bike week - part 2

One strange day during bike week, I was on my early morning way to and from 5 Brother's Deli for my daily dose of con leché when I noticed two little-kiddie bikes leaning side by side on the curb a few doors down from my house. Nothing unusual really, Key Westers have an unspoken recycling process. . .
Whatever you've got, if you don't need or want it anymore, set it out on the curb and before long someone who does will pick it up. (It's a win, win for everybody)


Now me, I'm a single guy and my kids are grown so, I've got no rideable use for little-kiddie bikes but as the day wore on and the shadows and light played on the things I thought I'd get some pictures before the bikes found their way to somewhere else. (it's an artist thing)


Anyway, while I was taking these and a few more shots, a friend of mine drove up.
I've known Danette Baso Silvers for just about as long as I've lived in Key West but we hadn't seen each other in a while and so spent a few minutes catching up on this and that. Then she asked me about the bikes. I explained they'd been there for the taking and that I had no use for them other than that afternoon's photo-op. She mentioned that her nephew was needing a bike and one of these two might be perfect.


Without much hesitation, we loaded them both into the back of her car and off they drove toward a little TLC and their new home. You've just gotta love the synchronicity of island life.

grande con dos azúcares

". . .You're kidding, right?? Dad, you used to be the biggest coffee junkie in the galaxy!!"

This was the reply from my daughter during a recent phone
call when, for some reason, I mentioned to her that I was off coffee drinking.

She was right of course, I'd started mainlining caffeine really early in my Design career when I was, for a time, operating an offset printing press eight hours a day. (it's what pressmen do) Then came the corporate Art Director syndrome and a coffee maker in every office and then my ad agency adventure with long hours and never enough sleep. Living life in Paradise, stress is less but the habit was formed and the coffee just kept on coming.

Then, a while back, Doc Covington said my blood pressure was up and wrote me a script for a bottle of pink pills. I tried them for a while but they came with strange side effects and so I invoked my "do it with diet" rule and, in concert with a few other changes, coffee was a thing of the past.

". . .God Dad, it was weird enough when you quite eatin' meat and bread! Now you don't even drink coffee? You're gettin' strange in your old age. Don't you ever get a jones on?"
"Yeah, not a lot, but sometimes", I told her.
"Well, what do you do then?" she asked.
My answer? "I cheat."

It's true, I'm as good as I can be, about 98% of the time, but perfect, not so much. To be perfect, I'd have to deny myself stuff. (yeah, that might happen) Besides, being perfect is fascist and I've got no interest in being a Nazi.

But even though I cheat, it's a compromise. When the Blue Moon rises and I'm bugging for a burger, I won't go to Wendy's, I'll get some ground round from Fausto's and home cook a meatball from my Aunt Lu's authentic German recipe, with cheese and a salad. (No fries. Those things'll kill 'ya.)

When the jones jives for java, it's a different story. If I have coffee in the house, I know I'll drink it. So, I outsource. My supplier of choice is "5 Brothers" bodega. They (all 5 of them) are walking distance from the house (even just barely awake), friendly folks, inexpensive but really good con leché and, every couple of weeks, a cultural small step out of my normal day-to-day.

Where else would I get 10 minutes of Miami morning news, find out who, in the neighborhood, just had an operation or a baby, got a divorce or hit by a Conch Train. Or who Judge Miller threw in jail the day before, what Old Town streets would be closed to traffic that day and which son-of-a-bitch cheated on his good woman the night before; all in Spanish that I mostly understand but, probably speak with a Brooklyn accent. (sometimes I get some really puzzled looks)

Now that I'm thinkin' about it, I suppose my java jones has less to do with the con leché and more to do with being a more involved member of the community.