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Sunday, March 22nd, 2020 – Park-and-Ride Route – Not!

With the Coronavirus pandemic in full swing, our normal Sunday routine has been cancelled.  Well, what to do?  We went for a walk and picked up trash, of course.  Is there anything else?

The route we used was the Park-and-Ride Route without the park-and-ride which was only about 4.5 miles.  Sunday is the day of rest, after all.

So this hoarding situation is just ridiculous.  We don’t understand the scarcity of hand sanitizer, rubber gloves and toilet paper.  Well, the toilet paper we can understand.  We’re down to our last 348 rolls and getting stressed.  But this is weird.  Someone dumped a bunch of gloves, 58 by our count, on Juanita-Woodinville Way.  It appears someone just gave up and threw in the towel, or dropped the gloves.  They were unused and we hoped they would fit like a glove.  And they did, like size large gloves, not medium like we use.  We are running a bit low.

Also along Juanita-Woodinville Way, someone lost their headlight assembly.  There was no evidence of an accident, just the single part.  We left it and picked it up later with the car.  You’d think someone would notice if their headlight suddenly fell off their car.  #oblivion.

A-tisket a-tasket we found a wicker basket. 

12th Man flag. We’ve been passing this on our walks since the culvert incident in October of last year when the guy tried to put his own culvert along the road before the city stopped him.  This morning, we removed the flag.

We crawled down into a gully after a beer can.  As often happens, once down there we saw more cans and what looked to be a milk bottle.  The bottle was full.  We opened it expecting some very soured milk, but it was filled with water and cigarette butts.  We don’t understand the logic of this.

Or this.  Another water bottle filled with yellow liquid.  Yep, rubber gloves.

We found an incorrectly-labeled bag of carrots in a parking lot.   They are supposed to be individual small carrots.  But they were mashed carrots.  There must have been a screw-up at the factory.

On our walk, we picked up a couple of large bottles and the cigarette-butt bottle so our bags were getting heavy.  This didn’t help.  A brass lock that weighed very close to a pound.  “PADLOCK (LESS CORE) BRASS SHACKLE 13/16 IN.”  Yikes! $104.  But that is without the core.  The core is an additional $46, so $150 worth of lock.  Of course, without the key…

 

Monday, March 23rd, 2020 – Safeway Route

Today was another quiet walk.  When we traveled over Norway Hill, on a normal workday, we get passed by 10 to 15 cars.  Today the only vehicle we saw was a garbage truck, and it wasn’t even garbage day.  And yes, we know all the garbage days along our routes.

We found another lock today.  This was a Yakima Hitch Lock and only the core.  It only weighed a few ounces and is available on Amazon for $17.  The total opposite if yesterday’s lock.  Still no key, though.

At first, near the KinderCare, we thought we found some balls, but they were balloons.  

The last one was on the opposite side if the street.  We gutted them all and they sleep with the fishes.  Not really, they are in the garbage.

We found another balloon.  Scratch that.  It was an orange.  You can tell because it’s the right color and when we gutted it, it squirted back.

Another tool for our found tool collection.  A 5/16-inch deep socket in great condition.

A lost lug nut.  No, the socket did not fit the lug nut.

Cigarette butts!  Blurry photo, but at this corner, some smoker rightly used their ashtray for his butts then emptied the ashtray on the street.  Where’s the logic in that?  We didn’t keep count, but we picked up about twenty butts.

Great.  A short way later, we found a buried dust pan.  We could have used it with the cigarette butts.  Next we’ll probably find a whisk broom.

Near Safeway, we picked up a lot of these.  This is a sanitizing wipe provided by Safeway while shopping there.

Earlier while visiting Fred Meyer, we saw this. Have we come to this?  

At the Safeway bus stop, there was a shopping cart.  We thought it might belong to a homeless person, but some of the items looked to be office-related.  Perhaps someone in the process of working from home?  We left it alone.

 

Tuesday, March 24th, 2020 – Park-and-Ride Route

There was off-and-on mist this morning and very little “interesting” trash.  Certainly no money.  We got to the Park-and-Ride bus stop early and there were two riders waiting, dutifully six feet apart and we skirted them.  One asked if we were finding less trash these days.  Yes, but not like you’d expect.  We keep finding an inordinate amount of random trash (including sanitizing wipes) and cigarette butts.

Officially, today the Governor has “hunkered” us down and we are incarcerated in place.  However, walking is still allowed as long as you maintain six feet of social distancing.  Here’s another use for selfie sticks.  Arm, three feet plus selfie stick three feet equals six feet.   If anyone gets within six feet, whack’em!

One of the first things we found this morning was a car air freshener to go along with the  all cigarette butts.  “Black Ice.”  Good thing we didn’t accidentally slip on it.  Black ice can be dangerous.

 

At the Park-and-Ride Party Corner, more Coors cans.  Oh, and a carton of snacks.  Someone’s not following the Gov’s noncongregation rule.

Again, we saw a Mike’s Hard Lemonade can down a hill.  Once down there we found two more cans and some miscellaneous trash.  But we also found a ball.  It was in very rough shape with its own collection of moss.  We really need to get down here more often.  We don’t know where that ball has been.  Now we know its now in our garbage can.

Traffic was oddly a bit heavier this morning.  That didn’t stop Janet from crossing the rush-hour traffic against the light.  One of these days, she’s going to get a citation for jaywalking.

The weirdness of the English language.  A citation is,

• An official commendation for meritorious action, especially in military service: a citation for bravery.
• A traffic ticket.

We’re guessing it’ll be the latter.

Wednesday, March 25th, 2020 – Safeway Route

Today was raining, cold and a bit breezy, but not too uncomfortable.  This was the first “Hunkered” day, and traffic seemed to be about the same as yesterday.  We’re probably down to the dregs of essential workers.  We didn’t see any riders on any of the buses, but we may have missed one.  If this is still the situation when summer rolls by, I expect we’ll see tumbleweeds blowing by us.

The cigarette butt count was down because of the rain, but we found a fair amount of mundane trash.  Interesting trash is way down.  Except for the Saturday swimsuits, of course.  We did find gloves and a poop bag, but we’ll save the photos of them until our Saturday walk to keep up the suspense.

Someone else lost a lug nut.  

We’ve found a lot of these.  We should see some lost wheels.  Oh, wait, we have.  We haven’t counted the lug nuts, but we probably have thirty or forty.  We should be finding a lot more wheels.

The Nerf Gangs are not practicing the social distancing. Or maybe they are.  Can a Nerf bullet travel more than six feet?

Another ball.  This one had no obvious home, so it is now in our lost ball orphanage.

The shopping cart from Monday was still there.  It had been ransacked and the backpack was gone.  We pulled it into the Safeway parking lot.  Yes, we looked like homeless people.  Glad there was no traffic around.

What’s this?  

Is someone setting up a zip line?  Strange things are afoot on Norway Hill.

 

Thursday, March 26th, 2020 – Park-and-Ride Route

This morning was a pleasant walk with very little traffic.  With the directive to stay home, the few cars we see must be essential workers so we’ve started waving to many of the drivers, and we’re getting several waves back.

At the park-and-ride, there were no riders when we passed.  This is where we used to see twenty to thirty riders.  And see how clean everything is.  You’re welcome.

Well, except for this.  A flattened sock.  Who changes clothes at the park-and-ride?  Okay, we have found six lady’s swimsuits here in the last three weeks.  If she changed clothes here, it might have knocked this guy’s socks off.  It certainly would us.   Well, at least Chuck’s.

Also at the P&R, someone ran out of gas.   This was too big for us to carry, so we passed gas.  Make that passed on the gas.

We extended our walk up a street we’ve not walked for a while and found this.  We’re not sure what it is, but it’s been here, probably buried, for a long time.  It weighed about thirty pounds, so we left it.  We may pick it up later with our car.  We’ll stay off this road from now on.

Someone picked up some trash on Norway Hill and left it in two different piles for us to pick up.  Thank you, we think.  The red Core Power bottle was another cigarette-butt bottle and the pink bag on the right was a dog poop bag.

It’s good to see a husband and wife doing things together.  Like giving up golf.  We gave them a nice golf clap of congratulations.

 

We heard this guy pecking away.  Woodpeckers peck to get food and to attract mates.  Since it was pecking on the sign, we know what it was after.  And no, don’t ask how 104th and 105th Avenues NE can intersect.

As we said, it was a pleasant walk today and we were in a good mood. Then, this threw a wet blanket on things.  

 

Friday, March 27th, 2020 – Safeway Route

This morning we had a light mist throughout our walk and found a very unlucky bunny.  We’ve been discussing that we have not found roadkill for the last month, probably due to the reduction in traffic.  But this morning we removed a very messy roadkill rabbit from 112th Ave NE, a moderately-traveled street.  We can walk down the middle of long stretches the major thoroughfare, Juanita-Woodinville Way these mornings.  This rabbit did not have a lucky foot.

We found more money today.  At Safeway, we periodically look through the shrubs by the driveway because people, including the beggars, often dump trash there.  Today, we found five dollars buried under a bush.    Then, later we found an additional quarter.  We’ve used this before, but we like money, and this movie.

 

We found another sock in the middle of the road.  

Perhaps due to the light traffic, someone had a Sock Hop.

 

Well, this is different.  A different Nerf bullet.  So does this represent gang colors with Nerf Gangs?

We found a student’s study list.  “Chapters in need of review.”  Nothing!  Great work.  Oh, wait, the school’s are on Corona-pause.  Finish the list!

Hey, a recycling event’s coming up!  “Uh, too much trouble.  I’ll just drop it in the gutter.”    

Back at Safeway, some low-life knocked over the shopping cart and re-ransacked it.  We up-righted the cart and loaded the materials back into it.  There were a lot of cheap electronic cables, a set of head phones and two wallets.

One wallet was empty and the other had a bunch of rewards cards, two driver’s licences and two credit cards.  We now think the cart was loaded with stolen goods, probably from prowled cars.  We pushed the cart up to a dumpster in the Safeway parking lot.  We took the licenses and cards home and shredded them.

We found one interesting card in the wallet.  This was a Beeping wallet.  The wallet had several slots for credit cards and if one is missing, it beeps to let you know. 

Here’s a helpful hint.  DON’T CARRY SO MANY CARDS!  One or two is sufficient.  We speak from experience.  We were pickpocketed in Naples, Italy.  Well, Chuck was and had to cancel all our cards.  Now we carry two credit cards, one each.

Think about what you needlessly carry in your wallet/purse that would cause problems if it fell into the wrong hands.  And, yes, we thought it would never happen to us, because we were careful.

 

Saturday, March 28th, 2020 – Riverside Drive

This morning was a warm 44°F with a light rain.  The first thing we found near our home was another wine box.  Maybe the McLitterers have started drinking out of boredom during the virus lock-down.

Someone lost a hubcap.  A nondescript replacement for a factory hubcap.  If you know who’s it is, we can tell them which recycle bin it’s in.

This new sign is on the street entering downtown Bothell.   It’s a bit startling until the second half of the message appears.  They need to work on their punctuation.

At the Sammamish River Park, we found a nice glass water bottle.  A 22 oz Life Factory bottle, $25 on Amazon.  It will probably end up at Goodwill like most of the usable items we find.

Uh-oh.  Some people are not practicing social distancing.  And there’s a golf pencil.  Wonder what par was?  Did he get a hole in one?

This was a banner week for both gloves and dog poop bags.  Twenty gloves and seventeen poop bags. And that does not count the 58 gloves that we picked up on Sunday.  Today, we picked up nine gloves and ten poop bags.  Both are attributable to the virus and the lock-down.

The rock painters are at it again.  We left it in place.

Just to prove that we’re good neighbors, we picked up a piece of trash across the Bothell City limits in Woodinville. You’re welcome. 

In some bushes along Brickyard Road, we thought we saw a baseball.  It was a large seashell.  It appears to be a Moon Snail.  “When the moon snail senses food is near, its giant slimy foot envelops the clam or other bivalve. The snail then starts drilling into its victim’s hard shell with a sharp kind of tooth called a “radula.” Progress is slow, so to speed things up, the snail squirts a few drops of hydrochloric acid and enzymes to dissolve the shell and then liquefy the victim’s innards.”  Nice neighbor.

We dug up an old buried sign.  “Work at Home.”  Well, isn’t everybody these days?

At the freeway, more money!  Six cents.  This brings the total for this week to $5.31.  Not bad for 15 hours of work.

At the Park-and-Ride, we didn’t find any more swimsuits.  But we did find this. The construction sign that has been lying on the grass for over two years has finally been removed.  The grass had been mowed, so perhaps the Metro Maintenance people removed it.  In the past, they just moved it aside or mowed around it.