from Up North. I recommended the museums downtown as places to visit. I like the Audubon House and Mel Fisher, possibly at an hour or three later than 6 am, but Rusty has his early morning needs. Actually any of them are worth a visit and if you can get yourself past the Hemingway House and the Butterfly Conservatory you get a round of applause from me. Which is worth what it cost you.

So we drove out to New Town, which is to say I drove while his Highness sat in the back with his nose out of the window causing cute attacks across town among the few others awake enough to notice him. 

I have discovered Rusty enjoys the industrial underbelly of Key West, the loading docks for the stores in Key Plaza and Overseas Market. After 17 years dispatching I still have a lingering tendency to use police abbreviations, KP and OSM, for these delightful spots. In case you were interested the city has no proper geo-location for this area and we had to enter it as OSM, (Over Seas Market) and then in the notes we would add "in the rear" or "next to the loading docks" to identify this strip of unkempt cement.

The "Sembrador" truck was apparently delivering frozen vegetable mixes. The title means "The Sower" as one who sows seeds and the translation from Spanish tickled me just a bit.  It really says " from among the good, we take the better." I liked that understatement. In American English, advertising always goes straight to superlatives, "THE BEST!!!!!" But here we have a modest belief in what is better than the worst but not necessarily the greatest. Lovely understatement. 

Later we came by here when the sun had risen and the discarded bread was being pecked to pieces by a band of wild ibis picking their way gently through the human debris. Rusty is not a fan of pastry, breads or pizza crusts (I know this from dinners we have shared when Layne was out of town) so he ignored the bread in a way that Cheyenne would never have done.

Above you see a massive generator which at this stage it seems, maybe,  just possibly we will not need this hurricane season. Hurrah! However it is a massive Diesel engine sitting on 3600 liters or gallons of fuel in the tank below. The idea is to give the motor a few feet of clearance in the event of flooding and enough fuel to run a few days to allow time for service to be restored. If you look around you'll see generators everywhere ready to keep facilities and hotels and stuff running when catastrophe strikes. We had a great summer this year as the rest of the country burned flooded  and blew down. But not every year is so lucky.

Living the Island Life and drinking the Local Beer. That slogan cracks me up every time I walk by. God knows what qualifies as local in the slogan.Years ago Baby's Coffee used to roast coffee on Duval Street. I know that notion sounds totally bizarre these days when Duval Street is good for chain stores and stuff you can't actually use but it's true. They moved out of town a while ago and sent their roasting machinery to the mainland.  It's the way it goes around here with the cost of land what it is. I am actually surprised you can distill liquor downtown and make a go of it.

Rusty enjoys sitting and watching and I have a suspicion he will love the opportunities to sit outside the van and watch. He does that every time we take a trip, anxiously pawing to get out and if I have parked us correctly he will find an island of grass or shade to sit in nearby and watch.

When we arrived there was a man sitting in a white car and he started to get out until he saw Rusty who trotted past ignoring him completely.  It was obvious even to him Rusty wasn't interested so he got out and walked away. What cracked me up was when I said "Good morning" he said nothing for a moment and then managed to gasp a low key reply while holding his breath. Clearly his  joint was medicinal but I was just fine with him being parked while I drove away.

Mask, check, phone with credit card check, shopping bags check, windows open for Himself check. I went shopping and Rusty, exhausted by his endeavors sat in the back of the car and did his favorite thing: watched the world go by. Tough life.