I almost forgot to mention the most amusing part of the whole driveway paving experience. The entire process required one front end loader, one asphalt spreader, two dump trucks (one for debris and one for bringing the crushed limestone and asphalt to the site), and two asphalt rollers. The dump trucks were parked in the westbound lane of the road I live on, since shoulders are about nonexistent on the road, leaving a gap between them that created a protected work area for maneuvering the smaller pieces of equipment. This gap was where they left the smaller roller, safely parked, while they found ways to use up the last front-end-loader-scoopful of asphalt.
After they had deposited most of that last scoop in front of my and my across-the-street-neighbors' mailboxes so that my mail carrier doesn't have to drive into the ditch anymore, the crew found the road littered with tiny specks of asphalt. The easiest way to clean that up was to scrape it with the front end loader, so the guy driving the loader backed it up to get a good shot at the scraps. Like all construction equipment, it has that loud, obnoxious beep alarm when the loader is in reverse. The flaw in those alarms is that the only work if the thing you are backing up into has ears. Small asphalt rollers that were parked in a protected spot away from traffic do not, as far as I can tell, have ears. The very same asphalt roller that was having such difficulty earlier got a front end loader full force to its own front end. It almost didn't start when they went to put it back on the flatbed.
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