My wife called me Friday afternoon and asked if I wanted to come into town to have after work drinks with some friends. Cheyenne and I were out walking on Cudjoe where I took these pictures, the sun was warm and the breeze through the mangroves was cool. I thought about riding in on Highway One in the weekend traffic and then, worse riding out of town with the departing office workers clogging the Overseas Highway and I made that sort of a noise that an alert spouse will interpret as meaning "God, how do I get out of this without causing offense?"
"No problem, " she said, and she meant it. I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I had a plan to buy a four pack of Boddington's Pub Ale at Winn Dixie on Big Pine and proceed to sit on my deck and watch the sun go down in a blaze of glory. A good plan I thought, and no need to be fighting traffic to get into Key West. Then of course I got the wave of guilt, and not just for turning my wife down. "I'm starting to act like a Conch" I thought to myself. People who live in Old Town Key West rarely bestir themselves to go to New Town. Driving five miles out to Stock Island is beyond the pale and coming out to my house at Mile Marker 27 is a full blown adventure. I pride myself on being able to ride the half hour into town twice a day if necessary, no complaints. But it seems even I am changing.
Life in the Keys is different and for some reason some people learn to adapt and thrive here and others fail miserably. I'm not sure what it is about living here but in part I believe some people have overblown expectations, some people have ambition and some people have no idea what they are letting themselves in for. Face it: the best most rewarding jobs are all taken. Sure you can start your own business and compete with already established well known organizations, but if you, like me, enjoy being a wage slave you will be hard pressed to find a job that pays the equivalent cash or satisfaction of what you do now (assuming you have a position where you are). I am extremely fortunate that I have a job I love in a place that respects me and gives me room to enjoy my job. My wife as I shall explain landed her job by sheer chance and determination and luck. You can land your dream job but if you can't do you still want to be here? Life in the Keys is close quarter living; you will see the same faces, the same vehicles and the same places over and over again. The art of living in a small space requires tolerance and the ability to turn a blind eye. If you are a control freak and think everyone should learn from you, the master, you will rapidly lose any chance at all of making a go of life in the Keys. Things get done a certain way here not because it is the most efficient or sensible way to you but because it works for what needs to get done, and paradoxically that usually is the best way to do things here! Often there is a secret Byzantine hierarchy that controls certain activities and threatening the power structure is never a good thing. The best advice I give newcomers is not to make waves, not to have any opinions and never ever have anything bad to say about anyone. You never know who is related to whom, who sleeps with whom, who wishes they could sleep with whom or who used to sleep with whom and have remained friends anyway. Start talking shit about people and it will come back to haunt you in a hurry. Get a bad reputation and Key West will close ranks on you. You get work, you make friends by invitation. And no one wants to work or play with a fink or a grouch.
In the larger picture I don't believe this is a very good time to be making a change in your life. It seems to me the musical chairs of the boom years has stopped and wherever one is when the music stopped playing is exactly where one is likely to have to stay for a while. Easy for me to say, I suppose. I like my house, my job and my location generally. I wake up every afternoon and look out the window at the sun playing on the palm leaves outside my house and I know this is where I want to be. I actually miss going to work sometimes even though I like being home with my wife and dog. I have more and better friends than ever and I don't want anything much to change in my life... In a society where people are used to packing up and making a change at the drop of a hat the new reality of high unemployment, shrinking wages and general immobility is going to be hard to take. Frankly I'm pissed off that the banksters have fucked up the world economy so much that even little old me could have his comfy middle class life affected by their greed. Happily Cheyenne plods on regardless and cheers me up when I read how world food prices are set to keep going up and starve more and more pissed off people around the world.
Key West is in many respects a little south of reality. The economy here is not hurting near as much as one hears about Up North. Housing prices have dropped a bit but for the most part houses remain largely unaffordable- especially considering how hard it is to qualify for a loan these days. There are a few fixer upper homes for around $300,000 but compared to what you can buy on mainland Florida house prices have a certain air of unreality about them, despite large numbers of foreclosures on the market. Lower Keys homes have dropped a lot more than those in town. I have asked around among my colleagues who rent and here is a run down of rough rental prices in the city for reasonable units most likely not deep in Old Town. The more picturesque your place the more it will cost and the more functionally uncomfortable it will be. For a two bedroom two bath (thus with potential for a room mate) $1500. Two bed one bath possibly $1300, and for a "real" one bed unit $1200 and a nice studio $1,000. A starting dispatcher's salary will pay one full check for rent at prices like these. It's not uncommon therefore for people to hold down at least two jobs...or for middle aged people to re-learn how to live with a roommate. Ugh!
Work is no longer easy to come by in Key West. If you wanted to move here, five or six years ago would have been perfect. You could pretty much have any job you wanted. My boat captain job literally fell into my lap one day while i was walking the waterfront. My boss desperately needed captains with licenses and he practically forced me to take a job I wasn't sure I wanted. My wife was hired as a teacher despite her only qualification being a desire to work and a law degree. She spent the next three years getting her teaching credentials and a slew of assorted upgrades, but when she applied for the job at the new juvenile jail classroom she was the sole applicant. No teacher wanted a twelve month job- in the jail! Most of the job interview questions related to housing costs and we lived on our boat across the street from the jail so she passed with flying colors! Last year that same job opening attracted four dozen highly qualified applicants from school districts Up North. My wife would never have even got an interview.
Speaking with people familiar with the hospitality trades the same applies. People who are known quantities in town get the best jobs, and networking is everything. It used to be easier of course but... In the matter of jobs it's easier to get a job when you are settled in town, but looking at those rental prices it means coming to town with something like $5,000 in your pocket just to get started. Or you could sleep among the working poor and homeless on a mattress in a dormitory at the Keys Overnight temporary Shelter on Stock Island...it's free but it's not what people come to the Keys to do, to live among the indigent.
Then there is the matter of the Key West "lifestyle." One young lad I knew recently came to Key West to go to school and live in the warmth for a while and went home to mom with a heroin addiction it turned out. This is not a good place to be if you have an addictive personality. Drink accompanies every function, drugs are widely available and if you need sex drunks in bars are on vacation and looking for companionship and adventure. However none of this adds up to a reliable work schedule and everyone knows intellectually that being on vacation isn't the same as being at home. How that translates for you in real life is up to you. Keys Disease is a fun joke when you are on vacation but it is a total pain in the ass when you are living your daily life and trying to get things done. Some businesses advertise their strong point as being that they turn up when promised. Being laid back is a cliché that only applies when you aren't in a hurry or when your toilet isn't backed up or when you just want to get in and get out without a prolonged stay in the check out line. Very often your neighbors who are on vacation or retired think it's okay for them to inflict their mañana attitude on you and call that being laid back. I have found a reliable mechanic, reliable house cleaner and a reliable odd job man. All that makes me a happy camper, but it took a while.
For those that have supportive partners, that can live in close quarters and can find and hold down as many jobs as needed to pay the bills, life can be very good. There are of course restrictions, no lakes rivers or streams, no hills within 800 miles, no skiing, no frost, no freeways and not much shopping. The joy of living without a car can translate into island fever or "rock fever" as it's known. Lots of people in Key West rarely get out on the water, and as they hate to drive rarely get out of town never mind drive to Miami for a change of pace of a weekend. Me? I
like living outside Key West. I have space around my house, perfect peace and quiet especially in the long hot summer months and with a dock and a skiff tied up behind my house my wife and I go swimming in the ocean five days a week when the waters are warm. That we don't go fishing is one of those cruel ironies that we live here and don't enjoy one of the best local sports available...
I have found a very happy way of life in the Keys. My first visit was in 1981 but I rode my Vespa back up the way I had come and continued on to the bright lights of San Francisco and ultimately Santa Cruz California. Key West back then was too small for my youthful desires and a university town with lots of bright young people was what I wanted. California wore thin after 20 years of summer fog and winter rain and traffic jams so we took off sailing with no destination in mind. We landed in Key West where I had lived previously on my boat and we slipped into a liveaboard life after a couple of years sailing down to Panama and back up in 2000. It was only when we moved ashore and bought a house and put down visible roots that we figured we might want to stay. I like minding my own business and I prefer it if my neighbors do the same. I love the weather, especially that it rains mostly in summer when it's hot and in winter when it's cold it's mostly dry. And about the summer heat it's not nearly as stifling as some people seem to think. It rarely gets over 90 or 95 degrees while I read about 100+ degree days in the mid West. Then there are those eight months of the year when snowbirds stay away and tourism is focused mostly in Key West. Those are the months that shine in my memory, less traffic no lines to eat out and bright white sunshine highlighting huge puffy thunderheads in the sky. It is quite magical down here from May through October.
And then there are hurricanes. These can be a total pain in the ass especially if they keep showing up one after the other all summer long, as has happened in summers past. If there is a likelihood of the city or county being hit officials will issue a mandatory evacuation order. All that means is if you elect to stay behind you can count on not getting any help when the winds start to blow. Some people make a point of swaggering and ignoring official warnings, my strategy is a little different. As soon as the schools close my wife packs the dog and her evacuation bag in the car and drives north to stay with friends. I close up the house and retire to the police station when we get locked down.
Hurricanes get a lot of press because they seem dramatic but more people seem to die in mid western floods from overflowing rivers than die in our storms. I can't think of one death attributable to hurricanes in Key West at least since Georges in 1998. However hurricanes do produce tornadoes and destruction from the embedded twisters can be quite dramatic. The chance of losing one's home is ever present. Renting has that advantage too.
It is difficult to overstate the isolation produced by living in the Lower Keys (those islands south of the Seven Mile Bridge). Get used to the idea that you will be a long way from what you know, your friends and family. You will have to live for quite a while in Key West, maybe as long as three years before people start to get used to seeing you around and trusting that you might be staying long enough to make it worth their while to invest the time in getting to know you better. It gets tiring meeting people and then having them "go home" just when you get to know them. This creates a rather reticent society, so plan on taking your time getting to make new friends.
Do you enjoy rock climbing? Mountain biking? Hiking in mature forests? Waterfalls? Shopping? Activities are limited but you make life your way in this collection of small lumps of flat rock scattered across the ocean. Me? I am not fond of gatherings. I like to go out and be with friends, but I'm not interested in costumes and balls and parties with a bunch of strangers so you won't see me around town much unless I get dragged there by the scruff of the neck. I don't drink in bars but I do like going to the Tropic Cinema. I like Goombay for the food, the local's parade during Fantasy Fest though lately it has been suffering from excess participation in my book, and the Holiday Parade in December. Other than that I'm not much for food festivals standing around in the sun eating stuff I can buy much more comfortably in a restaurant. I doubt they miss my participation as tons of people do enjoy that stuff. I used to like Sculpture Key West a lot more when it was located solely at Fort Zachary instead of being scattered across town...but I am not fond of change as a general rule. That's a bad thing as in Key West things are changing all the damned time.
Key West is a multi faceted jewel in the respect that my life here is likely to be completely unlike anyone else's and my perception of what works and what is worthwhile can appear completely wrong to that someone else. Naturally the more gregarious are out and about all the time, the wealthy view a lot of the tedious money calculations as pointless, or worse as
tacky, God forbid, and oftentimes one tends to forget the struggle it took to get settled here. Yet in trying to paint an honest picture one tends to come across I think as excessively morose and too focused on the aggravating details. For instance visitors often wonder why I don't want to live in charming Old Town and ride a bicycle everywhere, and I am at pains to point out that my fuel burning 27 mile commute is fun, I look forward to the ride every work night! I live in the Keys and I am not supposed to enjoy driving. What can I say? I like having offsets alongside my home to give me some distance from my neighbors, I don't like roosters and I loathe having drunks puking in my yard or screaming their way down the street at 4am.
I am sensitive to noise so living with crowing roosters and lots of neighbors close by while trying to sleep in the middle of the day would be hard for me. On Ramrod Key I live cocooned in blissful silence. To my way of thinking living outside Key West is proper Keys living with starry nights overhead unblemished by street lights, easy access to the water and space to enjoy views across the open spaces of the Lower Keys.
In my life I have found that emigration (and I've done a fair bit of it over the years) has come as the result of desperation. For some reason I couldn't stand being where I was and as a result I found it less painful to move than to stay. Had my wife not had rheumatoid arthritis I dare say we would have returned to live amongst our friends in our lovely beach home in Santa Cruz California, a very pleasant place to live where we lived a very pleasant life, but the fact is that two years of tropical living on our basic sailboat in Central America had shown how much pain she was spared in a hot humid climate. Key West offered her a chance to sleep at night where the cold foggy climate of coastal California didn't. We tried to settle in Key West half reluctantly, ironically enough, and for us everything fell into place rather in the manner of so much in life. When you want something too much the gods of irony frequently prefer to withhold it. Perhaps that's the best advice I can give to a potential émigré: treat Key West as a reluctant lover and sidle up ready to be the first one to do the dumping rather than to be ready to get dumped. Perhaps you will be admitted to the hallowed ranks and get to bitch about snowbirds and tourists and the costs of everything and the lack of shopping and all the other stuff you have to find to complain about when you get to live in Paradise; that's just the human condition.
I have a theory that the gods are watching out for me; every weekend off they plan weather in my honor, rain, clouds, cold winds, whatever they think would ruin my weekend off. This weekend is going down in usual style, after a week of summer like temperatures and bright sunshine.
If I'm out with the Fusion I am hauling Cheyenne around for a walk somewhere interesting. Interesting to the dog that is. On a day like this the only thing I find interesting is the inside of my snug little home. Persian poets like jugs of wine and loaves of bread. Me? I like a pot of tea and a book, but the principle remains the same.
Instead I found myself yesterday lunch time out in the chill north wind on a 60 degree (15C) Saturday hoping Cheyenne was working off all surplus energy. Clearly she was trying to do just that. This gate used to be locked shut. Now it isn't. 
This trail starts where Niles Road on north Summerland Key ends. 
It's a short trail, five muddy minutes through the mangroves and one comes to a bridge.
On a normal tidal day the waters rush under the bridge through the shallows sounding for all the world like a rock strewn river. 
When moon and north wind combine to blow all the water out of the Gulf of Mexico Cheyenne takes advantage to sit in the water that's left. 
When the water blows out one can find all sorts of odd things along the edge of Niles Channel. This garden pedestal for instance. Any wild guesses how on earth this got here? 
There are reportedly eleven million unoccupied foreclosed homes across America. There are quite a few in the Keys we are told. Places like this with views like this still command premium prices. Pity, that. 
I cannot for the life of me figure why they built this bridge in the first place. I have been over the bridge several times and the trail peters out in mud and mangroves with no sign of any construction or any reason for a super heavy duty bridge to be built here.
I didn't go over yesterday as Cheyenne go too wet for me to want to lift a salty wet Labrador above shoulder height on a cold windy day. We turned back thinking how thoughtful it was for some other visitor to drop off this splash of color in the dreary green mangroves.
The vet has told us that a suitable treat for a Labrador is a carrot or a piece of apple. However offering Cheyenne a piece of apple elicits the baleful look of a Labrador evil eye. However when that same Labrador comes across a discarded apple core she guards it jealously and swallows it almost whole in two crunches. People say humans love what they can't have; I know dogs are exactly the same way. 
So then I started looking with a jaundiced eye at the mangroves growing there minding their own business in the salty tidal mudflats. Is it possible they turn their backs on the ways other trees grow and out of perversity prefer to live in salt water and desalinate their needs from the tides? Do they crave the freshwater they currently can't have? Am I overthinking this?
Then I got back to the car, turned the heater on and my brain unfroze and started to work properly again. That was close, I wonder what would happen were I confronted by actual iced frost?
Bobskoot in Canada likes to make fun of me for not having a tachometer on my cheap Bonneville. It was known, before it was phased out, as a standard Bonneville; unlike the more expensive T100 which is still offered there is no chrome, no instrument to measure engine revs and it has a one tone paint job. I threw some luggage and a windshield on it, failed to add any chrome and chose not to modify the engine to increase the standard 65 horsepower produced by the modest air cooled 865cc twin and got riding. Bobskoot is no longer satisfied by his entirely adequate Suzuki 650, farkled and super equipped, and is looking with lust in his heart at a Yamaha Super Tenere that will cost him $17,000 (Canadian) plus delivery charges etc...etc...to reignite his middle aged love affair with motorcycling. 
In the Florida Keys the major mechanical enemy is the salt laden environment which attacks any piece of metal with airborne corrosion. You'd think the second worst enemy would be boredom- yet somehow I still love my ride to work, I revel in the fact before I took off on my spontaneous evening ride to nowhere I was lying on my deck, sunbathing with a book on the last day of January. Then I decided the other way to take advantage of the mild weather was to ride in it. So I did.
Snow? Ice? Mountain passes? Twisting curved roads? What are they?
My wife is bound and determined to save up enough to get us to Italy this summer, where my buddy Giovanni wants to take a motorcycle trip to the Alps, through Italy, France and Montecarlo. I wonder how we will pull such an ambitious vacation off in the year of living on the edge of international economic meltdown, but it's a nice dream, to imagine a few weeks in summer of riding twisting mountain roads with my last best childhood friend. Meanwhile I drift along, skirting tropical downpours watching the drizzle build up on my windshield as I ride. Rain is no problem in the Florida Keys, as I carry lightweight waterproofs and temperatures rarely get into the hypothermia range. Rain is just a little challenge to spice up the ride.
Look at this view! How could you ever get bored with this? 
I know the Overseas Highway is flat and straight, as is much of the riding for 600 miles (1000 kms) north of here, and the winter traffic is crowded and slow, but still, I cannot help but get that cheap thrill from simply going for a ride. 
Even when it's time to commute on the same familiar 26 miles into Key West I pull out onto the Highway wondering what the ride will bring. Some evenings I am feeling in a hurry for no reason and I spend the ride looking for a gap to pass the bored texting driving drones; other evenings I am feeling lazy and slow and I drift along at the speed limit or less counting the leaves on the passing mangroves, pulling aside to let faster traffic pass me by. Some days it rains, some it's windy, some it's sunny and some it's a bit of all three.
I think it's the curse of our age, a curse we are going to have to remedy somehow as money and credit dry up, that of needing fresh stimulation to retain the freshness of the experience. It's no wonder our Lords and Masters on Wall Street call us consumers, because that is all they want us to do, consume. And now, at least here south of the 49th parallel, most of us have lost the ability to consume thoughtlessly and wildly. Now we have to remember to feel and taste and enjoy with what we have, not with what we crave. Not hard to do in the Fabulous Florida Keys.
I said to my wife I wanted to "upgrade to a Triumph Sprint GT," a new sport tourer with 130 horsepower, heated grips, a sporting ride for the 21st century at a modest $13,000. She looked at me real old fashioned and I burst out laughing. She continues to get cheap thrills from riding her 150cc Vespa around town; we are not by nature "upgraders." She's not alone; I spotted this red one in the trailer park on Ohio Key but I'll bet it has far fewer miles than hers. We owe nothing on our rides and basic third party insurance only (we pay for our own damage) is $80 a year for both machines.
I have a couple of Iron Butt rides under my belt, including my raid to Binghamton, New York, in 35 hours last freezing cold October. My Bonneville and I cruised the Catskills immediately after I finished the timed ride, enjoying hills and curves and twisties. Then I finally got to see the famed Hudson River, riding it's banks on my trusty Bonneville. What a bike, it does it all for me. Some people need to own lots of bikes, one to tour, one to ride fast, one for the dirt, one for around town. My Bonneville is an even bigger bargain when you consider that like it's forebears it does everything adequately. I would ride to California tomorrow if I had the time (and it were summer, let's face it).
I hope this Spring I will get another Iron Butt ride under my belt some weekend that I have off. This summer my wife says I can go back up North and see Jack riepe my riding dominatrix who wears a leather skirt and cracks a whip the length of Pennsylvania. In the meantime we buzz back and forth on Highway One my Bonneville and I racking up the miles and not wishing for more horsepower or new paint jobs or any new shopping stimulation. 
And here I am, home sweet home, hidden by trees, off street parking under the house, the promise of more sunshine tomorrow.