The Bridge!!!

What an ugly day! Today and the next couple of days look to be the worst of the winter season here so far. Today it’s rainy, windy, and cold (by southern Italy standards). It’s hard to believe that Saturday I went for my first bike ride of 2006. The weather was pretty good and didn’t have anything to do in the middle of the afternoon. That’s a great time to ride because there are almost no cars out between 2:00 and 5:00 PM. Sunday is even better. I rode out to a rocky area of seacoast. I didn’t see anything special but it just felt good to get out.The news this weekend really annoyed me when I saw people protesting the bridge they are going to make from the toe of Italy to Sicily. It’s going to a beautiful bridge with the longest suspension span in the world. What upset me is who I saw protesting. I saw the WWF and other environmental groups. I consider myself an environmentalist and I can’t believe this bridge is bad for the environment. First the bridge has to be more efficient then all the dirty old ferries that run back and forth (they estimate cars will save an hour of time). Also now there will be a rail link all over Sicily and Italy (today it takes an average of 2 hours for someone to get from one train on one side to a train on the other). It won’t disturb a pristine habitant or historic areas. First, Messina had an earthquake and then it was bombed heavily in WWII. I’m sorry but there isn’t much historic or pristine left. I’ve driven to Sicily twice and the traffic where you catch the ferries in Messina is horrible. This bridge will take you over all this and straight on to the highway. I see no down side for the environment and I think the seaside for Messina could be reclaimed and made something nicer because you eliminate tons of ferries loading and loading. So I feel that someone else is using the environmental groups. Misleading them in some way. It’s like any type of progress or change is seen as bad in this country. Of course the bridge will end up being closed all the time because they’ll block it for everything, like maybe Messina gets a bad call in a soccer match, but they do that to the ferries already. Well you can check it out yourself www.strettodimessina.it. Don’t worry they have an area in English