On 1/19/2019 10:19 PM, David Scheidt wrote:
Frank Krygowski wrote:
:On 1/18/2019 11:35 PM, James wrote:
: On 19/1/19 12:14 pm, wrote:
:
: Where are you located where you ride a gravel bike? I've found really
: few places where those are practical though I have two presently.
:
:
: In Australia.Â* Nearest capital city is a 3 hour drive away.Â* Nearest
: town is a 15 minute drive away.Â* If I ride in the opposite direction
: from the nearest town, the bitumen runs out within 7 km and there are
: gravel roads beyond and to each side.Â* There are hundreds of kilometers
: of gravel roads through the state forest and national parks nearby.
: Coffee shops are few and far between though.

:I live on the edge of a metro area that was settled and farmed early in
:Ohio's history. All those little farms needed road access, so there are
:hundreds of little paved ex-farm roads to explore, although the paving
:is far from excellent. Supposedly, in the 1950s or so, the county
:engineer made a name for himself by paving hundreds of miles of gravel
:roads, but he did it on the cheap. We pay for it in potholes ever since.

Lots of midwestern gravel roads were paved by covering them in tar,
dumping fine crushed rock on them, and rolling a roller over it.
Repeat enough times, typically once a year for 3 or four years, and you
have a proad that someone who isn't a pavement geek would call paved.
One advantage of roads done like this is that they're a reasonably
flexible pavement, so they perform well with frost heaves. if they're
exposed to high volume traffic, the surface wears out rapidly. if
they're exposed to excessively heavy trucks, they get ruts.

Sounds like you're talking about "chip seal." We have some of those, but
mostly in neighboring counties, IIRC.

Given the choice, I prefer real asphalt paving, because chip seal's
rougher texture gives a lot more rolling resistance. But it's better
than loose gravel, at least once the motor vehicles pack it down.


--
- Frank Krygowski