Word: asphalt
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...holidays, 7,000 people were stranded in cars and trains when avalanches blocked valley roads. A similar disaster struck last February, cutting off several resorts from the outside world for two days. Olympic organizers say they are prepared. "The first flake won't even have time to hit the asphalt," says Killy. "It will land on a snowplow." But a few minor accidents on the two-lane mountain roads that lead up to the ski runs, bobsled course and hockey rink could create gridlock in transporting the 2,300 athletes, 6,000 journalists and 800,000 spectators...
...rampant paving of the countryside -- from parking lots to malls and office complexes -- has made deluges more dangerous by robbing the terrain of its natural ability to absorb rainwater. Water racing across concrete or asphalt travels up to 10 times as fast as it does across a meadow. Often it is funneled into streams and creeks too narrow, shallow and winding to accommodate the rushing runoff...
...dish. At seven he is a displaced person, a brilliant adult mind imprisoned in second grade. In class he flummoxes his teacher with complex answers to simple questions. (Q. Which of the numbers one through nine can be divided by two? A. All of them.) On the schoolyard asphalt he draws elaborate Madonnas in colored chalk. But he can't catch a basketball without falling down, or fail to be oppressed by his genius. Seems Fred is a kid too, envying the boy's ease of one rowdy, popular classmate: "All I want is someone I can eat lunch with...
...they are busy. So many people turn up at the Willow Creek Community Church northwest of Chicago, for example, that a traffic controller atop the building is needed to supervise the uniformed attendants who direct cars across the acres of asphalt. Befuddled visitors are greeted with information booths in the lobby. At Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana, Calif., converts are so numerous that they are baptized in the Pacific Ocean, dozens at a time...
...whole subculture, complete with a new slang vocabulary, is fast emerging around the sport. Bladers hang out with rollerbuddies (friends) who prowl the asphalt in an eternal quest for greased turf (smooth pavement) and try to avoid rollerblood (injuries) at all costs. But remember: in rollerblade lingo, cobblestone is a dirty word...