Cosmic Law of Key West. Never trust a Statue. Just remember that.

I applied for the street artist permit and was accepted. $100 for a year. I have to wear a badge or else. The photo on it looks pathetic. They treated us like vagrants and pretty much just shouted down our throats, "No Drinking! Everything must have a price tag! You can sell it for less, but not more! No tables! And you only get one chair. Only easels are allowed! Nothing else!" Who the hell pays more than on the tag? Do these people know anything about commerce?



The gold man here is not the infamous gold man I may have mentioned previously. It's another one. Piper is set up for face painting in the background. This is a gold soldier carrying a flag. He apparently gives 50 percent of his tips to the VFW. The other gold man has been bumming dingy rides for six months until recently when I let him know it's over. That wasn't pretty. He has no business on the water. Someone, however, sold him a boat for $400 and there he is. It's that easy!

Selling art on the street has improved my chances for success. One day, while set up on the street, a lady showed interested in my work. Her friend was british and said, How much? Twenty dollars! You ought to be ashamed!", as she wagged her finger like Stephen Colbert. "How about $10?"

The man with them the spoke up, "You not even buying it, shut up."
The woman replied, "I'm an antique dealer".
"So what, he doesn't care", responded the first lady.

"Yeah, I won't do $10." No sell. Oh, Well. People always haggle, but no one pays more than the listed price.

I am also still setting up at Sunset Celebration, but not as much. Here is Nina and her back-ups. She is really good. She's thirteen.



Piper has been face painting at Mallory every now and then. She's been doing pretty good. It pays for dinner sometimes. The Gold Soldier goes by the name Serge. It's Russian. I don't know how to spell it. One day he was set up across from Piper. He was very weird, but he did well. He actually has an act. He gives candy to the kids. That helps.



The other day, Serge (pronounced sir gay), the Gold Soldier asked if he could borrow my bike. I was set up in front of the Hard Rock Cafe at the time. I was hesitant, but he said he really needed spray paint from Home Depot and I agreed to let him use my bike and trailer while I sold on the street. I was there for five hours and he never came back. I had all of my art to haul back and my only transportation was missing in action. I packed everything as best I could and carried the whole lot three blocks to my friend Melanie's house.

I went to Mallory and asked around, but nobody had seen Sir Gay. I began speaking with the other statues hoping they had heard from him.
"He's probably in jail!" said Silver Man, formerly known as CopperTop. He used to be copper man until the other silver man was arrested for dealing heroin. By the way, Coppertop used to bum rides with the other gold man. They had met each other through Gold man's wife. She was cheating on him. You'd think after having nine consecutive kids with a man, you would be a little more faithful. Or maybe not. I guess since grandma is raising the kids, you still have time to do the Duval Crawl. (Duval St. is the main drag) Gold man took Coppertop under his wing because he felt sorry for the way his wife had treated him. These two fellas are the real married couple; you can tell by the way the bicker. Anyway, all these statues seem a little shady or mentally ill, but they all believed that SirGay was probably in jail.

I felt like decking Serge when I found him. Piper was worried I would. I also thought he was in an accident and probably in the hospital. My friends, Blake and Emily, saw me on the street and insisted I forget about the bike, It's lost forever, and to have a margarita. So, I did. I forgot about it all and then Piper appeared in front of the bar, surprised to see me. "I found him", she said. "He's in jail for battery. We found him online". We would have never recognized him without his glasses and his gold paint. But Melanie, with her acute sense of perception, recognized him right away.

We called the police about my bike, but they said the property office was closed until tomorrow. The next day, I walked to the police station and tried to claim my bike. It was registered as belonging to Raymond Something. It wasn't under my name or Serge's. They gave me an incident report. It said that Serge was riding down the busiest road in town, insisting he had just as much right away as other vehicles. People were honking at him in a long line. When the road opened up to two lanes in front of the police station, he threw a can out of my basket at a car. Well, she turned out to be one tough little stripper and followed him and pushed him off the bike. When the cops showed up, he was choking her and trying to push her into traffic. There were lots of witnesses. The police said I could not have my bike back unless I had a receipt. NO OTHER WAY, SIR! Luckily, I bought it at West Marine and they had the purchase on file. The police made me sign a paper that stated I did not sell my bicycle to Sir Gay. I was able to get my bike and the trailer, but not the hitch, bike lock, my lights and extension cord. I was still very happy. It would have cost me a lot of money to replace my transpo. The officer asked me, "Did you learn anything?"

I said, "Yeah, Never trust a statue."

Watch Goldie here. He goes straight for the boobs.



Fantasy Fest happened. It was interesting, but I was glad to see it go. I have never seen so many old naked ladies in my life. Apparently, it gets really nasty at night. We decided to stay home. We did see the parade. It was the highlight.



It was a very long parade. Lots of beer was being given away from the floats. People were dancing and prancing around naked. Just a bunch of S&M pageant girls. It reminded me of how dumbed down America has become. We'll assemble to party, but not for peace.









Everyday, we pick trash out of the sea on our dingy ride. Here was an interesting find. Below is another Manatee. It's always fun to witness one.



Shanti is Cliff's boat. We had dinner aboard her one night just before Thanksgiving. There were a lot of people there. It was cold. We had salad, cheese and crackers and some kinda pasta with scallops. It is always interesting to have a party on a boat. People come and go and watching the parking lot shuffle is fascinating.




















This is the coolest front yard ever.





We have been going to a lot of Christmas parties. This one was the Boys N Girls Club party at the Schooner Wharf. We were in the Christmas Parade with the Boys N Girls Club. Piper started the recycling program at the club. They decided to make a green float as well.









This is Piper on Christmas Day wearing her crochet Christmas beret.





Well, there is a lot more to say. But it'll have to wait. Below is a podcast we posted on youtube with video of a sea turtle. We did this so you can see it on full screen. In order to see it on full screen in high quality, you must first double click on the video so it takes you to YouTube. Then just underneath the video in blue letters are the words "watch in high quality". Click on those words, then click the enlarge window option square just above those words. Peace Out.

Hey Yall, The Cigarette Races are this week. All week long we have had races and often we get stuck out on the boat because we are not allowed to cross the channel. Also, there is a hurricane passing over Cuba as a category 4. It is really windy outside. Here are some race clips.

One of the projects I started here was recording my friend Toko. The video above features one of those songs. The video itself was footage of a recent rainfall that flooded most of historic Key West. All the drains got clogged. Toko Irie is a rastafarian from Grenada. He used to live in a real paradise where he hunted iguanas for food and really lived off the land. His friends told him not to go to America, that it would change him. He admits it has and wants to return to Grenada one day. However, now he has five children and a beautiful California wife. Now he has to convince them to leave home. He knows it probably won't happen. Home is a special place. They lost their boat and everything they owned on it during Hurricane Wilma three years ago. That is what the song is actually about.

Often people think there is nothing they can do to stop the direction the world is headed. When you find yourself unemployed and moping around at home hating the world, you could be learning exactly how the Federal Reserve, a private bank, is currently enslaving you. You could read about Ron Paul's Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act (HR2755). Click the link below. Piper did.

What You Can Do to End the Tyranny of the Federal Reserve

If you like living vicariously through this blog, perhaps you would be interested in the same documentaries that we began viewing as soon as we moved onto the boat. They turned our perspective from "wanting to get away from it all" to "wanting to stay and make a difference." Movies like: Orwell Rolls in his Grave, The End of Suburbia, and Who Killed the Electric Car. There are also a few documentaries that are being banned or blacklisted and are only available on the web. When we first arrived in St. Augustine, FL in August 2006, we met our friend Curtis. He helped us learn how to anchor in alternating currents. We became friends. He had a woodworking shop where we often hung out. He had bought his boat from a filmmaker. He had a CD labeled Small Spaces Big Style. It was a home improvement show. The boat he bought was on that show and we had seen the episode two years earlier. We couldn't believe we had stumbled into that boat. He said we should check out the other two DVDs that former owner gave him. One was his documentary of Cuba and the other was called Reopen911.org. It was about world domination and how they do it. That spiraled into an online media frenzy and is why I sign hundreds of petitions weekly with all my "free time". The latest movie is much more to the point and is only two hours long as opposed to the five hour one we first encountered. You can view it online at Zeitgeistmovie.com.

I wanted to post a mini update. Just a video.

Coconuts are everywhere. You can live off them. Here's me opening a coconut.

October is here and business is slowly picking up again. Piper has been volunteering at the Obama office. She has been telemarketing. There is no McCain office here because he is anti-makeithappen. I finally, became a regular at Mallory dock which means now the lottery system for spaces is unfairly in my favor. They are against outsiders in Key West. That's why locals get a 20 percent discount pretty much everywhere. They forget we are all Americans.
Anyway, as far as news is concerned, a waterspout came thru the anchorage the other day. It knocked over a few boats, but they sprang right back up. I had no idea it was happening. I was sewing our bimini down below. I just thought it was raining so I shut all the hatches which is the safest thing to do anyway. Afterwards, I was ready for some air and went up on deck to set up the wind scoop. Fred, my neighbor, was motoring over to tell me something.
"Did you see that?!" I hadn't noticed anything. A tornado had just come through the anchorage. It was a very calm day. Mostly sunny even. He heard on the radio that there was a tornado but didn't think much of it because there is always one being announced. It came by the north side of the island hugging the coastline headed west. Piper had seen it from Bay View Park with the Boys n Girls club. She called Fred and he said everything was fine. He had tried to warn me by yelling at the top of his lungs, but I never heard over the movie I was watching. Toko and his kid, Aaron were puttering around in their boat. They had not noticed it either. We all congregated in a dingy flotilla while Fred told us about it. He said that the Bait guy had it all on video. The bait guy, Don, has a little barge next to his sailboat where he sells bait. He has a huge generator and has internet on his boat. He is the only boat with a back yard. We all went over to see his video. Luckily, for us, the waterspout hit the island and lost its funnel. But the bottom was still there and came around the island right through the anchorage. It knocked down a few boats and went out to sea. It hit Cliff's boat directly. He has lawn chairs and palm trees and other stuff that got all sucked up and thrown everywhere. Then it knocked a blue hull sailboat's mast all the way down to the water. It sprang back up. Then it spun a very large sport fisher and next it pushed a 45 foot Morgan Ketch over about 45 degrees. If you were standing on deck, you would be thrown into the air for sure.




One day we met Vivian pictured below in the kayak. He was very polite and didn't drink or smoke. Of course he loved bob Marley. He wanted to buy a small sailboat and go to Cuba and then to Venezuela. He wasn't particularly close to us, but he often asked us a lot of sailing questions. We offered up lots of advice. One day, he was kayaking thru the anchorage and we invited him aboard. We noticed he didn't take his life jacket off. Eventually, we asked him if he knew how to swim and he said, "No." Our friend Cliff, also living on the water, found this out and immediately began teaching him how to swim.
One night, I rode my bike up Duval and saw Cliff and Sean talking in front of Project Lighthouse ( a place for runaway kids). Cliff works there. Cliff had spent the last three days at the city pool teaching Vivian how to swim and was very concerned.
"As soon as I let go of him he flips out and sinks like a rock." He was very worried about Vivian living on a sailboat.
That night the dolphins were making a lot of noise in the anchorage, slapping their tails on the surface and in the blackness they appeared to be playing. The next day at about two o'clock, the coast guard was circling about four boats away from our boat. My friend, Fred, came over to tell me they found a floater, a black man with dreadlocks. I said,"that's Vivian!" He said they didn't know who he was an expected foul play. So we decided that I should go identify him and let them know we were previously aware that he couldn't swim. It was a beautiful day and once i motored up to the coast guard boat, I could see Vivian was still in the water. He was face down in the fetal position. They made me keep my distance as it was a crime scene. They pulled him out by his dreadlocks. Rigamortis had set in. His father was murdered by rebels in Siere Leone and somehow he had ended up here. I identified him and told the coasties they could learn more about him from Project Lighthouse. It was terribly sad. I now associate not being able to swim with sinking like a rock.



I have been recording my neighbor, Toko, out on the anchorage. It is fun. He uses a sequencer and so I am learning a lot. We are also using his Roland recorder and a condenser mic. He has been playing steel drums, acoustic guitar and bass. His voice is incredible. He is the real thing as far as a vocalist entertainer is concerned. He can freestyle a song at any given moment and it just exudes love and peace. We have a lot of fun hanging out with his family. They have four kids and another on the way. One night, Naomi, made an booger out of aloe slime and hung it from this statues nose.





Our friend, Robert, in Colorado had sent us a solar panel and I successfully installed the system on Delphine. Thanks a lot, Robert. I learned a lot and am putting the PV to good use. It was really easy. We also installed LED technology from sailorssolutions. They are called sensiBulbs. They cast a light equal to incandescent bulbs. They are not bluish at all. We want to put them in our house one day.







Here is what you don't realize about ethanol. They are using the boating industry as guinea pigs, because we are recreational craft. Our life does not depend on our motors bringing us back to port safely. The disclaimers are as large as the gas pumps at the dock. There are two of them. Everybody in the anchorage is experiencing motor shutdown. Even us. Our motor has shut off and stalled about three times since they put the Gas with 10% ethanol in a few weeks ago. It is unreliable. Now we have to bicycle to the gas station where cars fill up.

September is the slow season here in Key West. Locals say Americans have a pretty predictable schedule. This time of year families are putting their kids in school and visiting campuses, not exploring islands and reefs. That seems to be the case. I decided if I am going to work and not make money, then i should work on the boat. That is the way I have spent the last two months. I cleaned up finished all my brightwork on deck, except I still need a few extra coats on some of the handrails. Anyway, here are a bunch of pics leading up to september. We had a tropical storm Fay, which evacuated tourists and was over by the time we were finished preparing for it. There was a lot of flooding as always when it rains. Too much work.

I was just reading over our last entry to see where we left off and I noticed I was wearing pants and my wind breaker in a lot of those pictures. That has not been the case lately. Paul said it was hot in the last update. Now it's sweltering.
Back in late May we flew up to NC for the week at Ocean Isle. It was a week full of babies.




I've been working full-time at the Boys & Girls Club this summer. We spend about half the day in the AC playing games like Connect Four and Checkers in the cafeteria and the other half outside or in the un-airconditioned gym playing capture the flag or building and learning to walk on stilts (my idea) or going to the beach or the pool. A few of the other things we've done are going to the aquarium, and the Eco-Discovery Center, snorkeling on the reef, fishing, archery at a boy scout camp, and movies every Tuesday. I enjoy it for the most part. A few of the kids give us problems daily. I've about had my fill of hotdogs.



Since I've been working 9-5 we don't go out much anymore. When Paul works we often don't get home until 11:00 or so and still haven't had dinner. It's too hot to cook on the boat so we bought a blender and lately we've mostly been eating smoothies, cucumber yogurt soup, and gazpacho.

Business for Paul has been really slow for the past few weeks. Fortunately his construction boss from Chapel Hill, John, called and offered Paul work and a vacation all rolled into one. John is moving to Boston and was trying to finish the roof on his new home in Boston before starting a job in Chapel Hill. He called Paul as a last resort and the timing just happened to be perfect. Paul got to see Boston for the first time and make some money to get him through this slow season.

With all this free time during the day, Paul has been trying to catch up on refinishing our teak. It's going to look fabulous when he's done.

Mark and Jessica came down to visit back in June. It was nice to finally have some visitors. Unfortunately Jessica gets seasick so they saw the boat but couldn't stay for dinner. Mark made up for it by taking us out to dinner (a lot).


Tioga also came down for a week in July. We thought we might sail up the Keys all the way to John Pennekamp State Park, stopping to snorkel the reef along the way, but it turned out there's plenty of good reef right here off Key West.

So we had the best of both worlds, snorkeling all day and always getting back to Key West in time to go out for a nice dinner. The first night we stayed out at the reef seven miles offshore and pitched and rolled all night. It was one of the worst nights of sleep any of us had ever had. We didn't make that mistake again.
So, so far on the visitors to Key West tally it's brothers 2, everybody else 0 (except Jessica). In case you didn't realize, you are all invited to come stay with us. It's way cheaper to fly into Miami and rent a car or take the bus. Winter is great down here. It's also the busy season. We will be here until late March.