Second Corner, Firearm Needed

"Where's a gun when you need one?" Six A.M. and I'm asleep at the Cabana Inn. I'd been experiencing the Duval Street nightlife until about 1 A.M. and I had hoped I would sleep late; checkout was at ten and I wanted to push the sleep envelope.

When I arrived at Key West I noticed the amount of fowl roaming the streets, wild, cocks, hens and chicks underfoot. Six A.M. and the roosters started braying at the dawn, at each other, their families, who knows. Do they bray? I don't care. They're loud, little peckers. And THEY WILL NOT STOP.

I'm not a violent guy, well not usually, but - oh man! - if I'd had had a pistol...

It actually turned out to be good that I got an early start. The buoy for the southern-most point is a mighty popular place, filled with picture-taking tourists all during the day, and your best bet is to get there early, get close enough to take a picture or two, and get away quickly. I made it there about 7 A.M. and a cute couple in neon, screaming yellow running tops, had just finished their turn. I pulled my motorcycle onto the sidewalk, grabbed a quick video that I'll post later, and took a couple of pics, one of which was a selfie that blurred so badly, it couldn't be used.

Back to the Key West nightlife: mildly disappointing, less Hemingway Old Man and the Sea and more McInerney Drunk Fratboy and the Peroxide Blonde. I expected more from the old dame on a Wednesday night and certainly there were a plethora of bars and restaurants begging for attention. I wandered among them, a California ghost, taking it all in.  I stopped for a vodka tonic at one place and then another at a another. Finally, I ended up at a honky tonk, Cowboy Bill's, its claim to fame being a mechanical bull and some kind of contest wherein seven ladies vied to win the male judges' favor by disrobing and simulating sex on the spinning, grinding, cowhide-covered contraption.

I stuck around until the final two, a three-phase elimination. If the ladies were modest enough to keep their tops during the first round, they were ousted, which quickly brought the number down to four. Clearly, skin-to-win was called for. Two more were eliminated during the second round; I wish I could explain why cthey were; certainly, they gave it their all and shed appropriately. The last two was the plucky, somewhat overweight young woman with natural breasts and the enhanced hottie who shed down to bra and panties in the first round. My journalistic ethic should've kept me there to report the winner but, frankly, I had grown bored and I had finished the Longboard and didn't really want to invest into another that late into the evening. It was that tipping point during a night out where you either go all in or you go home.

I'm pretty sure the enhanced hottie won and for the purposes of this story, I'll declare her the winner, but I was rooting for the overachiever.