We didn’t leave until after 9 because Mike needed to call the Miami Triumph dealer. He has had some very bad luck with his bike recently. I low speed sand incident broke one of this foot pegs, and then the poorly maintained Miami Beach roads claimed his rear tail light. The power cable for his GPS also stopped working.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have any luck with the dealer, so it was onto an autozone or something to pick up translucent red tape and to search best buy, Walmart and Radio Shack for a power adapter. Autozone and Best Buy did end up coming through for us but Mike still needed a new foot peg. And strangely, within a matter of a half hour, we had two people ask if we were brothers. One was at Walmart and the other at Radio Shack. The woman at Radio Shack even thought we were twins at first. I can understand someone mistaking us for brothers, but why would you ask? Is it unusual for family members to shop together at Walmart?
Riding down Route 1 towards the Keys, Mike had even more bad luck. We had to pull into a gas station after one of the locking screws for his helmet’s visor came off. Andrea was able to order one and have it overnighted to our next location, but we didn’t know if it would come in time. There were worries that it could push our schedule to the right. On the plus side, there was a very curious and enthusiastic guy at the gas station asking about our trip, and a random friendly dog that looked like a dingo came up to us before plopping down in the shade.
My observations for Florida south of Miami are that it has many similarities to Iraq. The built up areas were fairly run down with some palm trees around. Some of the small auto shops looked remarkably like Iraqi auto shops. The farm lands were semi-arid fields with palm groves and orange groves next to each other. Even the smell had the mixed aroma of farm and burning garbage. It’s hard to remember and describe every little detail that made me think of the similarities, but it really seemed like an Iraqi town.
In contrast to Miami Beach the Keys appeared to be more geared towards divers and locals, all while being more relaxed. Oh, and when we first saw the water. By god the water was beautiful. My expectations were very different when it came to the Keys. I thought it was mostly bridges that we would be riding on, but it was mostly riding on islands. One thing I liked was that there were so many places on the narrow islands to just pull over and enjoy the area if you wanted without paying a parking fee, unlike many other coastal areas. Oh, and we saw an endangered Key Deer on the road while we headed down. A woman was a couple feet away taking a picture when we rode by. Sadly for her, we spooked the deer and it bucked up and headed off.
It was a short day of riding and we reached Key West in time for a late lunch/early dinner. We had no idea where to go but I knew I wanted to try some conch and both of us wanted to try authentic key lime pie. The Blond Giraffe which supposedly made awesome pie was closed. According to reviews The Raw Bar down by the piers was pretty good. It wasn’t. The conch fritters just tasted like turkey stuffing. I couldn’t tell what conch tasted like, and the conch was incredibly rubbery. It was like chewing on a rubber band, but harder. The pie was pretty good. I liked the consistency; almost a custard and jello combination. It was very pale yellow which I suppose is natural, but I was expecting a bit more of a lime taste. Outside of the restaurant, before we went in, we met a long hair, bearded young guy who liked our bikes. He had seen Long Way Round with Ewen McGregor and wanted to do something similar as well. He was also an Apache pilot before. Nice guy. Overall the North/East edges of the island were super-commercialized and seemed to be only for boat people.
The Home Depot on Key West had to have the worst selection of nuts and bolts I’ve ever seen so we couldn’t get what Mike’s bike needed, and the local hardware store was closed. We also got the stink eye from the guy at the exit of the Home Depot, thinking we stole something. You know us bikers, a bunch of unlawful hooligans!
First thing about the southernmost point that I should point out is that it’s not actually the southernmost point. I tried to get to the actual point after looking at the map and it turns out that it’s occupied by a part of the Naval Air Station in Key West. So civilians can’t get to the actual southernmost point and unfortunately I don’t have a current IRR ID. The civilian point was a little unimpressive and I thought the landing that it was on would be bigger. On the plus side, we saw a whole bunch of chickens running around like wild animals. Apparently that’s a thing on Key West. On the way back to the campground we took the southern side of the island and I’m glad we did. The southern side is gorgeous, less commercial and actually has beaches for people without boats.
I think that the night of sleep in the hammock, right by the water with a cool ocean breeze and a rustling of palm leaves, might have been the best night of sleep ever. It was amazing to lay back in the hammock and see the moon with a palm leaf silhouette right above me.
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