Kite Boarder the day before hurricane ike from Catherine Tims on Vimeo.

Saturday Night, there are even more bikes out on Duval Street.  Some of the bikes parked in front of Sloppy Joe’s on Duval Street are worth upwards of $100,000.  Some of the paint jobs alone are $20,000!  Here’s a gallery of some of the most impressive, from the Alligator Bike (again) to the Hulk Bike the stunning matte black and red paint job.  

 

 

Bike Week in Key West is hard to miss.  Everyone knows when all the big bikes arrive because they rumble all day and into the night across the island.  The Bike Week happenin’s are down on Duval Street, but even bikers need to go the Publix or Kahoots, both at the other end of the island.  Back and forth all day, rumbling and making lots of Hog noises.  It’s great!

It’s officially a Poker Run, starting near Miami and through the Keys over the Overseas Highway to the end point in Key West.  In a grand gesture that thumbs its nose at all the DUI education done in the past twenty years, bikers stop at bars along the route and are supposed to pick up a playing card at each bar.  The best poker hands, once they get to Key West, win prizes.  

The bikes are beautiful, and they cost lots of money too.  They are parked up and down Duval Street, which is closed off until the 500 block.  Here are a few.  The Hooters Bike is nice, and so is the alligator bike.  I think it must be real alligator skin covering the entire bike.  

 

Well, we survived but one of our banana trees didn’t.  Hope this banana hand ripens this way.

We learned that banana tree trunks are full of water, and very easy to hack apart with a small machete.  

 

 

Well I guess we’re all going to live.  Hurricane Ike is just a big tropical storm here in Key West, but that doesn’t stop Fox News from sending out a crew.  The Hurricane Hummer is here too, thank goodness!  The flooding in the streets near Southernmost Point is from blocked storm drains and some waves do make it over the sea wall occasionally.   Sometimes the people make the best show!

 

It’s only Monday but everyone is ready for Hurricane Ike. It’s supposed to hit Key West Tuesday, but Key West is all boarded up and most tourists are gone. Just locals hanging out, kite boarding or sitting at a bar. People are walking around the docks, looking for something to do. There’s a news crew but who knows what they could be saying, except that Key West is ready for Ike. It’s gusting 36 knots out there and still a whole day before the worst is supposed to hit us.

 

If you’re staying in Key West or any of the other Keys for a week or more, you might want to consider a vacation rental home.  Renting a home for a week, a month or a season becomes cost effective when you have a family or group.  There’s actually a useful website that lists vacation rentals. The listings on the site are put up by the owners themselves, with links to their property website if there is one. You pay the rental fees and pay no third-party fees for booking, which is good. They usefully list amenities available in a clean right hand menu for each property, making it so easy to find the perfect Florida vacation rentals. At time of writing, there were seven vacation rentals in the Keys section, all with pools. One of these was in the Key West area.

The section for Orlando vacation rentals easily had the most listings. And every single property had a swimming pool, although in some places you had to share the pool. With the website’s clear design and simply layout, it’s easy to scroll down the list of vacation rentals in your vacation area and find what you need. The listings are descending order of bedrooms, so for Orlando, you get the bigger houses with six bedrooms, at the top of the list.

Encyclopedia Britannica likes Key West chickens,

and my pictures too.  Used with permission.

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