The ultimate driving machine

Bright as the Sun, Sharp as Coral rock and just as cool as myself. Tony the Pirate constructed the new Theo bicycle, he did such a great job on it that he had a hard time parting from it.
It started out with Diane buying me a Conch Cruiser bicycle from Marty. After a few test drives on this great gift we found that I had no brakes and another few minor problems that needed attention.
Of course Tony the Pirate ( one of our biggest iced Cafe Con Leche customer ) is a bicycle tycoon and convinced me with a few minor adjustments this bike could be a great cruiser...

After a new frame, new tires, new wheels, new pedals, new steering wheel, new seat, new fenders, new chain, and all the new bolts and screws. we have our updated Bicycle.
Hmmmm, not really that many old parts.
Thanks Tony, Great job.

Big man comes down from New York

Ok so maybe he's not really big in size,only five months old and not more than sixteen pounds but, baby Ronnie sure can steal your heart. I'll admit I was a bit hesitant about having a baby stay at our house. After all Theo and I aren't exactly what you would call baby people. I was expecting to be woken up in the middle of the night indicating it was the four o'clock feeding time. That never happened.
My experience with babies is when your at the supermarket and your walking down the isle and you over hear moms screaming the whole time their shopping "Timmy get over here where I can see you."Then you end up behind them in the check out line and mom is still screaming something about" put the candy back!!!" Those experiences have drove me to shop in the middle of the night. The non kid hour....
So I'm admitting we had a good time with Victor my brother and his wife Shari and cutie little Ronnie. His first experience with a swimming pool turned out to be a positive one. Non of us ended up in the hospital. We went to see the sun set at Mallory square, we did Taste of Key West, he even got to see drag queens for the first time, and of course lots of time was spent at Coffee Plantaion meeting all the fun customers and tasting yummy coffee drinks. The drinking part was of course done by Victor and Shari.
It all seemed to go so fast. It's hard to believe when we get home tonight there won't be a cute smile waiting to greet us with his little arms waving in the air as to say, "remember I'm the special one here. And that he is"
Until his next visit next year. Oh yes he'll be a toddler then. Oh boy..... Thanks for visiting.

It's all good

This Sunday the Nailbangers convention took place at Don's place here in Key West.
The Coffee Plantation Team had the pressure of beating last years results when last year the team snatched the 3 place in the Team competition.
This year the team was represented by Victor on the Nails, Houseboat Rick on the Saw and Theo throwing the hammers, We started out great Victor got the nails in in just over 1 minute, Rick sawed the 4" by 4" in 12 seconds and Theo got 1 hammer in the hole..... And the crowed was roaring....
We took the opportunity after this great run to pose with the grand price. We as a team got ecstatic and calmed down our excitement with a couple of cold Heinekens.
When the other contenders entered the Nailbanging arena, our personal time records got scattered by the contractors elite of Key West. I could not believe that MY trophy got away from me...
And I kissed the damn thing....
A great event though, we all had a great time and thanks to payback promotions there was a nice check written to the Boys and Girls club of Key West.
Thanks Victor the banger and Rick the sawing giant for giving up your Sunday afternoon to defend the honors of the Coffee Plantation.

Mongo the Clown

Mongo called us today from his circus tour, he is doing very well.
He loves the circus and gets to do everything...
I mean everything.
His Easter day special treat was to be picked up by a camel (a real Camel) and tossed around like a bean bag, just to funny, I do have a vision.
If you are in Newport Tenessee today make sure you visit Mongo at the Circus.
He is the Clown or the RingMaster or the man that is screaming from the top of his lungs..... Laaaadiess and Gentlemannnnn, Children of aaaaaaalllll ages.

A New Car

As I mentioned in the post about the wicker furniture, we have a new vehicle. It's a 2003 Jeep Cherokee. It replaces our Chevrolet van, the one that took us from California, across the country, and finally here to the Keys, two plus years ago. The van was still running well, but it had 130,000 miles on it and, worse yet, I was never comfortable driving it. Theo did nearly all of the driving, and it was him who had to go and do all the errands that need to be run here throughout the week.

It's incredibly liberating to me to be able to just hop in the car and go, rather than having to wait for Theo to take me to the market, or to ask someone else to drive me to an appointment at the doctor or the hair salon. A couple of days after we got the car I (mysteriously) found myself at a shoe store, and left with six pairs of shoes. (You have to be a woman to undertand!)

Right after we picked up the car, I was driving on Whitehead St. and spotted Tony on the sidewalk. Being very cool, I pulled up to show off the car. As I leaned over to the passenger side, I hit the button to lower the window on that side. The rear window went down instead, leaving Tony in stitches and me red-faced.

There are some more photos at our Shutterfly site.

You know the Island is to small when...

As everyone did after the hurricane, Diane and I were cruising around the island to witness the wrath of Wilma. Besides the damage from mother nature, the mess that lie before us from residents throwing all their personal belongings out on their front lawn, which latter became a treasure chest for us dumper divers was amazing. During one of our sweeps of the island on our scooter we passed a simply gorgeous wicker living room set. Diane pointed it out to me and said, "that set would look great at the coffee shop." Diane had seen the set before. When we were looking for a house to rent to move down from Sugarloaf , Diane had looked at the house for rent which the set came from. I decided to go get our van and pick it up. As often in Key West If you don't grab thing right then, a quicker dumpster diver will score it....... Oh well. I went back to tell Diane the news knowing she would be disappointed sensing how much she liked this set. Oh well it wasn't ment to be.

This morning at the coffee shop Diane was talking to Katie who comes in every morning for her latte. Diane was mentioning now that she has a car (jeep Cherokee) she plans on hitting some garage sales this weekend. We always need wicker furniture for the coffee shop she explained to Katie. Katie replies " you should talk to Supergirl (another Coffee Plantation Fan) we collected lots of furniture when everyone was throwing stuff away durning the storms." So Diane did and I was instructed to meet Supergirl at her house to look at the furniture. When I got there and saw it was in good condition I offered to buy it from her. She wouldn't take any money for it. She explained Katie found it durning Wilma and they would be happy to pass it on to us especially since it was for their favorite coffee shop. The best part is while talking to Supergirl, I figure out this is the same silly set we saw on Whitehead st. the day I rushed to get the van and returned with an" empty one" to tell Diane the sad news, The couch she loved was already taken by a quicker dumpster diver then I. ( It was Katie all along who was the quicker dumpster and had OUR couch for the past six months)
Needless to say a really great laugh has been had by all of us. It's been the talk of the coffee shop all morning.
O.K. O.K. not much happens here so this is really a funny story. I said it is a small island... Now the hunt is on for cushions because you can image after four feet of water which flooded that house the cushions were no longer.....

Diane's Muffins

Our fresh daily baked muffins are just so delicious, I had to share a few pictures with you.
In addition to our fabulous morning breakfast bite we added great litle lunch snacks to our menu.
Make sure you check out some of our soups when your in town, or try our Chicken salad or homemade hummus on a toasted bagel.
I'm telling you, It's the best stuff on the Island. And that's not only me that is saying that...

Almost famous

One of our steady morning customers Rick would have been featured at the Home and Garden show with his and steves Houseboat.
Rick send me this note...
We are so disappointed.

the TV show producer called us from the cutting room floor in N.YN.Y. thursday with good news and bad news the good news was the show was going to be reeally cool ,the bad news was while editing they ran out of minutes before they got to our segment and we aren't in it
42 minutes =18 for corporate advertiser instead of lil'old me and steves houseboat that we took three whole days off work with no location fee so they could spend 9 gruelling hours shooting and poseing for cameras and only provideed us with one sandwich 1- 12 oz domestic botted water and a comuunity bag of bagel chips and half a cookie
just what part of that was good news to us we don't really under stand so we are now engage in a worldwide boycot of HGTV and all thier sponsers- products and affiliated persons corporate devils and all their national and overseas broadcasters , cable and satelite providers second party affiliates and third, first and second cousins, inlaws x's and unborn children and there guileless pets
if want join in on the fight log on to www.iwantobeonhgtv.com
good luck and goodnite rick and steve on the good ship paradigm

Nailbangers, Attention

The Second Annual Nailbangers Convention will take place on April 23 at Don's Place on Truman Avenue. This event, put together by Captain Rick Dostal of Payback Promotions, is a fund raiser for the Boys and Girls Club of Key West, and it's a load of fun. The events this year are nail banging (of course), hand sawing, and power sander races. It's open to any one, and teams are being formed by various groups, including one from us here at the Coffee Plantation. Our team last year was a trophy winner. This year we're aiming for first place in each event.


If you're in Key West, come and compete for fabulous prizes donated by local companies, or just come to watch and cheer on your favorite team -- or nail banger. The prizes are nice, but bragging rights are even better, especially if you're in the construction trades.

Trumpet Bob Again

In early March we had a post here that mentioned Trumpet Bob, and a photo that shows him playing in front of Mangia Mangia on Southard St. The guy who was tap-dancing in that photo is also an artist, a painter. He painted a great canvas of Bob, and it hangs temporarily here in the Coffee Plantation.

Bob plays an occasional unique gig for the owner of a large boat, a yacht, that comes to Key West several times a year. When this gentleman is throwing a party on the boat any where in the world, he sends for Bob and has him come to play for his guests.

The painting was put up for sale at $3,800 by the artist. The boater bought it. We hope to be able to keep it on display here for a while, but it eventually must go.

Here's the painting: