Sunshine Skyway Bridge

know something, Johnny? If I'd had any sense, I'd have met you in Tampa.

Oh? Why do you say that, Earl? Well, because this murder, if it really was a murder, occurred on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, about 28 or 29 miles north of town.

Yeah, I wondered why we were heading north on the Tamiami Trail.

But

And how do you mean that, Earl? Oh, there have been a couple of unexplained murders of people who tried to cross him up back in the past.

By unexplained, you mean they couldn't pin them on him? Exactly.

Oh, here now, we're on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

Yeah, well, what'd they fight about? Oh, uh, seems Alfie had welched on a bet, a big one.

And he told me that on many occasions, and we were just talking about this before we started recording...

In the middle of the night, even, your mom or your dad might take you out fishing, sometimes over to the pier here on Ana Maria, sometimes onto the Skyway Bridge, sometimes at two in the morning, just to get your mind off of what wasn't going right in your tennis game.

They were all there, seeing them on the sidelines.

I was tearing up just watching on TV.

I oversee all the permitting, construction, engineering, maintenance.

We're talking about this new massive dredging project here that'll extend, looks like from a couple different locations within the bay, and then all the way out past the Skyway Bridge.

And so this is a deepening project, which we were talking about earlier.

And so this is a, what did you say, a $1.3 billion, sort of a moving number there because of the cost variables, but a massive, massive project.

But the real magic is, okay, what shapes... assets textures imagery do we feel like really makes you say if i showed this to somebody who had a very very minimal knowledge of what tampa is they would be like oh yeah that's tampa flagship places in the city that people could really be like oh i immediately recognize that without can you

rattle off a couple of them the sunshine skyway bridge is

one of the ones that that comes to mind it connects two of the major hubs st petersburg and tampa In the region, then there's the Centro de Español, which is this huge Hispanic social club that exists.

Ybor City as a whole was the actual cigar capital of the world.

Throw to first, not in time.

We were always fascinated in spring training with that trip across the Sunshine Skyway across Tampa Bay.

It was a little over twelve miles.

This one will be over seventeen miles.

So if you are so inclined, you're in the St. Pete area, showdown in St. Pete at Eckerd College.

A stone's throw from the Sunshine Skyway.

If I go, I got to take a picture because I can't tell you the last time I saw the Skyway up close.

uh but and i i don't know i might if i get froggy i might ride across just for like to say i've done it i'm one of them i'm one of them i like life experiences i did it once and then ride that cross and then you're doing it again never uh but um so if you are so inclined the 40 hat includes a ticket If you just buy the ticket, it's $5.