Marathon → Key West
Ah, first impressions. I think it might be the worst possible day to roll into an American town on Thanksgiving. I figured this was a holiday destination, so everything would be open, but it isn't, really.
Still, i wanted to quickly post to correct yesterday's comment about the road to Key West being boring. Once you leave Marathon and cross the Seven Mile Bridge, it's exactly what i hoped it would be. Which is: lots of causeways with ocean on both sides, and some lovely tropical islands that are basically just mangroves and that's it. You can see the seafloor from the road, the water is turquoise, it's beautiful. That first half of the road sucks, but the second half is alright.
Except, obviously, you're still on a highway. Even if you pull over at a state park or wildlife protection area, you are constantly hearing and smelling cars go past, so it's not near as idyllic as it seems if you just look at the pictures.
I set up camp, then headed into town to get my daiquiri. I didn't have any coffee break or lunch along the way because fucking everything was closed. On Key West, a huge chunk of the island was also closed. I went to a bar and asked for a daiquiri and they immediately were like "banana, pineapple, bla bla" like some fucking useless spring break destination. As if Ernest Hemingway never lived here at all. What the fucking fuck. Even when i said, dude it's just rum, lime and simple syrup, he's like "so what flavor syrup do you want?" Jesus Christ, what a disappointment. I thought this town was going to be serious fucking cocktail bars, not fruity nonsense that you can get at literally any trash holiday destination anywhere in the whole damn world.
But that's what this place is, a trash holiday destination, for rich people who are roleplaying the lifestyle of not being rich. At least in Miami people are rich and they flaunt it. It's honest. Here people are rich and pretend to be all rustic beach pants and Hawaiian shirt and straw hat "oh i'm living the simple life" while paying hundreds of dollars per night for their accommodation.
Nevertheless, i found a bar that knew how to make a proper daiquiri, and drank it. It was acceptable. The bartenders joked about all the tourists ordering mojitos, which (their words) is just a watered down daiquiri with a bunch of useless shit in it. No lies detected. And i chatted to the other folks at the bar, who ended up buying almost all of my drinks, so hooray. All from northern states. They all flew in.
"Well we flew into Miami once and drove down, but it took 7 hours because there was an accident on the bridge, so since then we always fly." I reckon i could cycle down from Miami in about 12 hours.
But they were nice enough folks. I realized that for most of these people one of the main reasons they come to Key West is so they can get shit-faced. It's all bars bars bars, expensive liquor, expensive cocktails (that actually aren't near as good as cocktails made at serious cocktail bars in the big city), expensive restaurants, places where you have to make reservations. Who makes reservations at a restaurant? Rich people, that's who. Well, rich people who go to rich people restaurants. Am i the only person who walks into a restaurant and if i need to wait more than 10 seconds to be seated then i just go to another restaurant? My time is worth more than the experience of eating at a place popular enough to not have any free seats.
Hell, even when i walk into a dive restaurant and it's crowded, i just leave and go to another one. That's not a COVID thing, that's just a me valuing my own time thing. And wanting to support local businesses. How can a new restaurant become popular if people wait for half an hour in front of the established one instead of broadening their horizons and trying something new?
But, no judgement. Everyone's got their own way of holidaying, and that's okay. Of course, when these blue state folks figured out i was trans, they fell over themselves trying to look out for me, asking my opinion on some has-been comedian who did a controversial Netflix special, as if i give the slightest fucking shit about this stupid social media nontroversy, worrying that i must have faced such hardships and bigotry in the red states because of who i am, and it's like... No?! Not really?! Basically, you just do you, and let people believe whatever they want to believe, and then you move on. These sheltered liberals are under some bizarre illusion that visiting half the country would be a death sentence for trans people which... What? For sure conservatives hold ignorant views and engage in behaviors that i think are detrimental to society, but they're still people. Imagining them all as murderous psychopaths is no different to the dumbasses who think all cities with black people in them are a warzone, or that brown people are flooding across the border.
I guess that's the view you get, though, if you live in a bubble and just take a plane from one liberal enclave to another one.
Not that Key West is liberal at all. There are plenty of conservatives. It feels a million times more conservative to me than Miami. Get drunk. Listen to guitar music. Watch football. Eat meat. Carry a gun. How is this not conservative again? Upper middle class Americans, no matter what state they come from, are far more alike than they want to admit.
But, ugh, politics, what a stupid waste of time to talk about at a bar. I got drunk. They got drunk. Everyone got drunk. Woohoo, Key West. Then i cycled back to the campsite, stopping at several restaurants to try get dinner. This one wasn't open. That one closed the kitchen at 7pm. This one was open but charged 8 bucks for a rice and beans side, and 20 plus for the mains. What the fucking ass fuck. Is there no little local sandwich bar? Perhaps, but it sure ain't open on Thanksgiving. The other folks at the bar were talking up this place with good pizza and that place with good Philly cheesesteaks, and sigh. Might as well still be in Kansas with those options.
Meanwhile, there is also a community of hippie, homeless, crusty types lying about the place. That's why stealth camping bike tourers and other young hobos and punks want to come out here. I guess it has a Santa Cruz vibe for them. Or they figure rich drunks equals easy spanging. But to me it just feels fake here, a town where every tourist is trying to get an "authentic" experience, but in being the millionth person to do so, it ends up that nothing is "authentic" at all.
But hey. I still have 3 days. Meeting a local i know from the internet tomorrow. Maybe i'll find the cool things. At the bare minimum there will be more options since everything should be open again. Stupid fucking Thanksgiving.
-o-
And now the guy in the tent next to me is snoring so fucking loud it literally woke me up and i can't get back to sleep. It is that kind of obnoxiously, offensively, aggressively loud snoring that is the result of a medical condition, so it shouldn't annoy me, but it fucking does. Maybe they can't help it, but what am i supposed to do? I already put in my earplugs and it's still cutting through, that awful, arrhythmic, wretched snorting of someone who sounds like they are choking to death but unfortunately will not. I haven't had to put up with this anywhere else that i've camped. Fuck this fucking shit. I am so over this place. God just let me fucking sleep. Fuck!
Still, i wanted to quickly post to correct yesterday's comment about the road to Key West being boring. Once you leave Marathon and cross the Seven Mile Bridge, it's exactly what i hoped it would be. Which is: lots of causeways with ocean on both sides, and some lovely tropical islands that are basically just mangroves and that's it. You can see the seafloor from the road, the water is turquoise, it's beautiful. That first half of the road sucks, but the second half is alright.
Except, obviously, you're still on a highway. Even if you pull over at a state park or wildlife protection area, you are constantly hearing and smelling cars go past, so it's not near as idyllic as it seems if you just look at the pictures.
I set up camp, then headed into town to get my daiquiri. I didn't have any coffee break or lunch along the way because fucking everything was closed. On Key West, a huge chunk of the island was also closed. I went to a bar and asked for a daiquiri and they immediately were like "banana, pineapple, bla bla" like some fucking useless spring break destination. As if Ernest Hemingway never lived here at all. What the fucking fuck. Even when i said, dude it's just rum, lime and simple syrup, he's like "so what flavor syrup do you want?" Jesus Christ, what a disappointment. I thought this town was going to be serious fucking cocktail bars, not fruity nonsense that you can get at literally any trash holiday destination anywhere in the whole damn world.
But that's what this place is, a trash holiday destination, for rich people who are roleplaying the lifestyle of not being rich. At least in Miami people are rich and they flaunt it. It's honest. Here people are rich and pretend to be all rustic beach pants and Hawaiian shirt and straw hat "oh i'm living the simple life" while paying hundreds of dollars per night for their accommodation.
Nevertheless, i found a bar that knew how to make a proper daiquiri, and drank it. It was acceptable. The bartenders joked about all the tourists ordering mojitos, which (their words) is just a watered down daiquiri with a bunch of useless shit in it. No lies detected. And i chatted to the other folks at the bar, who ended up buying almost all of my drinks, so hooray. All from northern states. They all flew in.
"Well we flew into Miami once and drove down, but it took 7 hours because there was an accident on the bridge, so since then we always fly." I reckon i could cycle down from Miami in about 12 hours.
But they were nice enough folks. I realized that for most of these people one of the main reasons they come to Key West is so they can get shit-faced. It's all bars bars bars, expensive liquor, expensive cocktails (that actually aren't near as good as cocktails made at serious cocktail bars in the big city), expensive restaurants, places where you have to make reservations. Who makes reservations at a restaurant? Rich people, that's who. Well, rich people who go to rich people restaurants. Am i the only person who walks into a restaurant and if i need to wait more than 10 seconds to be seated then i just go to another restaurant? My time is worth more than the experience of eating at a place popular enough to not have any free seats.
Hell, even when i walk into a dive restaurant and it's crowded, i just leave and go to another one. That's not a COVID thing, that's just a me valuing my own time thing. And wanting to support local businesses. How can a new restaurant become popular if people wait for half an hour in front of the established one instead of broadening their horizons and trying something new?
But, no judgement. Everyone's got their own way of holidaying, and that's okay. Of course, when these blue state folks figured out i was trans, they fell over themselves trying to look out for me, asking my opinion on some has-been comedian who did a controversial Netflix special, as if i give the slightest fucking shit about this stupid social media nontroversy, worrying that i must have faced such hardships and bigotry in the red states because of who i am, and it's like... No?! Not really?! Basically, you just do you, and let people believe whatever they want to believe, and then you move on. These sheltered liberals are under some bizarre illusion that visiting half the country would be a death sentence for trans people which... What? For sure conservatives hold ignorant views and engage in behaviors that i think are detrimental to society, but they're still people. Imagining them all as murderous psychopaths is no different to the dumbasses who think all cities with black people in them are a warzone, or that brown people are flooding across the border.
I guess that's the view you get, though, if you live in a bubble and just take a plane from one liberal enclave to another one.
Not that Key West is liberal at all. There are plenty of conservatives. It feels a million times more conservative to me than Miami. Get drunk. Listen to guitar music. Watch football. Eat meat. Carry a gun. How is this not conservative again? Upper middle class Americans, no matter what state they come from, are far more alike than they want to admit.
But, ugh, politics, what a stupid waste of time to talk about at a bar. I got drunk. They got drunk. Everyone got drunk. Woohoo, Key West. Then i cycled back to the campsite, stopping at several restaurants to try get dinner. This one wasn't open. That one closed the kitchen at 7pm. This one was open but charged 8 bucks for a rice and beans side, and 20 plus for the mains. What the fucking ass fuck. Is there no little local sandwich bar? Perhaps, but it sure ain't open on Thanksgiving. The other folks at the bar were talking up this place with good pizza and that place with good Philly cheesesteaks, and sigh. Might as well still be in Kansas with those options.
Meanwhile, there is also a community of hippie, homeless, crusty types lying about the place. That's why stealth camping bike tourers and other young hobos and punks want to come out here. I guess it has a Santa Cruz vibe for them. Or they figure rich drunks equals easy spanging. But to me it just feels fake here, a town where every tourist is trying to get an "authentic" experience, but in being the millionth person to do so, it ends up that nothing is "authentic" at all.
But hey. I still have 3 days. Meeting a local i know from the internet tomorrow. Maybe i'll find the cool things. At the bare minimum there will be more options since everything should be open again. Stupid fucking Thanksgiving.
-o-
And now the guy in the tent next to me is snoring so fucking loud it literally woke me up and i can't get back to sleep. It is that kind of obnoxiously, offensively, aggressively loud snoring that is the result of a medical condition, so it shouldn't annoy me, but it fucking does. Maybe they can't help it, but what am i supposed to do? I already put in my earplugs and it's still cutting through, that awful, arrhythmic, wretched snorting of someone who sounds like they are choking to death but unfortunately will not. I haven't had to put up with this anywhere else that i've camped. Fuck this fucking shit. I am so over this place. God just let me fucking sleep. Fuck!