Sunday, May 31st, 2020 – 100th Avenue Route
For a Sunday, this was pretty boring. We found a moderate amount of normal trash but no gloves, poop bags, money, etc. Not complaining, mind you. Just saying. Well, perhaps about the no money bit.
There was another mess at the collection bins.
We picked up a bit last week and did again today. At least put the smaller items in the bins. And what gives with the paper cup on the left?
There was a good book in the mix.
A book from one of our favorite authors, David McCullough. 1776. His books are highly recommended. “The Path Between the Seas” about the Panama Canal and “The Great Bridge” about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge are a couple of our favorites. Give them a try.
We found this in the same area of last week’s drone roadkill.
We’re not sure what this was. Perhaps the Garage Door Opener for the drone? If you have an idea, let us know.
On the hill, the Angry Orchard folks have definitely established a foothold.
The Mike’s Harder Lemonade cans are still making an appearance, but it is weak.
We found a “GoodCook” paring knife.
It is reasonably rated on Amazon.
But, wait. they come in packs of two, but we only found one. Where is our second?
Monday, June 1st, 2020 – Safeway Route
There was a definite increase in traffic today, but King County remains stuck in Phase 1 of the master plan. Perhaps folks are just getting used to the Covid-19 norm.
Well, this was a nice surprise.
Someone left Janet a bouquet of flowers. No, it wasn’t Chuck, it was someone thoughtful. They were a few days beyond their use-by date.
Another Woodpecker cleaning the sidewalks.
We’ve been walking for five years now and we don’t remember seeing Woodpeckers doing this. Perhaps it’s yet another symptom of the Coronavirus. “You have the urge to clean the moss out of sidewalk cracks.”
We found five stolen cards belonging to Sara or Benjamin.
These were near the apartments on 112th Ave NE. The Alaska Airlines credit card belongs to Sara and the Northwest Visa and BECU Mastercard belong to Benjamin. The gift card and the Washington Quest card were nameless. The Washington Quest card is the modern-day food stamps. We don’t know if it belonged to Benjamin or Sara.
A pair of nail clippers.
Obviously they got clipped by a car.
The Angry Orchard guy is showing consistency.
Although, he got a bit sloppy with the bottle in the center. No cap.
A bag of dog poop bags.
This is a canvas bag designed to be attached to a dog’s collar. How does the dog feel about this. “What’s this you’re attaching to my collar? Oh, hell NO! How am I supposed to pick up bitches with this on me?”
Someone lost a flashlight.
“The Center” is a mental health treatment center. Wonder if they treat Disposophobia, the fear of losing something. We thought Disposophobia was a fear of garbage disposals. Those things terrify us.
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2020 – Park-and-Ride Route
Traffic is still increasing, but still light by “normal” standards. Are we losing touch with what normal is?
This is our park-and-ride route where, with the lack of cars, we take a pass through the parking lot and pick up the usual Coors cans, other blatant trash and, oddly enough, women’s clothes. Today the lot was pretty clean. Then we found out why. A Metro worker had beat us to it.
We had a brief chat about cigarette butts and the lack of parked cars making our jobs easier. After thanking each other, we moved on with our walk.
Some folks organized a protest in Bothell and on the freeway overpass near our home.
Cedar Park Church took some precautions. Fortunately nothing got out of control, but better safe than sorry. Not sure these would be very effective in keeping a mob out.
Another automobile cap.
This one was near the park-and-ride, so probably from a vehicle from Jackson’s across the freeway. We can kind of see people forgetting to tighten their gasoline cap since it is very routine to get gas. But this was an oil cap. You don’t normally add oil to your engine.
Well, that’s not always the case, we did have a 1967 Cougar XR7 that was fine around town but, we found used a lot of oil at freeway speeds. We found this out when we took a trip from San Jose, CA to Portland, OR and back. It used 32 quarts of oil. It didn’t smoke and didn’t leak. We don’t know where it went.
On Norway Hill, we only found a single Angry Orchard bottle.
We normally find these in pairs, but to be fair, the weeds are growing, so we may have missed its twin.
Also on the Hill, someone left a McMess.
This looks like they went out of their way to scatter the trash. Either that or it was very determined crows. No, it wasn’t the crows, they are much neater litters.
We found this weird bag.
An armless dog, male, we think. He was thanking someone for putting this bag in a trash can. But it wasn’t in a trash can, it was on the side of the road. The “Thank You” was too soon. The guy had a case of premature “eject-ulation”.
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020 – Safeway Route
Litter seems to be getting lighter which makes for a bit of a boring walk. We did get a nice “Thank You” from a driver who stopped and talked to us on our way up Norway Hill. He didn’t offer us a ride, though.
On Monday’s walk, we saw a street sign that had rotted and fallen over.
The city put up a temporary stop sign. and they acted quickly.
They put up a new sign. But left the old sign post. Great job Kirkland!
We found a confusing tag.
Whatever the tag was on, was it “Part Full” or “Full?” And wouldn’t it be “Part Empty” for pessimists? Also, it says “Remove this stub before using.” So, if you used part of it but needed to remove the stub, how would someone know if it were full or part full? Or part empty? So confusing.
We found a nice golf ball.
Nowhere near a golf course, of course. We once took a golf lesson, but we didn’t practice and in due course gave it up. We took the ball and followed our course home. Of course.
Thursday, June 4th, 2020 – Park-and-Ride Route
This morning as we were approaching the freeway, a pickup pulled over and the driver asked if we were picking up cans.
We answered “Yes, and other trash.” He thought we were selling them for scrap and said he had a lot of cans in the back of his truck. We told him that we just recycle them. He waved ok and drove off. Wait, we haven’t checked. What does aluminum go for these days?
At the park-and-ride, more Coors cans.
Unlike most, these were in a bag. Five cans plus two Slim Jim wrappers.
Then we had a first for us. We were asked to not pick up trash. The driver of the metro pickup truck drove by and asked us to stick to the streets. The park-and-ride was his responsibility. Ok, we get it. It’s his livelihood. We’ll leave the trash, but still report on it.
Also at the park-and-ride part of a drug apparatus.
It was broken and didn’t make it into our drug paraphernalia collection.
We are a little worried about the Angry Orchard guy. Initially, he showed up with Corona bottles then switched to Angry Orchard. All of them had the cap replaced on the empty bottles.
Now, we find one every couple of days, and rarely with the top on. If he really wants to overtake Mike’s Harder Lemonade as the King of Norway Hill, he really needs to be more consistent.
This is clever.
We found a lost key. Okay, that’s an oxymoron. It’s not our lost key, someone else’s lost key, but we have it so it’s found. Clear? This key has a built-in LED light to illuminate the keyhole. Very cool, especially if you don’t have a cell phone handy.
Friday, June 5th, 2020 – Safeway Route
We are being shut out on money this week. Come on, you litterers, you only have another day to throw some change at us. We did remove a roadkill bird today, our first roadkill of the week. The longer this pandemic lasts, the weirder things seem to get.
Balloons!
We found balloons in three different places. The first was on 112th and the other two were on Juanita-Woodinville Way, but about five blocks apart. They may be all from the same event. If so, they better take better care of their balloons. These events can balloon into a major issue and go over like a lead balloon. It happens. Call us heartless, but we gutted the balloons, by the way.
We found another tool.
A deep socket, well runover, but still good enough to add to our found tool collection.
Another Angry Orchard.
Only one again, but at least has the cap pressed on.
This bus passed and we waved to the driver as usual but he ignored us.
So we called upon the God of Litter to curse the bus.
And it worked!
We caught up to the bus that had stalled by the side of the road. The driver put out some warning signs. Really? Are you going to see the warning signs if you can’t see the bus?
It was a good curse.
They needed to call in a large tow truck to try to overcome the curse. You can see the operator bowing to the God of Transportation for help, but our curse is too strong. Mwahahaha!
While the beast was disabled, were were able get a closer inspection.
Hey, unlike the airlines, the middle seat is king!
Saturday, June 6th, 2020 – Riverside Drive
The first thing we found on our walk was a dead rabbit in the road which we removed. We also removed two small snakes along the way. We found a lot of small snakes last year along Riverside Drive and figured that they were poisoned by some weed killer. Then again, these snakes were flat, so probably not weed killer. More like wheel killer.
On the plus side, we found our first money of the week, a penny and a quarter.
Both were very beat up from being run over. Reminder, a folded penny does NOT count as folding money.
Wait, we did find more money.
Sort of. We found these items together. A one dollar bus receipt, a Door Dash promo, a DSHS Community Services card and a Rosauers Store gift card. The gift card has thirty four cents on it. But the nearest is in Yakima WA, about two and a half hours away. That’s a long way to go to spend thirty four cents. However, there is one in Hood River, Oregon and we do go there periodically, so maybe we’ll hang onto it. By the way, the DSHS is the Washington State Department of Health Services. A.K.A the Washington welfare system.
This is the end of the walk week where we tally up the gloves and poop bags we’ve found and we’re down!
Gloves are down and dog poop bags are way down.
Only nineteen gloves and four poop bags, only one more than last week. We cannot explain the reduction in the bags. Maybe the Coronavirus makes people more responsible pet owners? Add that to the list of symptoms.
We did find two Angry Orchard bottles with caps.
They are spreading the “love” to other places than Norway Hill.
When we crossed the bridge into downtown Bothell, the Sammamish River offered a very serene scene.
But something was wrong. We didn’t see any plastic bags or beer cans. Someone’s playing a trick on us.
We found some garments along the way.
An apparently-new Seattle Mariners T-Shirt with the slogan “Refuse To Lose” on it. That’s a pretty tall order. A pair of orange socks, prison? A mask. Okay, not really a garment, but you might be able to use it as a bandana. And Calvin’s underwear.
Another old hubcap.
This looks like an old Ford hubcap, but like last week, we are not experts hubcap history.
At a location along Woodinville Driver, we found some bottles.
When we first started walking this route, we would weekly pull large wine bottles out of this area. These probably escaped us. The Absolut Vodka is new.
Another expended shotgun shell.
It had also been run over. We’ve found a few of these on our walks. Where are they being expended?
Another six bucks for Washington.
Loser.
At the apartment on Woodinville Drive, we found this.
So whatever couple used this was parked in front of about fifty apartments. So, do they need an audience? Do they charge per performance?
The city mowed an area near the freeway off ramp and uncovered a lot of minor trash and this pile.
Two black bags had deteriorated over time. There was a mixture of toiletries, butane lighter fuel and a ball, but mostly random trash. There was also a pair of prescription glasses.
The case is a lost cause, but we can donate the glasses.
At the park-and-ride, we saw more Coors cans.
Because of our discussion with the metro worker, it was hard, but we left the cans. We did take the pop tabs, though.
Trash Walking 