Destination: Key West - Day of Freedom #1

I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth, I've just fallen into Key West. I took a few days off from blogging to just enjoy the simple act of being here. Living my best dream if you will, and not the usual one where I want to wake up screaming.

Hopefully over the next few days I can get you caught up.

The day after I arrived I did very little except have breakfast by the hotel pool, 

 

 do some laundry in the machines, find a small bit of wisdom that catches my eye in the hotel hallway,

and get caught up on the back blog of entries I had been putting off, and of course napping. You may have noticed a flurry of new entries with that first date on it.

 

In the late afternoon I'd had enough typing and wandered into town. Actually I drove. Parking isn’t cheap at $4 an hour on the meter but it’s no less pricey in local lots. Fortunately it’s the way, way off season so parking is easy to find, and the hotel is nicely situated about a mile and a half away. Perfect distance for the quiet I want here.

I wander down Duval, the main “action” street. It’s a place filled with cheap and expensive and tacky and cute bars, restaurants, gift shops, t-shirt emporiums, art galleries, and Cuban hand rolled cigar shops. Men buy foul smelling cigars from little brown men while their ladies look on with equal measures of disgust, boredom, amusement, and resignation.

About a quarter of the shops are closed or empty. Most of the closed ones say they will be back in October or November, once the tourist season starts. I stop at a Crazy Shirts store to look around. The two ladies running the store ask if I’ve been in a Crazy Shirt store before. I tell them I’ve been a Crazy Shirts customer since 1976. The conversation goes from there about “Where are you from?”, “What a long trip”, and well you get the idea how the conversation went. It’s good to be able to talk with people again. Isolationism on the road is one thing but it’s not my ongoing lifestyle of choice. I like talking to people, mostly.

I ask the ladies it they have a place they like to eat. They suggest Caroline’s just up a block or so, mid-block after the corner of Duval and Caroline. Caroline Street is notable to me because of an early Jimmy Buffett song called "A Woman Gong Crazy Down On Caroline Street". I wander up that way but on a side street I spot Capt. Tony’s Saloon. I’m tempted to go there, but I’m saving the famous and legendary Capt. Tony’s for the right moment. I don’t know when that right moment will be, but it’s not this moment.

Did I mention the roosters that strut around freely everywhere? I took this picture on a back street so the garbage wasn't on Duval. But the roosters are everywhere.

 

I get a small table in the middle of the restaurant. There are no beers on tap, and no local beer at all. The closest thing to local is from New York called Magic Hat #9. The server says it’s not quite a Pale Ale. I figure what the hell and order a bottle of that.

While I’m waiting for the beer I spy a t-shirt in the small market next door that has “DDAD” on it. It stands for “Dad’s Against Daughters Dating – Shoot The First One And The Word Will Spread”. I drink a toast to my friend and his family back home. He has two beautiful, wonderful daughters, and a talented wife, the three of whom are all courageously fighting different health problems. You’re here with me too guys!!

Dinner is blackened Cajun chicken pasta. Large chunks of marinated chicken breast, peppery and spicy creamy sauce with chunks of green peppers, over firm penne. It’s just spicy enough to raise a slight sweat sheen, and not a mad gulping of liquid to put the fire out. I like it a lot.

Foot traffic on Duval is increasing as it gets closer to more people’s dinnertime. The makeup of the crowd is mixed but skews to middle age, which stands to reason since its fall everywhere but here. Families are back home from the summer road trips, college kids are still trying to figure out where the dorm room is, and the late 20’s crowd is back in the office trying to convince each other how important and significant they are. They’ll be back in the spring when Duval Street begins to look like the wreck that is Bourbon Street.

Me? I’m beginning to lose track of which day of the week it is. I’ve been on the road for 13 days and without a reason to keep track of anything other than how close I am to the 22^nd of September, I couldn’t care if it’s Saturday or Tuesday, or any other day. 

I rescue the car from a street meter and head back to the hotel. I want to see the sunset from my quiet balcony, but I’m a bit too far east than west facing to get a good view. Towering Cumulonimbus clouds off to the southwest have a wonderful shading of reds and oranges. As it gets darker the clouds directly in front of me begin to show lightning activity. They are way too far off in the Gulf Stream to hear thunder or get rain, but the light show itself is very impressive and powerful and dramatic. The darker it gets the more stars begin to peek out, they are brilliant. I don’t often get to see such bright stars anymore unless I’m driving home through the mountains in the winter. We used to see a lot of stars from our sundeck as a kid, but light pollution and air pollution have long since put a stop to viewing anything other than bright planets and stars.

 I have a couple of Land Sharks as I watch the electrical show for another hour or so, and then call it a night.