work-boats & live-aboards

The very first time Key West blipped across my radar screen was back in the mid '80's. I was at the peak of my design career and spending early summers flying out to the week long International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado.

During one of those trips to Aspen, I met a woman and we spent a few nights together. Over dinner one of those nights, she talked about a subtropical island where she'd spend a week or two to escape her Chicago winters.
That island was Key West.

She went on and on through most of the night, with her melodic voice and so enthusiastically. But I don't remember much of what she was saying.
I was young, she was blonde and beautiful and my attentions were more than a little, distracted.

Later, what I did recall, through the haze of my lust, was "relaxed island life, beautiful tropical sunsets, work-boats & live-aboards". In the years that followed, at least that much of what she said stayed with me.

We made loose plans to meet in Cayo Hueso the following February. But, long story short, I didn't make the trip.
(life's eddys and currents, you know)
All the same, the seed had been sown; and the better part of 20 years later it sprouted. So, with all my northern ambitions satisfied, I headed south.

It's been a dozen years since I made my move. I've never looked back and never saw that blonde beauty from the windy city again. But her enthusiastic stories of "relaxed island life, beautiful tropical sunsets, work-boats & live-aboards" are part of my reality now.

Thank-you Blondie-Blonde, wherever you are!