Top 5 Ways to Tell You're in 'Big Asphalt'

1) You are surrounded by parking lots and pavement so vast you can see the curvature of the Earth.*

2) To cross the street without getting run over, you have to put on your running shoes.

3) To communicate with someone catty-corner on an intersection, you must use a cell phone. Yelling at the top of your lungs and waving your arms are not sufficient.

4) You feel sorry for people on foot because you assume that only someone who is desperate would walk in that location. Maybe they are poor, or homeless, or their car has broken down, and they are having a Big Mac attack, or a combination of those things. Unless, of course, you are the one on foot. Then you are feeling sorry for yourself. You are tiny and vulnerable and dodging traffic or scurrying like a small, frightened animal.

5) If your house requires a seven-mile-drive to visit your backyard neighbor, then you probably live in a Big Asphalt area. The houses shown in the map below, which are less than 100 feet apart near Orlando, Florida, are separated by seven miles of pavement. That route takes you through Big Asphalt. See an intersection on that route below the map.