Since I've lived in Key Largo I haven't ridden my bike nearly as much as I did in Denver, mostly because there aren't as many interesting and scenic places to ride but partly because I'm a lazy-ass and can find things like not having much to look at while I ride to use as an excuse for not getting on the bike. I ride a mountain bike, after all, and I miss the downhill thrills and panoramic views you get on the trails west of Denver, as well as the joy of being able to ride for miles totally isolated from car traffic on the Cherry Creek and Platte River greenways. Key Largo, in contrast, has one road - US Highway One, known here in the Keys as the Overseas Highway - and it's a loud and busy dead flat straight line four lane with strips of restaurant and retail shops on both sides punctuated here and there with short stretches of untamed coastal hammock. Which isn't the most visually captivating environment to ride in - the beauty of the hammock, which is made up mostly of mahogany and lignum vitae trees, is hidden by the litter strewn mass of strangler fig and privet that lines the edge of the bike path, and once you've seen one tacky tourist shop or fake pirate themed restaurant you've pretty much seen them all. The other option is to cruise the neighborhoods off US1, which are nice and shady, but since the island is only about a half-mile wide at best and there are only a couple hundred yards of solid ground on either side of the highway in most places the diversions into the neighborhoods are very brief. Which means the only place to get in much distance is up and down the asphalt bikeway that parallels the highway.
So, in order to make my rides as interesting as possible, nearly every time I have ridden down here I've headed for a place where there are boats to look at. My house is only a couple of blocks from US 1, and three miles south, in "downtown" Key Largo, there are a couple of marinas where there are always sailboats to look at and two great places to be able to stop and gaze out on the ocean or the bay. Normally I head up Sound Drive to US 1, hook a left onto the bikeway and pedal past the State Park and K-Mart to Jasmine Drive, which leads down to Key Largo Harbor Marina where there is always a nice assortment of boats of various sizes and conditions in the yard and boats from all over the world tied up in the transient slips along the seawall there. From there it's about a mile through the Port Largo neighborhood to the marina at the Pilot House which also has lots of ocean-going sailboats and is the home port for the majority of what's left of Key Largo's commercial fishing fleet. It's always cool to watch the boats come in and unload the day's catch. On the way back I usually head down Marina Avenue to where it ends, right on the Atlantic with a million mile view out past the reef, suck in the ocean breeze and watch the changing kaleidoscope colors of the sea grass, sand and coral through the crystal-clear water in the shallows there at the end of the street.
All of which, of course, is great stuff for a dreamer and boat freak like me, and with a round-trip of about ten miles it's a ride that's just long enough to get a good sweat going and thrash out some of the frustrations and worries from work without pushing myself over the cardiac failure threshold.
That being said, for the last year or so I haven't had much of a desire to ride until recently. I've felt the lack of physical exercise as much as a longing for the joy of riding building up, so over the last month or so I've been riding at least once on the weekend, sometimes even on weekday nights, always taking the same route, down to the marinas to be in the presence of boats. And almost always thinking about work, or boats, or other details of my daily routine.
But this morning, after I had finally gotten myself out of bed, into a cup of coffee and onto the bike, I veered from the familiar path, turned right when I got up to US1, and headed north.
Three miles north of my neighborhood the highway forks at Garden Cove, with US1 narrowing down to two lanes and heading left and then north along the west side of Little Card Sound. The right fork is County Road 905, and it heads north, winding its way through the largest remaining stand of West Indies tropical hardwood hammock left in the US, ending up at the millionaire's enclave at Ocean Reef on the northern tip of the island of Key Largo. At Ocean Reef you can hang a left and take Card Sound Road across the bridge at the narrows between Card Sound and Little Card Sound and rejoin US1 at Florida City just south of Homestead.
I've come this way a couple of times on the bike but a while back swore I'd never do it again....the bike path ends at the 905 fork, and going north on US1 is suicide with the construction going on for the new bridge at Jewfish Creek and the road widening that's got the entire road torn up for the 18 or so miles between the bridge and where the road widens back to four lanes in Florida City. And taking the CR 905 fork is equally as dangerous because it has absolutely no extra asphalt right of the white line for bikers to cling to for shelter from the folks speeding north toward Miami hoping that they can shave a few seconds off their trip home by taking this route instead of suffering through the traffic slowdowns on US1 associated with all the construction there......
But, today, for some reason, I took the right fork and pedaled up 905.
Most of the north end of Key Largo has been set aside in a pair of conservation areas - the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge and the Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park - so there is no retail development and very little residential development. Just a long gently winding highway that's calm and quiet when there's no traffic and a white-knuckly nightmare when cars whiz by your elbow doing eighty-five.
When the state and some conservation groups started buying up the land in this area starting back in the '70's there had been some luxury residential / marina developments started, and one of the biggest was called Port Bougainvillea, a sprawling community that was going to have hundreds of houses and townhomes clustered around a central marina / restaurant / clubhouse complex with a boat basin and canal out to the ocean. Most of the roads had been put in and the canal and boat basin had been dug and some of the townhouses and the marina / clubhouse building had been started when the area was put aside as a preserve. The entrance to the development has been kept as a parking area for visitors to the park, and the first half-mile or so of the entrance road is available for public access as a walking / biking trail. Beyond that, however, everything is set aside as preserve. There are hundreds of acres in this section that are more or less off-limits to the public unless you get a back-country pass from the State Park, but I've slipped past the gate a couple of times and ridden the dirt roads and trails back there. I think going back there was my intention when I headed north on 905, but by the time I got to the park entrance I had already fallen into the comfortable oblivion of a long ride and was thoroughly enjoying what has become a way too unfamiliar feeling of one-ness with the bike and the road.
I used to ride a lot. A whole lot. An almost obsessively whole lot. Starting when I was what, ten years old, maybe? And by the time I was about thirteen I had a Raleigh Grand Prix and could enjoy the freedom of being able to get on the bike and ride away from the neighborhood and into town or over to the university or out to the state park. It was on those first long rides I discovered that watching the paving whiz by under the wheels and feeling my arms, legs, and lungs adjust to the bumps and hills and headwinds can be hypnotic....the world disappears into a grey fog sixty feet ahead of the bike and all that you are really consciously aware of is the sound of your own breathing....there's a part of your brain that keeps track of traffic noise and such for survival purposes, but it goes about those tasks in the background, the way that your brain normally regulates your breathing when you're not on the bike and busy living in the busy bustle of the here and now. Daydreaming takes the place of thinking about the riding, and after a while, when the conditions are just right and you lose your conscious focus on everything, the daydreams fuzz out into just a smooth hum of nothing. Rider’s trance, I've heard it called. And that riders trance has, I believe, been my mechanism, my brand of meditation, I guess, for working out the worries, griefs, and phobias that have come with living a varied and adventurous life over the past thirty some-odd years. And I've had my share of shit to work out, as, I guess, we all have, although the details are different for each of us and we all have our own ways of working it out. Even those that end up on the nightly news dressed in a clown suit running down the middle of the road with a high-powered rifle shooting at streetlights and road signs are, in their own way, trying to work things out....but that's a story for a different day, right?
So, anyway, I found myself getting into a good rhythm in my ride up 905. The morning air here in the Keys this time of year smells like rain even when the sky is clear, and the sun, which was just starting to peek over the tree line, cast a warm yellow glow on everything but wasn't baking the highway yet. The traffic was fairly light, and I was starting to feel my focus changing, the sounds of the road fading into the background and the sound and feeling of my lungs filling my mind and taking over more and more of my awareness. In my mind’s eye the world faded into grey beyond my nose and elbows, and my mind travelled a million miles away and into a series of Mitty-like scenarios where I'm sailing off into the horizon on my new boat (which is another story but I need to finish getting this one out before I can get into that....). The occasional passing car would sort of bring me back, and when I'd start focusing on pedaling and glancing at the speedo I'd remind myself that what's important is the breathing, not the pedaling, forget about your arms and legs and focus on your lungs and pretty soon the meandering trail of daydreams will start again and after a while disappear into the grey.....and pretty soon I fell deep into that mindless rolling blur, totally oblivious to everything.......
I don't know how long I had been in that groove when I heard Mikki's voice, and saw her there in my mind's eye in her overalls and tank top, all big smile and blonde hair.....
Not long after my Mom died I saw her in my dreams at night. At first the dreams were almost identical - I'm sitting with her in a familiar place, talking about something unimportant, and she's alive and happy, smiling and talking, and then something happens to cause me to turn and look behind me, and when I turn back towards her we're back in her hospital room and she's gone, dead and quiet......
After a while the dreams changed, and I'd run into her in passing at the grocery store or in the hall at school, and she'd smile at me and tell me I was a good boy and not to worry because everything's going to be OK.
Losing Mom was a terrifying, isolating thing for me, but seeing her in my dreams so soon after she passed, even the scary first ones, was a comfort. When Grandpa Barden passed away it was the same, although in those dreams I would only see him in passing in a crowd, and it was always after he'd passed by that I'd get the feeling like, hey, wasn't that Grandpa Barden? But when I turned to look for him he was always gone. Every now and then I dream about seeing Grandma Barden, almost always surrounded by kids and always with smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye. And when I see Grandma and Grandpa Allen in my dreams there's always football and potato salad involved, although we don't do much talking......
I'm not a religious person, and I don't think that these dreams are anything more than that...dreams. The subconscious mind's way of sorting out things that have gotten twisted up deep down in your head. But they do give me a real sense of.....comnfort?
Mikki and I had a great, wonderful, complex, tormented life together. We couldn't stay away from each other and we both drove the other one nuts. And when Amanda called and told me Mikki was gone I couldn't believe it...it was too soon, we needed more time.....
And since that September afternoon there hasn't been a day that I haven't thought about her, about us, about what coulda woulda shoulda happened for her and with us. But every time I've started to have those thoughts I've had to pull myself back because I've felt like I was standing at the edge of a bottomless pit of hopelessness and despair and if I wasn't careful I'd get sucked down and never come back up. And not being able to really think about her and deal with all of the regret and sense of loss that I have has made it impossible for me to fully deal with this. I was a mess in Pocatello at her memorial, have been no help or comfort to Amanda or Laci since coming back to Florida, and feel like I've sleptwalked through my days wondering why things turned out this way...and, I think, I've been hating myself because even though I have pictures of her, and Katydog here with me, and RubyGene in the driveway, all providing constant reminders of her and who she was I have a harder time every day remembering the sound of her voice, her laugh, her clumsy, klutzy grace; but still, almost every day, there's something that happens to remind me of her and all of a sudden I'm right back on the brink of collapsing into that pit of gloom and despair and it has been impossible to find a feeling of peace about any of this. There are a dozen or more drafts of elegies to her that I've started and abandoned, attempts to use the keyboard to work out how I'm feeling or pay tribute to her or tell her life story so everyone will know, and without exception they have all been useless........I've tried talking to friends but can't stay composed enough to really think about what I want to say, what I've needed to say, and every time I've ended up just spouting a bunch of insincere superficial BS.
And no matter how much I've wished and wanted to see her again, for her to make an appearance again somehow, it hasn't happened, and god it has hurt to want that so badly and not get any glimmer of her in any way in any of my dreams.
But today, despite all that, I wasn't surprised to see her and hear her voice in the bright early morning sun, didn't feel anything other than a calm sense of comfort and relief to see her again. And it was brief, I think, like a dream, and writing this now I don't recall anything about what she said except the first words she spoke - "you do much better when you don't think so much, Bigdog" - and something funny at the end, before that dream world popped and the world of traffic and trees came roaring back.
I realized then that I was sobbing, pedaling like mad, nearly keeping up with an SUV towing a pair of jetskis ahead of me.
I also realize now, after seeing her face and hearing her voice so vividly, like in a dream, and taking the time to try to write down what I was able to take from the experience, that I've needed to know that what's important isn't just me letting her go.......what's really important is understanding that it's OK for her to have let go of me, of us, of this world, of all of the joys and pains and sorrows that were her life here.
And right now, although I can barely see the keyboard through the tears, I know everything's gonna be OK.
I love you, Sweetie. I'll see you in my dreams.
And, I promise, I will try to remember to wear my sunscreen.....
Saturday was a sad day at the Crazy Cave, friends and neighbors....I rowed out to Reprieve for the last time that morning under a clear blue sky. I've known for a while now that with my move to Orlando there's just no way I would be able to give her the attention she needs. For the last several weeks I've been looking for a new skipper for her, preferrably someone who has kids and loves to sail but just doesn't have the means to get into a boat. With the limited time I'll have in the next three years I'll be spending time on Moon getting her ready for The Trip, and I just can't let Reprieve sit on her mooring without being there to do the maintenance she needs and keep her in good shape....which was made abundantly clear when I got out to her. The pirates had been there some time over the last two weeks, broken the hasp on the companionway, and looted her. They took the outboard, the VHF, the CD player, the batteries, and one of the solar panels. They made off with the portable depth finder and anemometer, the inverter, boat hook, tool boxes, compass, barometer, clock, light fixtures, life jackets, charts, dishes, food, and rum. Damn it they took the rum! They also took a couple of changes of clothes I had stashed in the hanging locker and all the back issues of Latitudes & Attitudes magazine. And left beer cans and cigarrette butts in the cockpit. It hurts, man. It really hurts. It's bad enough that I'm letting her go to someone else, which, corny as it sounds, feels almost like I'm betraying her (although she's going to a good man). But for her to have been violated like this in the last days that she was in my care, after as much fun and escape as she had provided me, just ain't right. I'm not normally one to wish ill to anyone else, but I hope those bastards get drunk on that rum and fall down go boom. They did leave the sals, though. And two anchors and all of the sheets & halyards and the tiller. She still sails! And the man who's taking over her care and command is a good guy, a lifelong Keys person who will enjoy her and take care of her. I'm sure he and his kids will have many adventures on her, and she'll take good care of them along the way like she did for me. It was hard to leave her and row back to shore, but as I watched her shrinking in the distance behind me I remembered the many great sailing days, peaceful nights on the hook out in the bay, and calm afternoons sitting in the cockpit with a book or just daydreaming over the rail.....
