TV’s, Couches, and Bikes. Oh, My!

December 23rd, 2019 – Safeway Route.

Today was 41F with a slight mist and traffic was lighter than usual, probably due to people taking time off before the Christmas holidays.  Trash, on the other hand was heavy, but mostly common cans, bottles and miscellaneous bags and wrappers.  Well, and yes, cigarette butts.

The first thing we found was on the street beside our home.  The leavings of the Taco Tokus.  No receipt again.  They’re not leaving any evidence for us to track them down.

By the apartments on 112th Ave NE, someone dumped a couch.  Another thing for the city to pick up.

We notified them of this, the TV set from Saturday, 

and the construction barrel from a week ago. 

If this much trash is dumped in our small walking area, what’s happening in other areas of Bothell?

Fortunately, the City of Bothell is very responsive to our requests for picking up random trash we cannot handle.  We were annexed into Bothell a few years ago.  If we keep this up, they may try to reverse the annexation.

We had a sad first today.   A large roadkill owl.  It was close to eighteen inches tall.  We pulled it off the road and covered it with leaves.

We found another tennis ball for our ball collection. Yes, we picked up the #@$% plastic bottle too.  Maybe we should start saving them since they’re worth five cents in California.   A round trip to San Jose is about  $130 so it would take 2600 bottles to break even.  Nah, they wouldn’t fit into the overhead bins.  And that doesn’t count the $5 for an inflight beer.  Both ways.

We found a Flip in the gutter.  Oh, wait, it for the right foot.  It’s a Flop.  From the Army, “It’s your left, right, left…”  Translated, “It’s your flip, flop, flip.  So this is definitely a Flop.

 

December 24th, 2019 – Park-and-Ride Route.

Today was Christmas Eve-light traffic.  In fact, 50% of the cars that passed us on Norway Hill gave us an enthusiastic honk.  Ok, that was one car.

At the end of 112th Ave NE, we found a bicycle in the ditch. A Schwinn with a flat tire.  We’ve never dumped a bike for a flat tire, or a construction barrel or a Sony Trinitron, or a sofa.  Then, again, we awake at 5:00 am to walk six miles and pick up trash.  Perhaps we’re the weird ones?

“TV’s, Couches, and Bikes. Oh, My!”

We found another USB cable.  It’s a weird color, so will probably end up in the Goodwill pile.  We’ve have plenty of USB cables to suit our needs.

At the park-and-ride bus stop, we found a complete druggie kit.  A dime bag, soot-covered tin foil, spoon and a needle.  At least they put the cap back on the needle.  Thoughtful of them.

We found another complete set.    A Chinese meal container with chopsticks and rice, but they ate all the good stuff.  We started using the chopsticks to pick up the rice, but it was slow going.  We ended up leaving most of it.  We’re sure some Chinese Crows would clean in up.

We normally find this product in the form of pills.  But there’s a liquid form.  We’ve reported on this product before.  I contains unreported Viagra according to the FDA.  Hope they could keep their Holiday spirits UP.

We found a wooden stake.  This probably belongs to a vampire slayer who dropped the second wooden stake.  He may be clumsy or a bad aim.  Who knows?  But he has a lot at stake here.  Come on, we are running low on material here.

And it’s not getting better.  We found another tennis ball for our collection.  The text on the grate seems a bit awkward, but is technically correct.  So, what would a Romanian think of this?  Well, let’s ask Google.  “”Outfall to stream dump no pollutants” translates to, “ieșire pentru a scurge depozitele de poluanți.  Translated back to English is, “Exit to drain the pollutant deposits.”  Not the intent.

 

December 25th, 2019 – Park-and-Ride/Safeway Route.

Merry Christmas!  Today was a cool, 33F and dry.  We got zero honks on Norway Hill, but no cars passed us, so we’ll count that as a plus.  Today was our normal Safeway Route,  but we spotted some debris on the island near the park-and-ride.  We extended our walk to the park-and-ride then continued on our normal Safeway Route.  Our Christmas present to the neighborhood.

Outside the KinderCare, we found a cone.  This is probably part of their preconstruction curriculum.  Construction 101: How to abandon discarded materials at the job site, three credits.

Another lost lug nut.  We have over thirty of these in our collection.  That’s a lot of loose nuts out there.

“Never open while hot.”  Well, define hot.  It’s 33F today, is that OK?

Since it’s not raining, it’s only fitting we found an umbrella.  An umbrella like this normally costs about $20.  But this is a Bravern umbrella, so it probably goes for $75 or more.  We’ll accept bids.

We do Hors d’oeuvres for Christmas day.  Some families do a turkey dinner and some do ham.  Oh, and also Spam.  Merry Christmas.

 

December 26th, 2019 – Cancelled.

The temperature dropped to 28F so our walk got cancelled.  We slept in and spent some time with our grandkids who spent the night with us.

 

December 27th, 2019 – Safeway Route.

Today was warmer than yesterday at 37F.  Traffic and trash was light.  But we did get an enthusiastic honk from one car on Norway Hill.  That is 100% of the cars that passed us.  It must be the Christmas Spirit.

We found the wrapper of a Christmas dog toy.  “Fido, sit!  Good boy.  Roll over!  Good boy.  Litter!  Good boy.”

At the far end of Juanita-Woodinville Way, we found an intact car grill.  It was an unknown make.  Not because of the photography, (my fault) but because there were no brand names.  Maybe Santa had a rear-ender?

We picked up a green bottle.  It was empty and the label was removed, it looked like a vaping-related fluid, but we could be wrong.  It happens.

And we have another loser! Sorry.  Find a smarter way to pay for your Christmas purchases.

We found a large bag with an elastic opening about two feet in diameter.  It could be a shower cap for the Jolly Green Giant.

Or, maybe his prophylactic.  We did find this nearby.  An unopened pregnancy test kit.

 

December 28th, 2019 – Riverside Drive/Brickyard Road.

After last week’s detour up Brickyard Road, we decided to try it for a while.  We are still covering the original route, we just added a new way home.  We did find some money this morning.  A penny and a dime in different places.  It’s not as good as last week’s take, but better than our normal income these days.

Grape Flavored Cigarettes??  The pack was almost full, so they must not be very good.  We can imagine the smoker:   “Hmm, those look interesting.  I’ll try a pack.”  Later, “Oh, that’s terrible!”  Even later, “Oh, it couldn’t be that bad.  I’ll give them another try… Oh, they are.  I don’t need this. [toss]  Whoa, look at those two weirdos in yellow safety vests!”

Time to review the week in gloves.   Nice variety, but not many compared to recent weeks.

Ok, we also found a doggie bag.  The one and only this week.  That’s Janet in the background standing upwind.

We picked up a scrunchie at a bus stop.  One of us didn’t know what a scrunchie was before we started finding them on our walks.  Walking is very educational.

At the same bus stop, someone left a nice message.  “Be Happy.  Now Brush.  Merry Christmas.”  Probably a Dentist.

We found this.  So we were finally in lockstep… Uh Oh.  No key.

We picked up a lot of cans today, mostly White Claw including this batch.  So selzer is carbonated water, so hard seltzer is carbonated water and alcohol.  So, what’s the draw here?  Oh, wait.  Nice white cans to litter.  We get it.

We picked up a brass brush.  Someone trying to clean his cigarette butt?  What, $457 for six on Amazon?  I’m sorting through our recycling for it first thing tomorrow!

On our new route is this sign.  “Sound Baths, Energy Medicine, Spiritual Life Coach.”  MauSOULeum?  With a name like that, it’s a good thing they didn’t add marketing to their services list.

Someone tossed out this sign, so evidently this ploy doesn’t work..  On the other side of the sign was the same message printed in non-mirrored print.  “Hey, Fred, pull up in front of her.  I see her in the mirror, [holds up the mirrored sign]…  Dang, these things don’t work.  [toss]  Look at those two in the yellow vests…“

On the new Brickyard Route, we found a quarter can of Goof Off.  After reading the warnings on the labels, we’re glad we were wearing gloves. And don’t smoke.

Ok, we found some interesting stuff this week and have them in our relics room (garage).  If any of you are interested in purchasing anything, you can take your pick.  Price is negotiable.