Joyride by David Key

Author:David Key
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784521202
Publisher: Panoma Press

CHAPTER 8

The Seven Mile Bridge

This is it, the famous Seven Mile Bridge, starting here in Knight’s Key, still part of the city of Marathon, and reaching out across the wide blue ocean to Little Duck Key, first of the Lower Keys. Actually there are two bridges: the original, built in the early part of the 20th century, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the one we’re traveling on, which replaced the old bridge in about 1935. It’s a popular movie location. It can be seen in Mission Impossible III and several other movies and TV series. Part of the old bridge was blown up for the 1994 James Cameron movie True Lies, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. (The bridge really was blown up without the aid of CGI. The production company rebuilt a section of it that had already been removed to allow boats to pass, so they could blow it up again. No room for error when they filmed that shot!)

The original bridge was the brainchild of an engineer called Henry Flagler and it was conceived for use by the Florida railway. It was known as the Overseas Railroad or more colloquially “the railroad that went to sea.” Can you imagine looking out of an elevated train window and seeing nothing but water all the way to the horizon in every direction? It must have felt like being in a dream. For some that experience of a dizzying, new and unusual perspective would be exhilarating, much like the climber’s when he looks down from his mountain peak. To others it might be a little scary. We all see the world differently. Like the color of this Mustang, all of our sense experiences are open to personal interpretation. It’s odd to think that one person can have an experience that’s thrilling and life-affirming, while another shrinks back in terror from the exact same experience. Remember when I was talking about fears and phobias earlier on? I mentioned that I’ve helped many people overcome some quite debilitating fears. One of the questions I have sometimes been asked is whether it’s possible to instill a fear in someone, as opposed to removing one.

You bet it is. Just ask a movie director.

Steven Spielberg did more than just instill fear in people with his iconic ‘70s blockbuster Jaws, featuring a very hungry shark terrorizing a fictional American seaside town. For months afterwards moviegoers living 1,000 miles inland who had never before given sharks a second thought were checking their bathtubs for great whites before putting so much as a toe in the soapy water. Why is that? If you’re watching carefully you’ll notice that the shark doesn’t make an appearance until late on, but Spielberg knew instinctively that it’s not so much the images on screen as those we project from our imaginations that have the power to freak us out. All we need is a few gentle nudges in the right direction. The opening sequence in which

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