Asphalt Unite Quotes

It’s happening everywhere; commercial and housing development, along with the road network needed to support it, is the single greatest pressure on natural landscapes in the United States, and by its very pervasiveness the hardest to control. Between 1982 and 1997, developed land in the forty-eight contiguous states increased by 25 million acres—meaning a quarter of all the open land lost since European settlement disappeared in just those fifteen years. This isn’t a trend, it’s a juggernaut, and the worst may be yet to come. At this pace, by 2025 there will be 68 million more rural acres in development, an area about the size of Wyoming, and the total developed land in the United States will stand at a Texas-sized 174 million acres. Already, just the impervious covering we put on the land, the things like roads, sidewalks, and buildings we pave with asphalt or concrete, adds up to an area the size of Ohio.3

P-22 just may be the Neil Armstrong of his kind. A quick glance at his route on a map shows he had to be a bit mad to even attempt his journey. To get to his new territory of Griffith Park, he must cross two of the busiest freeways in the United States. Imagine soft, padded paws fitted for bounding over snow and boulders touching the asphalt of the first eight-lane highway, known as one of the worst roads in the country. Even in the middle of the night, the 405 never slows, and the highway thrums with mechanical noise and explodes with the mad dance of headlights. When faced with the living, breathing monster of the 405, most cats do an abrupt about-face, or get mangled by a few tons of moving steel. But P-22, with his tenacity, or luck, or both, somehow manages to cross. There is no way of knowing how he navigates the formidable obstacle of the road, whether he uses an under- or overpass or bolts straight across. All have been attempted by other cats, and many haven’t lived to tell the tale.

LBJ was on his way to one of the largest American bases and was bowling along an asphalt road, in an air-conditioned black Cadillac, one of at least twenty heavily guarded limousines. Suddenly the President spotted a little old Vietnamese woman trotting by the side of the road. He turned to Ambassador Bunker and said, "Does this little old lady know that the USA built this mighty fine road she's walking on?" The answer was noncommittal, but LBJ was in one of his manic Texas moods. The President ordered the whole convoy to come to a stop. He said, "Someone go over and ask her who built this road?" The command was transmitted from ambassador to general to aide to colonel to a junior officer interpreter, who went up to the terrified old lady and said, "Who built this road? The President of the United States wants to know." The little old lady went down on her knees, sobbing, rolling in the dust, and saying over and over again, "I don't know. I didn't do it. I didn't have anything to do with the road.