We made our annual trek to Florida again this year. And I stuck to my pledge to eat a lot of fish and I did. Tuna,mahi-mahi and shrimp were on the menus. We decided to drive all the way down to Key West, stay for three days and then spend three days in the upper keys at a place called Tavernier. The Keys are so thin in Tavernier that its just a matter of walking across the street that separates the Gulf Coast from the Atlantic Coast. There are some awesome views at Tavernier. But first I want to talk about what we did in Key West. Like always we take our routine with us and if everything goes well we park the rental car and never use it except to drive back to the mainland. We arrived around 4:00 p.m. and we were kind of beat from all the traveling we did coming down from Pittsburgh. So we decided to just take a walk around the island taking in the sights and marveling at how we can be in Pittsburgh in the morning and in this tropical paradise so soon. I’m finally getting to know my way around Downtown. I’ve always relied on Laura since she lived down there for two years and knows it much better than I. The trouble with finding your way around is that it is so flat you have nothing too tall to use as landmarks. But that is kind of the fun of it, getting lost. You’ll always find something good. We walked for about an hour trying to slowly acclimate to the sun. On the main street, Duval we play the tourist but on the back streets we fall right in with the local Conchs as they are called. That evening we got our beers in Bahama Village and headed down to Mallory Square to check out the sunset celebration and the street performers. There was a new guy from England who was one-lining everyone and juggling. He finished his act standing on a tight rope about 6 inches from a big tourist lying on the ground. The rope was being held by a bunch of us tourists tugging on both ends. When he passed the hat, a buck does not cut it anymore I threw in a five dollar bill. After sunset we went to a place that used to be called Billies nearby, now called Red Fish Blue Fish. We were pretty hungry by then and I had a tuna steak and Laura had grouper. We talked to the waiter about how expensive living in paradise can be and we left a big tip. The next day we rented bikes and headed out to the Florida Keys Community College. This is the jewel of all of southern Florida. The bike ride is along the water most of the way and the school is surrounded by water. Here is where bringing our routine makes life easier. We always read a little bit in the library to give the sun a break. We check up on the latest books and magazines. Then we swim out back in the lagoon where all the scuba classes are taught. There are a couple of underwater docks where tons of fish congregate. They now try to restrict swimming but if you keep a low profile you can get away with it. It is definitely something to see with a snorkel. Then we always end up going by the campground where Laura once worked. I photographed the banana trees that John the owner has planted. One time we were there we partied with one of the owner’s sons. He helped manage the place along with students from the Community College who were living at the campground while attending school. That day we went to Fort Zachary Taylor State Park to swim and lay around on the beach. Sometimes we read under some the strange looking aspen trees that give some nice shade on the beach. The beach is rocky where the water meets the shore so beach shoes are recommended. Since it costs a $1.50 for bikers and walkers to get in, this small amount keeps out the masses of tourists and it is always a tranquil place. There are rock piles around this southern end of the island where loads of fish congregate. The rock piles were put there to prevent the island from eroding. That afternoon I spent a good two hours snorkeling around the rocks. I saw a couple conchs and I followed around a small reef shark for a while until it ditched me. I saw whole schools of parrot fish. And schools of fish that I cannot name. Then I saw a three foot barracuda with a hook line and sinker hanging from its mouth. Time passes quickly for me when I am in the water. Laura usually takes a short dip then goes out and reads for a while and does that many times. I like to lie on the beach until I get toasty then once I get in the water I stay there until it is time to leave….
We had a few beers that Laura bought in Bahama Village not far from our hotel, Spanish Gardens. They have these corner ma and pa stores where they sell single beers and the price is the best at these places. This one place sells an awesome conch salad to go. And with a couple of beers we made one of our beach excursions into a picnic. Its our routine in the evenings to either walk around town or head to sunset carrying our beers with us. The beer suppresses the hunger somewhat. On this trip I had bought a new video camera. Laura figured out how to use it and was explaining to me how it works. By the time we got to sunset she was shooting video. So we checked out some new acts and then I decided to videotape The Great Rondini’s act. He is an escape artist who has been at the street scene for many years. Last year on Halloween and Houdini’s birthday, he pulled a prank. After having been chained up in his straight jacket he jumped off the pier into the water and disappeared. Paramedics and police had to be called out. Even some of the performers had to jump in to help look for him. He was found two days later holed up in a hotel with his girlfriend. He fooled everyone. Of course the city of Key West was not happy and he has to pay them back for the police and paramedic service. Anyway, after videotaping his act, I was not even hungry anymore. After everything we did that day I was at the point of losing my appetite. It just shows that hunger is related to how occupied you are. We walked up to Duffy’s across town and I figured I better eat or I would not sleep that night. I had a fish platter of shrimp and a filet of the catch of the day and Laura had a steak. Duffy’s is a mainstay of the island. It has good food and it is a reliable place to get out of the sun for a while….
I never want to be in the position that I saw two young couples in one evening. The one woman was badgering the other couple, she said “You don’t want to eat and you don’t want to drink what do you want to do then?”good God woman, I thought to myself. If food and drink are all you know, its time to be put out of your misery. Every vacation should involve a little adventure. Even if it just involves a little spontaneity. One night we came back to the hotel and our bellies were full from eating and drinking pretty good. We realized that we did not have any dental floss so we walked down to CVS to buy some and it was dark by this time. So we are walking back to the hotel and Laura starts flossing her teeth. And as we walk past one of the fancier restaurants, Laura decides to look at the menu to scope out another place to eat. They had the menu stapled at the entrance. All the while she is flossing her teeth and a very elegant couple is eating by the window where we are standing. And the woman looks up to see Laura cleaning her teeth. It made for a very hilarious and embarrassing moment for us two drunkards that night. And it seemed the dining couple got a kick out of it too.
Today we did some uneventful things throughout the day then headed to a place called The Rum Barrel for entertainment, food and drink. We sat outside on a verandah and listened to a dynamite guitar player who dueted with a really good singer. There are some of the best musical acts down in Key West, if you know where to look. The guitar this guy was playing looked like a cross between a regular acoustic guitar and a Spanish flamenco guitar. He played the hell out of this intrument. After we ate we took our drinks and headed to the outside bar. I videotaped a couple of their songs. After one set she was talking to the crowd in Spanish so I yelled something out in Spanish. She punmmeled me with a flurry of Spanish. Then ,fortunately she returned to English before I could embarrass myself. The guitar players strumming mesmerized me and I sat there listening and thinking about what it would be like to play guitar like that. We ordered another round and bought the band one too. Then we called it a night.
Our last day in Key West started out with breakfast on the beach. Having spent too much time in the ocean the day before I had a slight case of sunburn on my back. I usually wear a t-shirt in the water but I took it off later in the day thinking that the sun was less weak at 4 p.m., but you can never underestimate the Florida sun. And what I have learned in the past is too much sun leads to a breakdown of the immune system. Since it felt like I had a head cold coming, I told Laura that I needed to eat, to repair my immune system. Everyone knows that old saying, “feed a cold”. Its amazing what a ordinary breakfast can do for the start of a head cold. This was the first time we ate breakfast all week. And since we probably overeat in our work lives at home, eating is the only part of our routine we do not take on vacation. It is liberating to eat only when we are hungry. But today I had to apologize to Laura for having to eat so soon. She did not mind, she was hungry too. Our waitress was from the Ukraine. And I asked her if she spoke Russian and she said, “of course.” I had to ask her where she learned English and she told us that she lived in New York City before Key West. She told us that she worked two jobs to offset the cost of living in Key West. I regretted not having a bag of grains to give her, with my website on the lable. I usually give bags of grains to people who work in resturants and I tip them good too. But I don’t believe somebody’s pay should be left up to the fickleness of tipping. Anyhow, I just hope every chef, short order cook and waitress can take a break from food once in a while and learn to fast with food. Upon returning our bikes after breakfast, I saw a hoot and nanny of people on bicycles coming towards me. And I recognized the guy leading the pack. It was Lloyd who leads bike tours around the Keys. I took his tour in Key West and wrote about it in a previous blog. He was the guy with a machete who would raid the local’s fruit trees. He is known for being somewhat of an expert on mangoes. There was a write-up in the New York Times about him last winter. He was slowing down and coming to an intersection. So I walked over to him and said, “Dad its me your long lost son, Mom told me where to find you.” This is my shock line for people I haven’t seen in a while. I always get a pretty good reaction out of it. He recognized me but wasn’t sure who I was. Most men have an innate fear of possibly being looked up by an illegitimate child. Especially when someone comes up to them and hugs them and calls them Dad. I did not keep him in suspense to long. And I told him I took his tour a few years ago. He asked me how I was doing I said, “you know the boats always sinking, but you try to keep it afloat, and let the people know who are rocking it that you know how to swim better than them.” The people who were in his tour looked hot and beat so I did not keep him too long and I bid him adios.
After three days we were ready to trek to Tavernier in the Upper Keys. The first night we got there Laura and I went for a swim right outside our room at Atlantic Bay Inn. We were not in the water more than ten minutes when one of the small children started yelling that there was a manatee in the water. Laura headed right for shore not knowing what was going on. I started swimming in from the mangrove island I was checking out. I swam right into a 1000 pound mother and her small pup which must have weighed at least 200 pounds. I looked both of them right in the eyes with my scuba mask. They were incredibly docile and friendly. A guy who was cleaning his boat near shore started squirting water at the mother and she rolled over on her back and she must have drank 50 gallons of fresh water in the next twenty minutes. The kids and I swam around with them. Their skin was tough and rubbery and they both had enormous scars on their backs from boats running into them. It was amazing the pup was still alive. She had a couple of huge welts the entire width of her back. As these animals are mammals, they must come out of the water for air. They are kind of a cross between a walrus and an elephant. Their skin is hard and rubbery and the mother had a short cropped field of sea grass growing on her back. They did not mind us touching them. In fact it seemed like they liked it. They hung around for about an hour. After seeing these animals I felt my life was complete. That night we rented bikes and roamed around the little islands that make up this part of the Keys. We biked to a mall that was nearby and while Laura was buying a few things at the supermarket, I meandered around to the side of the mall where a restaurant called Dillon’s was and looked in. We went there that night for dinner and it turns out to be a favorite place for the locals. The food was good and the price was fantastico. We did the fish specials and loved it. The ambiance was festive.
Finally I got around to booking my scuba trip for the next day. I signed up at Florida Keys Dive Center. The boat left for the reef at 1:00 p.m. Since I don’t dive that often and I rented all my equipment, I had to remember how to use it. For the rental and the boat ride out to the reef the price was $100. I befriended some young guy who was ex-navy and he was down in the Keys on vacation. He worked on a submarine in the navy. And now he worked on a ship where he worked for four months straight and was then off for four months. While he was helped me hook up my regulator, we discovered, it turns out our jobs had a lot in common as far as machinery goes. He worked with chillers and compressors and boilers and such. Only all his work was on a ship where mine was in the basements of big office buildings. But since we bring in water from the Allegheny River to cool the equipment our work is similar. And since the year before when a forty inch pipe broke out in the street where I work and we got flooded, you could say we were kind of sunk. The whole mechanical plant was flooded and almost everything had to be rebuilt. Out on the reef the sights were awesome. Those perfect brain corals were like nothing else. At one point I knelt in the sand next to the reef about 40 feet down and looked up at the sun‘s rays coming through the water and rejoiced for being alive. After two different dives we headed back to shore and the boat supplied fresh pineapple to alleviate the dry mouth that you get from breathing compressed air. It was a nice ride back and I just sat in silence on the front of the boat and thought about everything that I had seen….
The day after my dive we decided to just take it easy and sit on the small beach and read behind our hotel. We met a woman from Montreal and I laid a little French on her. She was so amazed that an American could speak something other than English, she responded with a flurry of her language. Since we have never been to her fair city we asked her a bunch of questions about Montreal. Turns out Montreal is the second biggest French speaking city in the world just behind Paris. Actually she told us that everyone is bilingual, speaking English and French. Sounded like a good place for a future vacation. She told us about all the ethnic enclaves up there. She herself was Greek and I told her what our friend George who lives at the campground that we visited in Key West says about Greeks, “there is a Greek everywhere!” I think he is right. George is a pretty amazing guy. I don’t think the IRS even knows he exists. But that is another story. We chatted for quite a while and then when I could not take the heat anymore I got in the water with the snorkel. Right off I saw a huge tarpon fish swimming circles around me. If I had had a spear gun I would have had dinner. Next I swam over to where some boat docks were located and there are always interesting things under there, like used truck tires and cement blocks. And sure enough, there was interesting sea life and I grabbed a spiney lobster that was lurking in one pile of dock refuge. All this material turns into small reefs that are really colorful.I made a mental note to get a underwater camera for a future trip and record all of this. If I wanted to I could have caught a lot of lobster under these docks. There was a row boat down there that turned into an exceptional artificial reef. After swimming for a couple of hours I got out and read under a tree. When I got tired of reading I went back to the room and took a shower. I was feeling restless so I took a walk around the island before thinking about dinner. Down the road from our hotel, I walked past a small hospital and I noticed a fowl smell coming from behind some trees.And I thought to myself that maybe some hobos are using this patch of trees as a latrine but it was a small sewage treatment plant right on the main road. And this was the only negative thing I experienced in the upper keys. They might have located this treatment plant somewhere else but maybe they did not have the room.
That night we finally burned out on eating fish. And we went to an Italian restaurant. A place called Anthony’s. It was great. Good salad and good pasta. After dinner we wondered into a book store next to the restaurant and I bought a book called, “A Long Way Gone” by a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. I wanted to buy Slaughterhouse-Give by Kurt Vonnugut but I could not find it. I remember reading in a magazine so many years ago that a teenager at the time summed up Kurt’s body of work by stating, “All things may fail but courtesy will prevail.” Kurt agreed with this observation. I would say that his work says so much more. Vacation is about rest and rejuvenation. And sometimes a new book can get you there.