Camp Meeker Beat by Tom Austin - August 2018
This summer is FLYING by.
You know what else is flying by? Cars. Cars are flying by on the newly smooth surface of Bohemian Highway. Like buttah, it is.
This project has involved a certain amount of inconvenience and delays as we wait for the pilot car to complete its leisurely loop and shepherd our caravan of cars past the road work. That’s all behind us now,(or at least it will be by the time you read this—at this writing, they still have to paint the stripes and what not).
Caveat: this apparently does NOT include the repair of the roadway across from Tyrone. The concrete K-rail and the stop sign will be with us a while yet, probably festooned with “fix me”, with “a drink” currently appended. I am still thinking this is the work of the same waggish individual(s) who have been providing written commentary for the benefit of the vehicular reader. That commentary has been expressing impatience with the slow pace of repairs and taking issue with the prioritization process by which our tax dollars are spent, or not. In other words, the lukewarm war between citizens and gummint continues.
Naturally, you will want to hear more about the details of the road construction—especially if you read my earlier column nerding out on that very subject. Happy to oblige!
The various county websites have not been updated with specific information on the Bohemian Highway work, but by observation, I can confidently state that the Boho Highway was the recipient of an “Asphalt Concrete Overlay”. This consists of, and I quote the “Pavement Preservation” page on the sonomacounty.ca.gov website:
Asphalt Concrete (AC) consists of mineral aggregate bound together with asphalt, laid in layers, and compacted. The most common type used on streets and highways is Hot Mix Asphalt(commonly abbreviated as HMA).
Hot Mix Asphalt Overlay is regarded by most road departments as a standard for road maintenance and restoration, and has been for several decades. It produces durable, long-lasting results, and can increase pavement life by 15 years or more. Combined with other processes, such as milling or grinding of old pavement, an AC overlay can transform a tattered road surface into a like-new condition.
This is, on the whole, good news. After Full-Depth Reclamation(as was done to Cazadero Highway), the AC overlay is the most intensive roadwork method, and at fifteen years provides the longest expected life after the Full-Depth Reclamation’s thirty years.
The steps involved in an AC overlay are several. The first is the repair of selected locations in the roadway, places where the roadway is particularly uneven. When I saw this work being done, I was concerned that these spot repairs were to be the entirety of the work. I dubbed this the “Brylcreem” work: a dab here, a dab there, a little dab’ll do ya. Apologies to anyone born after 1970 who has no idea what I am talking about.
After the Brylcreem work is done, the next phase is to mix batches of mineral aggregate (read: tiny pebbles, as Don Ho might have sung if he were Californian) and asphalt, then the laying down of layers, and finally the steam rollering (that’s the “and compacted” part in the paragraph above). I don’t know about you, but my inner eight-year-old boy loves to watch steam rollers at work. I wish I could drive one. Taking bumpy things, making them smooth. Man, that would be the life.
Enjoy the new highway.Enjoy popping your clutch(apologies to anyone born after 1980 who has no idea what a clutch is) at the top of the hill past the Dentist’s office and cruising a steady 30 mph at max gas mileage all the way to Camp Meeker’s Front Porch™ at Market and Bohemian.
Enjoy it for the next fifteen years. It’s nice to see the West County getting the good kind of attention for a change.
