Key 3

Mr. Right continues in his pursuit of an A, leaving me little chance to get near the computer for posts. Only two more weeks! Then I want to try and catch the Pompeii exhibit right before it leaves Chicago. I’ve heard they have already sold something like a hundred thousand tickets to the Tut exhibit, many to people from far away as California. Wonder if I’ll be able to see that at all?

In other news, I enjoyed the book Mixed: My Life in Black and White by Angela Nissel, author of The Broke Diaries. Very good. I see from the book jacket that she is now working as a writer for the TV comedy Scrubs and noted that is the closest she has ever come to using her medical anthropology degree.

Noticed gas prices were down a little this week – kind of a make-good from Cheney?

Here’s a Tax Law change long overdue: Allow me to declare my cars as dependents. I provide 100% of their support! If people like me WEREN’T buying gas, there’d be complaints about that too, as profits fell. To a mere 14 billion.

Back to the vacation story…

The next morning we went kayaking with Lazy Dog Tours. They really had dogs all over the premises, mostly Border Collies. After handing out life vests and paddles, our group of ten launched in a mixture of one and two person open kayaks. I’m just really glad Louise was there to do all the work, or I’d still be at the dock splashing in a circle.

Louise was ready to abandon ship five minutes into my not-so-rhythmic flailing with the oar. Only I could screw up left, right, left, right…. Thirty yards from the dock I was pooped. No way was I going to last two hours!

Fortunately all we did was paddle to the nearest Mangrove outcrop and drift along slowly looking for sea life. Whew! Thought Louise would make me sit on a sand bar and issue me a round life preserver on a rope, telling me to hitch a ride back to the marina on the next passing dolphin so she could enjoy the trip.

The guide knew his water critters, showing us a sea hare, starfish, conch, sea cucumber and horseshoe crab. A few of the paddlers were squeamish and took a pass at touching some of the slimier offerings, but not us! We couldn’t get enough of holding and photographing anything short of a sea snake. I was pretty disappointed we didn’t see any sharks. The deadly bull shark can be found in those waters, but we were so shallow (at times touching sand) there were none to be found. The guide said sometimes they saw nurse sharks (more docile; I would have ventured a touch).

No sea turtles either; they feed deeper, so not much chance of touching one of those. Nothing like admitting your loftiest goal in life is to harass sea creatures, but this seems to be a thing with me. I really want to touch wild sea turtles and sharks. Captives will do in a pinch.

We got more than our promised two hours and had a pleasant time. Some day I will have to try the whole kayak thing again, perhaps in my own craft. Nothing like capsizing to teach one how to paddle correctly.

By the time the tour ended we were famished and ended up in Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville restaurant for gulf shrimp. True to form, the place had a heck of a gift shop. The island was one big gift shop – most of it too big to fit into my suitcase. Among some of the goodies I had to leave behind: the sea turtle candle, sea turtle wall sculpture, sea turtle carved cabinet, sea turtle coffee table… you get my drift.

Locals there were in very good shape – all ages rode bicycles and looked very fit. It was easy to spot that the fat wheezy ones were tourists. I found the chickens charming and honestly didn’t see droppings on the sidewalks, so perhaps they weren’t much of a nuisance in the areas we visited. The houses were very close together, only the fanciest had yards of any sort.

We visited the Key West Aquarium, but I was disappointed it was so small. Cost $10 to get in – everything was pretty much $10, except for Hemmingway’s house, that was $11. Go figure. Had to give off an ‘exclusive’ air? No time to see everything, and I’m glad we concentrated on the animals instead. The Aquarium had a sea turtle who kept surfacing right in front of the Do Not Touch sign. Now, what genius puts her right next to the Touch Pool? This was the pool where the public was encouraged to touch everything in the display. Barely 24 inches away is ET the sea turtle looking for her dinner. I wondered just how much of a Tips Appreciated would be needed to get the guide to look the other way…but I kept my hands to myself.

Then followed a leisurely afternoon of shopping, culminating with the turtle races at Turtle Kraal’s.* It’s this dockside bar that puts little numbers on box turtles then lets them race down a wooden dragstrip for the amusement of dumb tourists like myself. I was holding a winning ticket and then had the opportunity to pick a key. If your key opened the treasure chest, you would win the money in the kitty; that night it was up to $325, but no one won that evening. We watched sunset from their upper deck and then hunted for some chocolate covered Key Lime pie (which comes on a stick, no less) and shopped yet more before heading back to the hotel.

*Former site of a turtle cannery, est. 1849. Yep. I stood where the carnage occurred.

Tomorrow: Is there a beach around here?