Pop Tabs Redux

Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – New Route, Third Time

Today was a nice walking day but we are still in “grooming” mode on our new route.  Our six-mile walks should take about two hours.  Today, we were out about three hours.  It will get easier, we hope.

Last week, including Saturday, we accumulated twenty-two gloves and eight dog poop bags.  Today we picked up six gloves and five bags.

On the neighborhood blog, NextDoor.com, there was a thread about people leaving poop bags around the area.  Someone suggested it was people leaving them to pick up on their way back so they didn’t have to carry them.  Yes, could be.  But how many dogs poop twice at the beginning of the walk in the same place?   And at six o’clock in the morning?

We found a baggage tag at the bottom of the Tolt Pipeline.  This is a rare, Turkish Airlines baggage tag in the Covid-19 age.

Inside, the tag, we found the person’s address.  He lives in Boston.  So, how does a guy in Boston on his way from Turkey drop his luggage tag at the bottom of the Tolt pipeline in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic?  So many questions, so few answers.

By the apartments on 112th Ave NE, someone’s car was ransacked.  Everything was waterlogged and heavy.

Also among the items was a golf card.   It’s for the Oki Golf Club and we may be able to return it to the owner.  We’ll let you know.  

We may have been the victims of a drive-by shooting this morning.  But it’s really hard to tell with these Nerf bullets.

Yet another Vulture Scam profiteering on the Covid-19.  In last week’s blog we reported on these and noted that a good way to validate them was to look up the phone number on the Internet.  If you don’t find it, it’s a red flag.

Well we were wrong.  We did find this one.

So, if you need to sell you home, call Brian the Carpet Cleaner.  Enough said.

We pass a generally-messy yard with random toys and lawn furniture.  Today we found a dog toy that was trying to escape.  No way, we tossed him back.

Cloud Bliss. This large Starbuck’s sign had blown across the street from Safeway.  These inserts routinely slip out of the sandwich board sign and we usually put them back.  This time it got recycled.

We dug a large bag out of the bushes.  “HD Fowler Company is the oldest and largest independent, family-owned distributor of waterworks, irrigation, pumps and wastewater treatment equipment in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the largest in America.”  And evidently a distributor of large plastic sacks too.

Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey and Pabst?  

Well, we guess so.

We’d be willing to give it a shot.

 

Monday, April 27th, 2020 – Safeway Route

It was a boring Monday walk.  Of course, a good part of yesterdays walk covered the same territory.  Other than gloves, we did find a penny.   One wet penny.  

And, well, a dog ball.  It was in good condition and ended up in our ball collection.  Pretty exciting, huh?

We have an annual bike ride called the Seven Hills of Kirkland.  As we’ve pointed out in past years, one hill  is in Cottage Lake and one, Norway, is in Bothell.  But they ignore us.  We can’t blame them.  “Five Hills of Kirkland, One Hill of Cottage Lake and One Hill of Bothell” is a mouthful.

We saw a sign for the ride on Norway Hill.  But the ride is normally on Memorial Day.  This is WAY too early to be putting up signs.  It turns out because of Covid-19, the Seven Hills day is transforming into the Seven Hills Month of May to maintain social distancing.  Good idea.

 

Tuesday, April 28th, 2020 – Park-and-Ride Route

Today was a bit cooler but calm which made for a nice walk.  We removed a small road-kill bird and didn’t find any spare change.  We found the usual number of gloves and dog poop bags including these two.  One in the middle of the road and one hanging on a berry bush.  They must have been too pooped to properly dispose of the poop.  And that’s the straight poop on the poop bags.

We found a nice, shiny Buick hubcap.  We normally find plastic caps that have been damaged.  This one is metal and hardly a scratch on it. This one’s a keeper.  w00t!

At the park-and-ride, we found a soccer disc.   Playing soccer in the empty parking lot is a bad idea for a couple of reasons.  First, soccer is a team sport.  Can we spell “s-o-c-i-a-l  d-i-s-t-a-n-c-i-n-g?”  Second, IT’S ASPHALT, you idiots!

Deep in some bushes we found a box with something in it. When we got home, we opened it.  A bag had a brand new Fairwin belt in it. 

We were going to send it to Goodwill.  

But if it makes me this cool, I may keep it.  It must be the buckle.    

 

Wednesday, April 29th, 2020 – Safeway Route

Sorry, folks.  Things are getting really boring out there, unless you are into gloves and poop bags.  Let us know and we’ll start saving them for you.

Or cigarettes, we find a lot of them.  Someone even emptied his ashtray for us.

The only other nontrash item we found was a ball outside of the KinderCare.  

Yes, we find a lot of balls outside of the KinderCare fence and we toss them back.  But this one was about the size of a ping pong ball and as dense as a billiard ball.  We didn’t think it was a good thing for the kids to play with.  Ok, perhaps not us either, but we took it anyway.  It’s in our ball collection.

 

Thursday, April 30th, 2020 – Park-and-Ride Route

We really need to get this pandemic over with and open up the economy.  Trash is getting really sparse.  Two gloves and no poop bags.  Wait, we’re not complaining about the lack of poop bags, just saying.  We did find lots of cigarette butts along the route.  On Norway Hill, we found a lot of Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans, but that was mainly because the City of Bothell mowed and uncovered (and shredded) several that had been hiding.

This is a favorite corner for people to “donate” stuff for free.  A hose reel (empty) and a sprinkler.  Guys, the pandemic won’t stop the grass from growing.  Maybe someone stole their hose?  Nah.

This is at least the second time we’ve found these.  A couple of Rite Aid security devices, apparently for alcohol.  One of them still had a red LED blinking.  Hope they are not GPS tracking devices.  It would be very embarrassing to have the King County SWAT surround our recycle bin in the middle of the night.

Hut, hut, hut, hut, hut, hut.

Our tab jar is full again.  

One of our neighbor’s brother collects pop tabs for a charity.  Why?  Several charities do it, check the Internet.  In 2018, we started collecting the tabs from cans we pick up and have estimated 4.9 pounds of pop tabs so far – that is equivalent to about 6150 cans.

At this point, Chuck needs to issue a retraction.  For the past few weeks, Janet, indirectly has been unfairly chided for losing a dime she found.  When we find small things we want to keep, like pop tabs, coins and other things, we put them in our pockets, not our garbage or recycle bags.  Larger things we want to keep go in our recycle bags since we sort them at the end of our walk.

While cleaning the full jar of pop tabs, we found the dime.  So I was remiss in blaming her for losing the dime.  But she sure as hell was remiss in the handling and storing of it.

Then again, we also found a penny and two screws in the mix.  I’m sure those were her fault too.  Me?  Nah!

 

Friday, May 1st, 2020 – Safeway Route

Today the traffic was a little heavier and there was a greater variety of trash.  Plus, we found some money.  

One penny.  One red cent.  One lousy copper.  And our walking week’s about over.  Tomorrow had better be a big day.  By the way, Chuck took charge of the coin since Janet can’t be trusted with money anymore.

The Bothell mowers have been mowing the weeds along our route, so we are finding things that have been long buried.  They uncovered two balls in a ditch behind a home without a fence.  The one on the left was still in fair shape so we tossed it back into their yard.  The orange one was destroyed by the mower.  We took it, it didn’t even make it into our ball collection.  We have our standards, low that they may be.

A pair of kid’s socks. Of course they didn’t match.

Well, we pulled up stakes and moved on.  Make that picked up stakes and moved on.  We’re set in case we’re attacked by a plastic vampire.

We don’t think we’ve ever seen a vehicle parked along Juanita-Woodinville Way.  This morning, we found a car transporter.  The truck had Idaho plates on it.  The cars had Pennsylvania plates.  The driver may have tired, pulled over and climbed in one of the cars for a nap.  When he awakes, someone should tell him he missed Idaho.

A nice pair of nail clippers in good condition.   These will come in handy since we can’t get our monthly pedicure.  Chuck used his angle grinder once, but it hurt.

 

Someone tossed their shopping list.

Hmm, bread, ok.  cottage cheese, ok.  Tato chips, ok.  Breasts, big, [Chuck: well duh!]

Another R-Rated DVD.  

Hey, if you’re going to toss these out, at least toss them where they don’t get run over and become unplayable.  [Janet: Yes, Chuck again.]

 

Saturday, May 2nd, 2020 – Riverside Drive

We had some minor rain today but not bad.  Finally, we had a pretty good money day.  Two quarters and a penny.  By the way, when we say it would be nice to find some folding money, this is not what we mean.

We found a case with a bunch of small parts in it. 

When we got it home, we found it was a double-sided case containing a bunch of random nuts, screws and other miscellaneous parts. Most of it rusty.  We can see why they didn’t want it, but just recycle it, don’t dump it by the side of the road.  There were some small sockets and driver bits, so this counts as tools.  They will end up in our Found Tool Collection.

The Rock People were at it again. There’s a Facebook page for these.  They paint rocks and hide them for people to find.  They should hide them better.  We weren’t even looking for them and we found five.

The number of both gloves and poop bags are a little higher this week, but no records.    Twenty-nine gloves and ten bags.

We came across a balloon.  Way too happy for these times.  We popped his bubble by popping it and putting it in the trash.

Ah, this is more like it.  Yep, a lot of folks are these days.  It may have been a dog toy, but it was nowhere near a home.  It ended up with the balloon.

We found a do rag.  It looks like it has a paramecium design on it.  We’ll wash it, but the paramecia may not come off.  We’ll add it to our growing pile of Goodwill clothes, for when Goodwill opens again.

We’ve found a few dead moles on our walks, but this is the first live one.  It was about two feet into the traffic lane apparently eating something.  We tried to nudge it off the road, but it kept trying to go to the center.  We finally gave up and let it find its fate.

Someone was shaving at the bus stop.   Might as well shave, it’s not being used for a bus stop much these days.

At the freeway off ramp, some left this sign.  Why they want concrete at the off ramp, we don’t know, but people are ignoring the sign.  There was no concrete but there were plenty of cans, cigarette butts and other trash.

At the deserted park-and-ride someone had one or two parties.  Twelve beers, a dark chocolate wrapper and a can of whipped cream.  It must have been a wild party.

We picked up a lot of cans today, mostly beer.  When we got home we counted forty-seven pop tabs.