In 2006 Bicycling Magazine asked me for a very long article about asphalt–its history, why we fall on it, and how it gets those terrible alligator cracks. Almost everyone involved with Asphalt is interesting. Here’s John Harvey, a professor of Pavement at UC Davis:
“To Harvey, pavements are so animated they might as well bleed. They are tricky, willful and puzzling, ever-shifting. The only thing a road doesn’t do is lie quietly on the ground. “Pavements are really complex structures, more complex than buildings or bridges,” he says, “It’s harder to build a pavement than to send a man to the moon.”
NASA, meanwhile, was studying how pavement affects the weather…
Here’s the article.
lisa margonelli 