Out of town

I'm out of town this week and will be next week, so postings will be light if at all. But I leave you with this thought...

I'm on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, and we started talking about all the waterfront development that's going on here. One small aspect of the development is all the new blacktop that's being laid in around the shore and marshland. There's an old fire safety clause that says that any new development must have a 50 feet black-top driveway entrance that will permit fire fighting vehicles to turn into.

Fire safety makes sense. However, black-top doesn't seem to be an improvement over smashed clam shells, the traditional road surface on the Eastern Shore. Clam shells are semi-permeable, are a reusable materials (washed up and discarded from the clamming factories), and someone added, are like having the road lit at night because they reflect headlights more softly than blacktops. I never knew.