Stormy weather

We sent out the word yesterday to all of the subs working on site that the job would be closed down all day today because of the approaching tropical storm Ernesto. Some of the guys approached me to see if they could swing a deal for me to let them in to work because they needed the hours, and some tried to convince me to keep the job closed down for the rest of the week so that they could have an extra long Labor Day weekend.

I drove over to the labor hall to pick up checks for our carpenters last night - they were working late securing the building and the office would be closed before they got done, and several of these guys need to get paid every day in order to have money for food and a place to sleep. All of those guys wanted to come back to work today.

The Popeye's restaurant in Perrine was busier than usual last night, given the number of hungry tourist families heading north on US 1 out of the Keys and the locals grabbing a bite on their way home from work. I wanted to feed the crew working late at the jobsite, so I ordered 4 eight-piece boxes, and the clerk laughed and told me I'd better be ready to wait my sorry ass around for a half hour, ordering that much all at one time. She twisted off entirely when I asked if it would faster to get 8 four-piece boxes. I ended up getting a couple of sacks of hamburgers from Wendy's.

There were lines a quarter mile long last night at most every gas station I saw.

The Keys are under a stage 2 mandatory evacuation, which means all non-residents are required to leave. Driving in to work this morning, I passed at least a dozen pickup trucks hauling flats boats heading south on US 1. Do the snook bite better in a storm?

Dawn at the jobsite, coffee on the back porch of the trailer with a couple of superintendents. The talk centers around Jaime's new pickup truck and Mark's upcoming trip to Utah & Wyoming. Everybody's got shutters to put up at their houses, so I reckon we oughta get our odds and ends done so folks can head out early before it gets crazy out there.


Coming home from work in the rain this afternoon I passed a guy on a bicycle heading south on the stretch, 10 miles south of Florida City and 10 miles north of Key Largo. He had on the cycling tights, brightly colored jersey, wild helmet, etc. It looked like he was having a great time.

I wonder if he's going fishing or has shutters to put up?

Battened down and secured

She's as prepared as I can get her. The hatches are battened down, the mainsail's off the boom and stowed in the v-berth as is the bimini, and she's holding on a new 30 pound super hooker danforth type anchor with 35 feet of 3/8" galvanized chain and about 120 feet of 5/8" nylon rode (in addition to the 35 pound plow with similar chain and rode that's her regular mooring hook). As long as none of the other boats in the anchorage break free and foul her anchor she'll be able to take up to Cat 2 without any trouble. As long as Ernesto passes to the west she'll be in protected water. If the wind gets up over 125 mph all bets are off, of course.

Setting the new anchor and getting the boat secured kicked my ass today. I'll be glad when this crud is gone.....

Setting anchors with the crud...

So, I hadn't checked on tropical storm Ernesto since Friday afternoon, when it looked like he was gonna skirt the western end of Cuba and head into the central Gulf. At the time, the Keys were outside the 5 day cone of death projection put out by the good folks at the national hurricane center. From past experience I should have known that meant we were likely to get a direct hit. Very seldom do hurricanes follow those long range forecasts, say 5 days out or longer, so I should have started thinking about preparations on Friday.

Not that I was thinking very well in the latter half of last week, let me remind you. I was so focused on fending off the attack of the snot monster that I didn't really think about where Ernesto might end up.

After studying the 3 day track forecast this morning it looks like it would be a good idea to move Reprieve back to the protected anchorage she was in last year. So I'm off to West Marine to get new anchor line and a snubber. Look for film at eleven.....

On the road with the crud...

Well, after three days of laying around the house trying to get past this cold or flu or whatever-thuh-heck without getting to feeling much better, I got cabin fever this afternoon and decided I may as well get out of the house for a little while. Next thing you know, I'm in Islamorada, so I stop to take a few snaps of the hurricane monument. Back in the car, and all of a sudden I'm in Marathon pulling on a smoothie from the 7 Mile sub shop and ambling the aisles of the used book store. Who knew there was a published collection of Exquisite Corpse selections? Having come this far, I figured it was only reasonable that I cruise on down to Key West and head for Turtle Kraals to get some conch chowder. Stuff's good for a cold, 'specially if you load it up with Tabasco. Refreshed and fortified, but still a bit stuffy in da noggin' despite putting nearly a half-bottle of tabasco in my bowl of chowder, I did a bit of a Duval crawl with the camera. I wandered up and down Duval and along a few side streets. It was wet and drizzly, so I wrapped the camera in a grocery bag and took some shots between the drizzles. Click on this link and let me know what you think.

PS....I just previewed the photos and realized that there isn't a single person in any of them, other than the figures in the mural. Odd.....it was a fairly busy day, you know, Saturday afternoon in Key West, and I didn't consciously try to avoid people when I was framing the shots. Maybe it was vampire weekend and they just didn't show up on film?

The crud

I've been on my back for the last few days, fighting a jumbo case of the crud. Screaming sore throat, evil headache, wracking cough. Normally I can push through these kinds of things without too much disruption to my daily routine, but this has really kicked my ass. Two solid days of napping on the couch has helped, though, and I'm gonna try to lay low today, too. Sad to admit, but I feel like a slacker if the sun's up and I'm not at work.

Anyway....I've got enough energy today to read a book, which is more than I can say for the last two days.

Before I go, here are some recent photos.














Later.

Sunday night thunderstorm

Hey. A big thunderstorm rolled across the island this evening, and it sent several lightning bolts sizzling out of the sky and into the mangrove jungle in the backyard as it was making its way south. The thunderclaps shook the house and rattled the windows, scaring a dozen or so small geckos out of their hiding places and onto the living room ceiling. They huddled near the ceiling fan, and it almost looked like they were discussing what to do next. I had been half asleep under a blanket on the futon reading a Tim Dorsey novel at the time, and the odd sight of the upside down lizard congregation and the sudden deafening jolt from the thunder had me a little disoriented, I think, because for a moment it wasn't clear to me which way was up. The moment passed, of course, and as the little monsters slinked back into their crevices I got up to watch the storm. This one was powerful but compact, and the thunderhead is heading offshore with its light and sound show now, leaving behind a steady rain. I opened up the sliding door, cranked open a few windows, and as I write this I'm savoring the cool breeze sweeping through the house.

News from bigdogland is that I got certified (along with 3 other people from the job) as an American Heart Asssociation CPR/AED/1st aid trainer this weekend, so I'll be able to train other folks in the company on this stuff. Part of the training included teaching a class of about 10 people with an instructor monitoring the process. I was pretty nervous when we first got started, and although I loosened up fairly quickly it reinforced my respect for those of you out there who do now or have in the past had to get in front of classes and teach for a living day in and day out. You know who you are, too, so don't try to get all modest and it ain't no big deal about it, either, OK?

By the way, and not to get up on the soapbox, but have you taken my advice and taken a CPR class? Why not? Take a few hours on a Saturday morning and go to a class somewhere. Give yourself the skills that could help you give someone a second chance.

Speaking of the miracle of life, congratulations to Val and Aaron on the arrival of Lorenzo. With such artistic, intelligent, caring parents he's destined to be someone special.

And, speaking of the miracle of life, but on a completely different tangent, here's a little video that will probably put a smile on your face. Every house should have some combination of kids, dogs, and cats, I think.

Well, it's bed time and I've gotta scoot. Good night, everybody.

I'm Gonna Dance

Hey friends. When you've had a long day slogging through the daily grind at your job, struggled to gain the upper hand on the weeds marching into the garden, fought back tears over the madness coming through in the daily news, or are feeling a bit low for any reason or no reason, take the Bigdog's advice and click here.

Storm clouds

Well....here we are on the first day of August, running up on the Dog Days, and our first real storm of the season is gathering itself off the Leeward Islands. Welcome to the world, Trop Storm Chris! Too soon for the weather service folks to tell for sure where this one's going, but the old timers here in the Keys have already started spreading the word that this one could have our number. It's looking like Chris is going to drop into the "slot", the narrow slice of deep water in the Puerto Rico trench that angles northwest from the Leewards between Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Cuba to the south and the islands of the Bahamas to the north. Local folklore has it that storms following this track build slowly as they move across the deep and relatively cool waters of the trench, and then quickly gain speed and strength when they reach the warm shallows of the Bahama banks. The mountains on the big islands to the south tend to steer these storms along a path that takes them right smack over the southern tip of Florida.

The big hurricane of 1926 that wiped out the fledgling tourist settlement of Miami Beach with a raging storm surge came down the slot. A couple of years later the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 that ruined Mr. Flagler's choo choo and killed nearly 450 people was a slotter. It wiped upper and lower Matecumbe Keys clean - every building, road, tree and blade of grass was swept away under a fifteen foot high wall of water pushed out of the Gulf Stream by the sudden fury of a tempest that went from tropical storm to Cat 5 hurricane strength in the 80 or so miles from Cay Sal to Lower Matecumbe. In 1945 a "minor" hurricane came out of the slot and brushed the north end of Key Largo before wrecking Homestead and south Miami in a preview of the damage that would be caused by the non-slot trajectoried Hurricane Andrew. Donna in 1960 was the last big storm to launch itself out of the slot and through the Keys, and the locals are feeling like we've been too lucky for too long. Rita passed us by safely to the south a couple of seasons ago as it took a leisurely cruise through the Gulf before bashing Texas and Louisiana.

Overdue. Everybody's a little nervous already, and this one's still at least 5 days out. I stopped at Captain Jack's for a cold one after work tonight, and you don't have to listen too long at the bar to hear the polar opposite opinions of the new generation of Keys residents that have multi-million dollar houses and yachts to worry about and the old time conchs who enjoy more modest accomodations about whether having the wind and the sea wipe the islands bare again would be a disaster or a blessing. Catastrophe or catharsis, depending on your particular perspective.

We, of course, have a whirlwind of activity at the site right now, not only in prep for the coming weather but also in response to the growing, and somewhat contradictory, pressures we're getting from the Owner to get done as quickly as possible and the demands from the boss that we make a bunch o' cash. Folks on all sides are in a panic, knowing that their indecision or interference in the past is catching up, and everyone seems to be so busy scapegoating that there just ain't much productive work going on.

Fear and loathing on the jobsite, so to speak. For me, I've got to admit that most of the time now there are thoughts running through my head about whether or not I want to ride this storm out, and if I were to decide to bail out and head for higher ground before the real shit storm hits whether that would be a sign of prudent self-preservation or cowardly desertion. Tragedy or triumph? All in the way you look at it, I guess. There was a point in one of the meetings today where even the hint of one more "what the hell were you thinking" was going to be enough to push me over the edge and out the door. Luckily, I guess, I got so pissed off after a while that my blood pressure spiked up and the corpuscular storm surge breaking on the scarred shores of my brain drowned out most of what was being said.

Woooo-Saaahhhhhhhhhh..........

Anyway, where was I going with all this? Oh yeah...TS Chris. Hope you don't grow up to be a hurricane, little buddy. But if you do, I guess there are worse destinations in this part of the world than Key Largo for an early August Dog Day hurricane. Spare the poor children in Haiti and Cuba, and think about a little island renewal in Monroe County, OK?