wender bender: Sep 22, 2009

in bermuda i suffered what for me is an extremely rare traveling causality: i left an AYCJ shirt, a pair of underwear and a pair of sox behind (i'd left them out on the balcony to dry). i wanted to replace them and headed to a nearby shopping mall complex. ideally, i wanted to replace the AYCJ with a ron jon long sleeve, but they had only three or four styles -- all too expensive and none of them to my liking.

instead we headed a couple blocks away to the super target.

while there i also bought a small storage bin to share a trick with you, dear reader ... i'll do laundry.

what you do is:
* put your dirty clothes in a bucket
* add detergent (i use citronella camp suds because it's biodegradeable)
* fill with water
* drive half the distance you're traveling for the day
* dump the soapy/dirty water
* fill with clean water for the rinse cycle
* dump at your distination
* wring and hang your clothes to dry

i've used this technique dozens of times, including my trip in a land rover throughout morocco (where i had clean clothes every day for weeks without ever having to stop and do laundry).

where in the hell did i get this idea? where i get all my best travel tips -- the great american authors ... this one was used by john steinbeck in "travels with charley."

clothes are in the washer/rental car

water sources are remarkably easy to find. most gas stations (and nearly all convenience stores) will have a spigot.

i'm washing the clothes now really as more of a way of showing off to you, dear reader. i don't really have to do this now (especially when i could just wash in machines as i catch up here) ... but when time comes for the cruise, this will be the way i do laundry the entire time i'm on board.

we're headed to the keys today (for an odd reason you'll see in a second) and along the way stopped at the captain's tavern (a restaurant we'd *just* missed searching for last night -- we found their seafood market closed and didn't realize they had a true restaurant out back).

it was lobster day, two for $30, so that's what i had. my accomplice had salmon roasted on a cedar plank, a dish so good that it actually created a frightening form of temporary insanity in my accomplice.

and then we headed to the florida keys. our quest wasn't to see the setting of the sun on key west, but rather glimpse some key deer. one of the odd pieces of trivia about me is i'm a huge wildlife fan -- in fact, i have a lifetime membership in the national wildlife federation (i bought it for $500 in college, when i only had $525 to my name). anything endangered interests me and even though i've seen them twice before, i wanted another go.

(the road down to the keys)

(one of several bridges)

as far as anyone knows, the entire endangered population of the world are on big pine key and no name key (although a few have been moved recently to other keys). about the size of a large german shepard, the world population of this sub-species of white tailed deer (less than 1,000) could probably be swept away forever by a decent-sized hurricane.

we arrived to big pine just at dusk and immediately saw a spectacular buck. unfortunately i was driving in traffic and couldn't get a good shot of it ... but cruising around that immediate area we saw about a dozen individual animals and i did manage to get a couple of almost decent shots, although the light was nearly gone.

(the noise you see in these photos is coming from me using picnick to try and make them more clear -- notice how tall the deer is relative to the thigh-high picket fence [and no, it doesn't have five legs].)

as it grew dark we went over to a short wildlife trail in a area that, technically, had closed when the sun went down ... we saw fireflies(!!!) and i got a couple interesting pix.

it's nearly dark here -- this is a 60 second exposure with no photoshop

60 second exposure

60 second exposure ... notice the wind blowing the branches further away -- makes it look like a near-focus shot, but it's not.

we stopped at butterfly, a highly recommended restaurant on marathon. i had a blackened mahi-mahi sandwich (they're still bold enough to occasionally call it by the original name, "dolphin fish," in some places here).

for dessert my accomplice and i had a flour-less chocolate cake and a piece of extremely modified key lime pie.

i write this to you from a hotel room draped with drying clothes.

extra pix, like always:

(heavily over-driven -- these are actually red balls on a white sidewalk ... i have no idea why my camera decided to lose its mind here, but i liked the pic.)

the red-eye in means the same thing as always ... i don't get a full day of travel, i get about half.

hitting the ground about noon, we had a good barbecue lunch then found a hotwire hotel in fort lauderdale (with internet) for $40 nearby.

pulled pork and brisket (w/ loaded baked potato)

i had a bunch of writing to catch-up on and wanted to shave and shower.

that burned through things to the evening. we headed out to have a spectacular meal at oceanaire -- scallops wrapped in neuske's bacon and lump crabcakes. you know i was hungry because i forgot to take a picture.

but if your retinas need burning, fear not. afterward we went to miami beach. i won't yap, i'll give you a ton of pix.