Dumpster Disgust

December 2nd, 2019 – Safeway Route.

The weather finally warmed up to a balmy 39F and we were able to walk.  We didn’t find any roadkill and had one wave from a passenger on a bus.

We did find more money.  Two pennies a the 7-Eleven and another about a mile away on the fog line of Juanita-Woodinville Way.

During our walking hiatus, the Taco Time Tokus was busy.  Two different bags.  Again, no receipts.  They’re definitely onto us trying to track them down.

We found the remnants of a wreck. We popped the VW emblem out and it’s now in our collection.  The rest got donated to the 7-Eleven dumpster.  

We found a tool. Ok, it’s only a funnel, but it still counts as a tool.  Wait, it’s not a funnel, it’s a Flo Tool.  See, we told you it’s a tool.

Near a bus stop, we picked up a dropped shingle and walked it across the street to put it in the trash receptacle.  There was a passenger we didn’t recognize waiting for the bus.  She totally ignored Janet.  If we didn’t know us, we’d try to ignore us too.

However, on our way back from Safeway at the same bus stop, we met someone who does know us. Tracy, who we know from The Hop and Hound, was waiting for the Seattle bus to report for jury duty.  We first met her and her husband when they bought us a beer because they recognized us from our trash-walking.

Someone littered a tag from a nursery. A “Big Tree Plant?”  What kind of nursery would put that on the tag?  That’s what we would call it.  We expect something like “Rubus pensilvanicus” for a blackberry bush.  

We found some diamonds in the middle of Juanita-Woodinville Way.  We read about the 1-billion euro Dresden Green Vault robbery last week.  We’re pretty sure these are part of the stolen diamonds.  The gold paint on the backs are probably for protection.

Someone made screwdrivers.  The Vodka bottle still had a little left in it.

We also picked up a full can of Dr. Pepper.  No leaks or anything.

And then, a half-bag of chips.  All Dressed Ruffles?  What does that mean?  Oh, they’re Canadian.  That probably explains it.

Someone left us an almost-full pack of cigarettes.  They must be trying to give up smoking.

Ok, then we found a book in the bushes.  Guess we’ll spend the rest of the day drinking Vodka Peppers,  munching on some chips, having a smoke and reading the Book of Mormon.

 

December 3rd, 2019 – Park-and-Ride Route.

It was even warmer today at 45F, a comfortable walk.  We waved to the Salinas Construction driver.  We also removed two roadkill.  A rat and a rabbit.

The roadkill rabbit was a questionable record.  It marks the 100th rabbit we’ve removed from the roadway since we’ve been keeping track.  For being the 100th rabbit, it was fairly mundane.  What, you say?  Of course we have a roadkill rating system.  Don’t you?

There was a significant amount of trash on the road but little was noteworthy.  To our point, this sock made the noteworthy list.  And it didn’t even have a mate.

On our way to the park-and-ride, we found the remnants of another fender bender.  There was much less debri than was left by the wreck of a couple weeks ago, but still significant.   We picked up the big pieces but there is still a week’s worth of minor pieces for us to clean up.

So when one is driving, checking his emails and rear-ends the car in front of him, what is he charged with?  Distracted driving?  Probably.  Reckless driving?  Possibly.  Littering?  Never.  In case you’re keeping score,  it is a banged-up Ford hubcap.  Not a keeper.

We arrived at the park-and-ride early and the bus hadn’t cleared out the riders, so we wandered the parking lot for few minutes.  We arrived at the Electric Vehicle parking area, we noticed that two of the five parking signs had fallen.   Whoever signed off on this job should be fired.  Get it?  Oh, give us a break.

At the Tolt Pipeline, someone had a party.  Smirnoff Ice, vodka, pizza…  When we attend a party, we make sure everyone picks up after themselves.  We don’t get invited to many parties.  Including this one.

 

December 4th, 2019 – Safeway route.

Today was even warmer at 49F with some very light mist.  We got a honk from a minivan and a headlight flash from a passing car.

Plus, we found the answer.  42.Forty two cents in the gutter near Safeway.   Nice.

A Coors Can. After five beers, maybe you don’t care if the six-pack holder is still attached to the can.  It happens.

A rubber glove and a broken soda bottle.  Maybe the guy couldn’t hang onto the bottle without the rubber glove.  The soda is “Blueberry Lemonade and Other Natural Flavors.”  Blueberry-Lemonade seemed like an OK combination to us.  Perhaps he tossed it because of  the Other Natural Flavors.

During the summer when we don’t use flashlights, we miss a lot of trash like cellophane cigarette wrappers or small items.  With our flashlights, we often see a glint from something and find a bit of trash.  This morning we saw something shiny about thirty feet down a side street.    It was an eighth-inch nut on the road.  If we’d known it was a tiny nut, we would not have taken the sixty-foot detour.  And that’s our story in a nutshell.

OK, this looked yummy.  Uh, but where?  Instead of “donut holes” they should have written “oxymorons.”

We found small booklet.  It was a CD album insert for an album titled Misty Eyed Adventures.  It sounded pretty good on Youtube.

 

Heading up Norway Hill, we found a McMess.  It was strewn on a forty-foot path along the road.

As we proceeded over the hill, we found three more cups.  One at the Tolt Pipeline, one just over the crest of the hill, and one three-quarters of the way down the hill.  There was no sign of Taco Time.  It looks like an invasion to us.  We’ll see.

 

December 5th, 2019 – Park-and-Ride Route.

Another cool, overcast day with surprisingly little trash.  We did wave to the Salinas Construction driver who gave us our vests.  Norway Hill was devoid of both McDonald’s and Taco Time trash.  A truce may have been declared.

Someone tossed out an ice cream cone and napkins.  Ice cream in December?  What were they thinking?  Oh, wait, they weren’t.

A package of Halls Cherry Cough Drops.  They only used two of the nine pieces before coughing these up.  Not a great endorsement for Halls.

A sweatshirt at the Tolt Pipeline.    No doubt NASA is hiding evidence, perhaps of an alien spacecraft?

This is where the rubber meets the road.  

 

December 6th, 2019 – Safeway Route.

Today was again overcast, cool and dry.  Getting boring.  Traffic was Friday-light and we picked up a moderate amount of trash.

We came across this.  A free panty?  Is that half a pair of panties?  Anyway, we didn’t see any.  There was supposed to be more inside, but there wasn’t.  False advertising.

On the Norway Hill battleground, the truce between McDonald’s and Taco Time seems to be holding, but another player entered the field.  Jack in the Box. We don’t know who dropped them, they just kind of popped up.  

 

Another tool for our tool collection.  An allen wrench, also known as a hex key.  It’s a bit rusty, but, then again, so are we.

More keys.  We found a set of three duplicate (triplicate?) keys.  This guy made extra keys in case he lost the original.  If one of these is the original, he is up the proverbial creek without a key.

We found a chunk of heavy foam rubber.  .  It turned out to be a Ladder Mitt that protects surfaces when the ladder leans against them.  And this mitt, like most gloves we’ve found is pretty much useless without a mate.  Aren’t we all.

And now a plug from our sponsor.  Oh, give us a break.  We need to work with the material we’re given.

Ok, this may have counted as roadkill.  A purple racoon? or is that a beaver?  We tossed it back into the yard it most-likely came from.

We picked up another condom.  This one was opened but still in the wrapper.

• Guy:  “Getting lucky tonight.  Woo hoo!.”; Condom: [rip]
• Gal:  “Oh no you won’t!”;  Guy: “Great.  Another headache.”; Condom: “What the…?”
• Condom: “Geronimo!”

 

December 7, 2019 – Riverside Drive.

Today we walked in the rain which meant heavy, waterlogged trash.  Also, we missed this route last week due to the cold weather, so we had more to deal with than usual.  However, there were several trash/recycle bins along the way to help out.

We did come across two roadkills.  We found a squirrel, and an opossum, we think. We analyzed the opossum roadkill for a while.  It could have been a raccoon or an opossum.  There were three distinct paws and a tail.  In the end, the decision entailed focusing on the tail.  It could have focused on the paws, but that’s another tale.  Or is that tail?

We also found some more money.  “One thin dime, one tenth of a dollar…”  Don’t get us started.  Oh, what the heck.

Ok, back to our walk.  The first thing of significance we picked up was some Taco Time Tokus trash.  This was no surprise to us.  We have been passing it in the car when running errands, but, due to traffic, there was no opportunity to stop and pick it up.  This does not break the Norway Hill truce between Taco Time and McDonald’s since it predates the truce.  As far as we know, it is still holding, but Monday will tell.

At the Sammamish River Park parking lot there were some Hop Valley empties.  We’ve had Citrus Mistress, but not the Palisaderade IPA.  Only 21 IBUs, so probably not a keeper for us.

However, evidently Hop Valley got results.  Near the bottles was this.  You know the adage, “Candy’s dandy but liquor’s quicker.

Also nearby in the parking lot was a baby bottle.  Hopefully they are not related.

These are the dumpsters in the parking lot where we turn around to head to the other end of Riverside Drive. We use these dumpsters to unload the trash collected to this point.  They are really disgusting.  We don’t dump our trash just anywhere.  We may start boycotting them until they clean up their act.

It’s time to wrap up the week in gloves.  The gloves in the last two images were found today.  One was a nice work glove, but we didn’t find its mate.  The last image was of four gloves in the same area.  Perhaps two surgeons were operating on a patient, got into a heated argument and took off their gloves.

Super Dry!  NOT!  It’s raining, how could it be?

It appears a bicyclist lost a wheel.  But, well, wouldn’t he notice?  Maybe not.

 

We found a NASA sticker.  The sticker notes it is made for McDonalds.  Is McDonalds vying to be the first fast food franchise on Mars?  Wonder if Taco Time is aware of this?

One of us never heard of these.  A Tooth Treasure Chest.  Guess which of us it was?  Ok, and there was a tooth inside.  So let me, the guy who didn’t know about Tooth Treasure Chests, figure out what happened.

• Kid loses tooth.
• Parent buys a Tooth Chest and gives it to the Kid to put under his pillow.
• The tooth fairy shows up and leaves fair money for the tooth and takes the chest.
• On back to wherever, she tosses the tooth.

Where’s the economics in that?