Morning in the Keys and Michael let me down- his last chance this trip- since the truck at the corner of White and Truman was closed for second time when I needed him. Instead of a tasty breakfast sandwich, I had to settle for filling up the tank on the Panzer and got some cash out of the machine for the ride north around ten. Marlow stopped by to give me a Key Lime for luck, plucked fresh from his tree at the house, and I put it on the dashboard, wedging against the Garmin electronic navigation device.

The lime led me East and North, though frankly, the inclination was to turn it around and head West and South.

I won’t bother you with the details. It was bright and sunny and the light glittered on the water in the lower Keys. Weekend activity was happening on the bike-path and the fishing piers- and some irritating Special Events around a gigantic flea market on Islamorada- which I know was Spanish for “Isle of Morada,” but still reminded me of a name for a repressive theme park constructed by the Saudis.

Maybe it was just the slightly sour sense that this trip to Paradise really just felt like it was getting started. Key West is freaking magical in so many ways- the people, the sense of jolly anarchy, the hard work of the people who have made their lives there.

Marlow said it best just before he drove off to deliver meals to the shut-in community: “It’s not the Mainland, Man.”

I muttered that to myself as traffic stopped to permit people to amble across the two-lane, the public safety community wing their hands showing a little un-Ilsand like frustration. That slowed things up, and the 126-miles of Overseas Highway passed with beauty and a certain forbearance.

Once on the mainland, the homicidal hurtling started immediately: where there are three lanes, Floridians appear to be afflicted with the same disease as their brethren to the north, which is to say, a class of driver considers overtaking on the right, in the slow lane, be be the preferred mode of ballistic transit. I would call it annoying- that whole “Passing side, Sui-Side” the truckers used to paint on the left and right side of the back of their trailers, but I am not sure people would get it these days.

Anyway, I tuned in to the world as the wheels turned north: The events of the day included mass protests in Kiev, in Ukraine, the arrest of el Chapo, Guzman the drug billionaire, and a review of some of the lunacy of the week from Washington. The real event of the day for the Panzer was the return to winter, which occurred just north of Fort Pierce. I stopped to gas up and looked at a thick dark band of clouds to the north, and when I was back on the superslab to penetrate it, the resulting curtain of pounding water turned the windshield white-gray and completely opaque.

The good news was that it probably washed the salt off the car. The bad news was it meant emergency flashers through the construction areas on I-95, and a vague hope that no one would do anything really stupid up ahead.

Once through the front, I was extra-tropical again and the shorts that seemed so natural that morning seemed a little freaking cold. The dashboard told me the temperature had come down from the low nineties in greater Miami to suddenly seventy, and then the long slow decline.

I hit darkness in Jacksonville, and stopped at a high-rise Marriott. The bed was better than anything I own at the moment, and very comfortable indeed. The computer- oh, yeah, the radio told me my Apple operating system was compromised and I ought to stay off unsecured networks like those in comfortable Marriotts- so I guess I will.

Hope to make the farm by four. We will see how that works out.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303