PirateJohn and Hurricane Michelle

Well, pholks ... ol' John's out of The Keys and, as I'm writing this, I'm sitting in an IHOP somewhere in the Greater Miami area.

You may have heard that there was bit of crappy weather bearing down on Key West. And our Buffett get together got cut short.

When the lady from the Miami Herald interviewed me in the Upper Keys, somewhere north of Islamarada, I had to tell her the truth. Coming across the Seven Mile Bridge, with very strong cross winds, a driving rain that has made me wetter than I've ever been in 25 years of motorcycling, and feeling really, really isolated on that bridge out in the middle of nuthin' but a lot of angry green water with whitecaps everywhere, I was beginning to think that I had made a pretty serious miscalculation. Where's my mother when I needed her??

Let's go back a few days, because ol' John takes hurricanes very, very seriously. How did I get myself into this mess?

The trip to Meeting of the Minds, the annual phlocking of the Parrothead Clubs, had been planned for months.

About a week ago some wag posted on one of the various Buffett-esque discussion forums that (duhhhhh ... ) the long range forecast called for rain the entire week. Some character (John raising his hand) volunteered that "that's OK ... most of the bars in Key West are enclosed and you can still get in plenty of mischief indoors in KW." Brother!

And being the perpetual CNN watcher that I am I was sorta aware that there was a hurricane south of the Keys, but hey ... that thing wasn't even in Cuba yet, right? No problem, Mon.

So there I was, taking a leisurely ride from Jacksonville, meandering down through the Keys. Having dinner at a perfectly respectable place in Islamarada, looking out over the water. And the staff were discussing plans to evacuate.

Huh?

Surely this was premature, I thought. So I finished my dinner, and rode back down the road a few miles in order to have a few Guinness at the legendary Woody's. Woody's, whose house band is the equally legendary Big Dick and the Extenders. You get the picture that Woody's is a 'restrained' place that could only exist in the Keys, right? And guess what?? The staff at Woody's was also discussing evacuating the place.

You're kidding me, right?

Nope. Someone official, somewhere was supposed to make some sort of decision
about evacuating at 6AM the next morning.

I'm doing the math and thinking that this thing is traveling so slowly that surely, SURELY I can stay until Monday AM and get out OK. Right??

Denial is a wonderful thing.

In typical style Yours Truly got to the MOTM registration at 8:30, 30 minutes before registration closed. Came strolling into the very shi-shi Wyndham Casa Marina in my red and reflective motorcycling jacket and crash resistant black pants, amidst a parting sea of Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts. ol' John has arrived!! Let the party begin, right?? (Pholks who were at MOTM are now no doubt amuzed, because the party had actually started 2 days earlier and was definitely continuing full steam ahead on Friday night with or without ol' John)

Met a few phriends, shot the breeze, and now my next stop was to claim my room at another place, Casablanca at Bogart's. When I'm in Key West I really love staying at Casablanca. Who wouldn't? They have their own, gen-U-wine Irish bar and are right on Duval Street, within staggering distance of all the other bars in the tourist district.

My key was waiting for my in the bar, since the office had long ago closed by the time that I arrived. Works for me!

The next morning I was walking by the office and innocently thought that I'd better stop in the office. Say "hi," maybe sign something, that sort of thing.

Now I haven't been quite able to figure out where the manager's from. She's a black lady, and her accent sounds to me like it's a bit Down Island with a bit of Irish brogue thrown in. Doesn't matter -- at this place the bartenders are all Irish, the asst. manager is French, the maid is Scandinavian. Hell, I feel like I'm at the UN without the bickering.

And in that lovely accent the manger greets me. "John, so good to see you again. When are you leaving??"

Now, I thought that was a bit odd. After all, I was pretty sure that I was in bed by 2AM and I could remember most of the evening, so I couldn't imagine that I had done anything wrong. Yet.

It turns out that The Powers That Be had concluded that evacuating the tourists from Key West was a smart thing. Tourists?!!?!? Surely that doesn't apply to Pirates, I thought.

Think again, Bubba.

OK, OK. Casablanca, bless their hearts, told me that I could stay one more night fer shure. I later found out that most of the guest houses around Key West told their guests to leave immediately, if not sooner.

The Casa Marina, in comparison, initially told everyone to get out, then decided that anyone who had transportation off island could stay the night but that they were to be out by 9AM the next morning. And just to reinforce the point two Greyhound buses stocked with Corona and limes and cheeseburgers in Paradise showed up to relocate the party to Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.

Meeting of the Minds was gonna shut down early, at 7PM on Saturday.

Saturday morning was beautiful. Admittedly, the water is getting high at the Southernmost marker, and more water was standing in several places in the streets. The wind was breezy, but there seemed to be plenty of time to go around town, take photos, have a coupla dozen oysters at the Half Shell Raw Bar. {sigh ...} Key West truly is Paradise.

A gent named Bill Wharton, a/k/a the Sauceboss, www.sauceboss.com, was gonna
play at Margaritaville at 10PM Saturday night. Hey, I had transportation, right? The trusty Robomantis could get me through anything I figured, and Pirates will do silly things to see good music. So one mo' night in the Keys seemed like a plan, right?

Wharton showed, and he played a great performance, and 'ol John hung around long enough to sample the famous gumbo that Bill cooks during his gig. Mon, this is wot life is all about, right?

At 2AM at the conclusion of Wharton's show 'ol John decided to get one extra beer and call it a night. That's when things began to get a bit weirder.

Very few other bars were open. And this is in a town where the bars don't close until 4AM. And where there are 180-something bars on an island 2 miles by 3 miles.

You know it's serious when Capt. Tony's is closed up tight at 2AM.

Hell, even the transvestites outside 801 South had called it a night and that place was closed.

To their credit, Upstairez, the nudie bar above Rick's and Dirty Harry's appeared to still be going strong. Gotta have priorities, I guess ;)

I stopped outside Wax, a techno dance club on a side street, and was going to go inside and get one last beer. But while standing there, trying to get out of the rain and reading the really outrageous posters at the bondage and leather supply place next door, and chatting with an especially swishy gay couple (they had some sort of electronic package installed in a new X-5 BMW SUV that made even the obviously drunken driver look like a champ when it came to parallel parking) 'ol John decided that, well ... maybe this scene was a little too high energy for me and it was time to get some sleep after all.

So I got my last beer at the perfectly respectable Bogart's Pub and crawled
into bed.

I couldn't sleep. Just as I was nodding off a phriend called at 3AM to see how I was doing ("Doing OK, until you woke me up!" I replied.) Was watching the Keys Channel, which is something that could only exist in the Keys. (Where else can you see Capt. Tony Terricino, former mayor of Key West, endorse a restaurant by saying that their balcony had a great view of Duval Street where you could watch tourists, pretty girls, and every so often the hookers?) But I couldn't sleep.

Sunday morning dawned, the roosters in Bahama Village crowed, and I got packed. And Lordy, was it raining. Raining hard. And the wind was gusting.

Not only was it raining, but there wasn't a soul in the inn. I mean, no guests, and no management. I was there by myself. This was weird. Too weird.

Around 9AM the maid shows up and she doesn't have a key to the office either. She calls the manager, I'm packed and ready to go, bike parked on the curb in front of the building in a location that, normally, you'd never get because of heavy traffic. The manager shows up, the office is opened, and bless their hearts they fix coffee for me and give me breakfast.

While waiting for the manager to show I've had a chance to survey the scene. Every so often you'll see someone walk by or bicycle by, but the whole town is deserted. The tourists are pretty much gone. Or driving by on the way out of town as I watch.

The rats have already fled the ship. Hmmmmm ...

Time to boogie.

The 24 hour restaurant (a Shoney's??) on the corner of Truman and Duval is open, but everything else is boarded up. Rolling by the Casa Marina there's just a handful of people waiting for cabs. No friends left. I stop, take a few pictures at the MOTM banners flapping in the cold rain, and keep going.

Heading out of town the wind is really, really blowing. Now that I'm getting to the parts of the island that aren't as sheltered as the area where I had been staying the wind is intense and water is standing in deep pools in the right hand lane.

And in true tourist form it's obvious that most of the drivers are changing lanes without looking where-the-hell they are going. In the rain they cannot see my motorcycle despite the extra four driving lights. Lovely. I feel rather vulnerable, thank you.

As soon as you leave Key West and get a few miles into the next island, Stock Island, there are some pretty rural parts of the Keys. And out there I was feeling very, very isolated. The winds were blowing like mad, the rain was pelting me, and there wasn't any shelter.

And every time you crossed a low bridge things got spooky. There was no wind
break, and no trees around those bridges, and with the Atlantic on your right and the Gulf of Mexico on your left that green water was lookin' really, really angry.

Think the low bridges were bad? Try one of the taller bridges that allowed boats to pass underneath. Whew! Those suckers were definitely windy when you get up there on a motorcycle!

And I rode on.

After about 30-40 miles I came upon a tall bridge rising out of the gloom. And an open convenience store just before the bridge. I decided to stop and have a smoke.

A quick survey indicated that my state of the art Brand "A" riding suit was leaking. I was wet inside the suit, and I've never seen that happen in the six years that I've been using Brand A. My BMW-labeled, Gore-tex lined boots (recent overall winners of some motorcycle magazine's water-proofness testing) were soaked and I felt like I had about half a cuppa water in the right boot. I presumed that meant that a lot of my luggage was soaked as well. Damn, it's wet!

All of the locals at the convenience store said that they didn't exactly envy me. Really fawkin' lovely. At least my cigars were still dry. And my wind resistant, water resistant lighter, a holdover from my sailing days, worked. Thank God for modern
luxuries.

Back on the bike, and across that next bridge. Traffic is crawling along, I'm riding in 4th gear, and at some point I realize that as much trouble as I'm having on a motorcycle that tractor trailer in the front of the line isn't having it any easier than I am. And those cars are getting blown around quite a bit, too.

Man, this is nasty stuff!

On down through the rest of the Lower Keys, the journey continues. I was mildly amuzed to realize that, for once, I didn't have to slow down in order to meet the speed limit whilst going through the Key Deer Preserve on Big Pine Key. No deer to be seen, and no traffic cops either This is the only place that I've ever seen that has Federal traffic cops, so you know they are serious! Everyone has enough sense to get out of the rain, except for me, I suppose.

I keep watching my GPS and wondering when I'd get onto the Seven Mile Bridge. The Seven Mile Bridge is just what it sounds like: a long, narrow 2-lane concrete bridge that stretches 7 miles between keys and connects with the southern side of Marathon. There's a shoulder ... sort of ... but it's not wide at all. The Seven Mile Bridge is quite a piece of engineering and is featured in many films, a Bond film of several years ago coming to mind as well as that great scene in True Lies where terrorists destroy a section of the bridge and a car goes into the drink. Today, I definitely don't need to think about that scene. The Seven Mile Bridge puts the traveler into the middle of some seriously deep ocean water between the keys and today Mother Nature ain't happy.

I was NOT looking forward to that crossing. I'm watching Mr. GPS and he indicates that I've about 10 miles to the town of Marathon. And the moving map display shows some seriously open water just ahead. So I start lookin' for a place to stop and have another smoke. Maybe even try to wait and see if there's a break in the weather.
The first gas station that I come up to is boarded up tight. And so is the second one. Neither one even has any shelter where I could get out of the storm.

And there it is. Curving in front of me is the majestic Seven Mile Bridge, mostly hidden in the rain and gloom.

I stop, and look around. There's no place to get out of the torrential rain and tropical storm winds. And in my mind there's no turning back.

Onward.

It's funny what you think of when you're genuinely scared. I remember calculating that I only had to endure this hell for about 10 minutes, more or less, if I could maintain 45 miles per hour. I also remember thinking that, if I survived, I'd have some good stories to tell. Then I began to think about my mother. I told that one to the reporter as a joke, but there was truth to the tale. Inside my helmet, as I rode across that bridge, there was a big grin on my face as I remember thinking how, in
simpler and younger times, all you had to do was call for Mother and Mom could make everything all right. Damn ... I wish that she could see me now!

Gotta concentrate now. Every blast from the storm blew me toward the yellow line, threatening to put me in the wrong lane and risk a head on collision with whatever might be coming out of the gloom. And every correction to the right threatened to be an over correction that could potentially put me over that knee-high retaining wall and into the Atlantic Ocean. Wearing a heavy suit and miles from shore there wasn't much chance of survival if I went into that water 50-75 feet below.

The guy behind me decides to pass. That's OK -- he's only the second vehicle to pass me since I left Key West -- but I'm thinking that he picked a crappy time to pass, on this bridge and all. He gets around me, and then he gets hit with a gust of wind, waffles all over the lane, and all of a sudden he's not going any faster than I am. Nice.

Maybe 5 more miles to go. Gotta concentrate.

3.5 miles onto the bridge; I'm halfway there. The guy in front of me is cruising along and has opened a gap between us. Then all of a sudden it looks like he's slowing down.

He is! He's pulling on the shoulder! And there are flashing red and blue lights coming through the gloom. What the hell?!!?!?

Are they blocking the bridge?? Has there been an accident??

The lights turn out to be a convoy of coppers heading southbound. Several cop cars, several sport utilities, and a school bus painted in the colors of the local sheriff. I guess they are either taking a bunch of cops into the Lower Keys, or else going to evacuate prisoners. But one thing's for sure -- we don't need to be sitting on the frickin' bridge watchin' the parade go by!

{Saturday night I was joking with the Key West cops doing security at MOTM
that they really, REALLY didn't want to arrest any of us on the eve of a hurricane 'cause they'd have to evacuate us. They agreed with me.}

So we get moving again, and now it's a line of cars heading northbound. And I'm sandwiched in the middle. I just hope, if I fall, that one of those 'expert drivers' doesn't run right over me in the poor conditions.

Near the north end of the bridge there's a raised portion so that sailboats can get underneath. So we head up, into the gloom, into the increasing crosswinds, and there, in the distance, I can see Marathon.

Man, I was so happy to get onto solid ground at Marathon, and to find a convenience store where I could hang out for awhile. For the last several minutes I had begun to shiver uncontrollably due to a combination of cold, wet, and just all-around fear that I was going to make a fool out of myself. Time to get the electric vest out, drink some coffee, and have that smoke.

I was chatting with the clerk at the store and he commented that he lived behind the store. In a termite infested mobile home that he hated and wasn't sure that it would survive the winds that we had, much less what might be on the way. He didn't have a car, and so he couldn't drive away. And the shelters wouldn't take cats, and he couldn't abandon his pets. I could relate to the part about the cats. At times like this you feel so helpless.

I wished him well. A gal came into the store and said that the hospital where she worked was being evacuated as we spoke. Later I was to read about this: the more
serious patients were transported, via an Air National Guard C-130, to Sebring in central Florida. A team form the ANG based in North Carolina flew down, during a time when no other aircraft were flying in or out of the Keys. Tough people, and the C-130 is one legendarily tough plane.

Marathon is about 40 miles north of Key West, and Islamarada is about another 40 miles. Once I had gotten to Marathon the worst was over, although there were still plenty of hairy moments between Marathon and Islamarada. A few long bridges, but nothing like what I'd already crossed.

Woody's was boarded up, and the joint that I had had lunch on Friday night was also boarded up. Just about everything in Islamarada was boarded up! Still, by this time I was 80 miles away from Key West and the weather was much better.

Down in Tavernier I ran into a young lady from the Miami Herald who interviewed me. She asked me how old I was, I told her, and with a smile on her face she told me that I was old enough to know better. Yup ... couldn't agree more. She commented on how bad the weather was. Later, the irony would hit me: I had stopped for souvenirs at the first shell place that I had seen open in two days and the weather in Tavernier was NUTHIN' compared to what I had ridden through a few miles earlier.

Sunday afternoon I continued on to Palm Beach, about 200-250 miles from Key
West and about halfway home for me. Normally I can ride from Jacksonville to Key West, or vice versa, without getting a room or sleep. But not this time. At 6PM I was struggling to stay awake and was stopping every 30 minutes or so. It was raining, hard at times, and gusting, but no where near what I had experienced earlier. But I was exhausted. And the economy motel across the street looked awfully good!

What lessons were learned from this experience? First and foremost, take hurricanes very, very seriously. This damned storm was a Cat. 4 when it hit Cuba. If it had hit Key West, and at the time that I left all predictions were that Key West would get a solid hit, then it would have killed (with a capital "K") most of those people who stayed behind. With a 15-20 ft. storm surge, and you're on an island that's about 4' above sea level at it's highest point, do the math. There's no place to go!

Secondly, it goes without saying that you don't want to be the last person to leave. At some point it's too late. Planes stop flying and lodging places close. I doubt that I ever got hit with wind gusts much over 50 mph on this trip. I've been through a Cat. 2 hurricane with steady winds of (if I recall correctly) about 100 mph and I can guarantee that it's not safe to drive in that sort of wind. You can't walk in a Cat. 2 wind. About the best you could do is to crawl on your belly. Not my idea of fun. This bugger was packin' 140 mph winds when it slammed Cuba. Let that sink in.

As things turned out the brunt of the storm unexpectedly turned eastward and
missed The Keys. They got lucky down there. Ask the good people of Charleston, SC -- when Hugo hit it was unexpected because Hugo was supposed to head north toward Wilmington, NC. Rather, Hugo took an unexpected and sharp turn to the west and walloped Charleston with little warning.

And I got lucky, too. The next morning I realized that, as the storm's pace picked up and it headed to the east, that if it had followed me into Southern Florida that it likely would have caught me during the night. I was just too tired to run any more.

The R1100GS BMW bike is a great beast for the sort of shenanigans that I get into. I was carrying a ton (not literally, but I'd guess 60-90 lbs.) of luggage in the bags, top case, and my brief case and large specially-designed duffle bag that fits onto the luggage rack where a passenger seat would normally go. None of the factory cases leaked; that duffle bag did, however, despite some really robust construction. But the bottom line is that the fuel injected, anti-lock braked GS kept running strongly and basically saved my unworthy ass. Out on the open roads the GS will run with the best of them, but when times get rough the ol' Robomantis has proven to be about as rugged as a rhino and as unpretentious as a Farmall. I was impressed ;)