Archeological Finds

Monday, August 10th, 2020 – Safeway

This morning’s weather was clear and cool. Nice walk. We have not been remarking on our wavers and honkers. We are getting about five or six unsolicited (friendly) honks per day and about 50 percent of the drivers respond to our waves. It’s good to be appreciated.

We removed a roadkill squirrel from the road and found some money. We came upon a bunch of litter.

There was a random assortment of trash, mostly 3×5 cards and condiment wrappers. But just to the left of a mustard pack were three pennies. Our first find of the week. As we were picking up the trash, a guy walking a dog passed by and said, “Found some trash, huh?” We responded with “And three pennies.” He seemed unimpressed. He must be one of those rich guys.

We found a “Rewarding Good Taste with Lower Prices” muffin.

Judging by this, the price is still to high. We passed.

On Norway Hill, we found another McLitterer bag.

This one was a bit different. It still had the two clean pancake platters, two tea cups, two unopened syrups and two unopened utensils. But instead of unopened butters, it had seven unopened strawberry and grape jam packs. Guess they thought they were getting into a rut.

Tuesday, August 11th, 2020 – Park-and-Ride

Another nice morning for our walk, but a bad morning for money. We also didn’t come across any roadkill, a good thing. However, we found four dog poop bags including three from a serial pooper behind a cement barrier.

We shouldn’t have looked back there.

Yet another hubcap.

Or at least a skeleton of one. This was very early in our walk and we left it in a neighbor’s recycle bin. They shouldn’t mind. It is garbage day.

We also found two car emblems.

A high-class Mercedes and a lower-class Chevrolet. Well, they’re both on the streets, so who’s to say which is the higher class. We’ll bet the Mercedes is still the most expensive to replace.

Someone else lost their pants.

Ok, we get this one. This kid probably didn’t notice his pants were lost and wouldn’t care if he did.

The sign wars continue.

Marker guy has attacked again, although he has progressed to spray paint. We can’t quite make out what he wrote, though. It looks like Ceep. Is he a bad speller and meant Keep? Keep Biden? And keep him where? Either way, Biden’s looking a bit beat up. Time for reinforcements on both sides? Like a new sign and a new marker.

There is a lot of road construction going on and a lot of traffic delays.

We knew the traffic delays were long, but we didn’t know they were this long. We added this one to our collection. These are not selling like we thought, so we are lowering our price. “Slightly used, in original packaging. $0.50 OBO. Only three left in stock.

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020 – Safeway

This is becoming an uneventful week. Again, no money and no roadkill. It makes for fast walks, though. Some girl lost her shirt at the intersection of Juanita-Woodinville Way and 145th.

We weren’t there, but she probably tied up traffic.

We did find a bungee cord in pretty good condition.

It was hardly run over at all. And it had a warning label.

They forgot the most important warning. 7. Do not sell to idiots.

The McLitterers hit again.

This one was standard with two syrups and seven butters.

This brought back some memories.

An unopened box of rice paper candy. It contains double-wrapped candies with an inside wrapper of edible “rice paper”.

A long time ago in a city far, far away called San Francisco, we used to go on dates to China Town and buy rice paper candy. At Target, the price is $2.29 a box. The price has skyrocketed in the last fifty years. We remember buying two boxes for a quarter. And they had a real toy inside, not a sticker. We should have bought stock. And don’t get us started on Cracker Jacks.

Thursday, August 13th, 2020 – Park-and-Ride

Well, we did have a little bit of normalcy today. Unfortunately. We removed two roadkill rabbits from the road. But some money would have been nice.

As we went through the park and ride half of it was very clean and had been swept with a street sweeper. For some reason, the other half was somewhat picked up, but not swept. We harvested some pop tabs and found evidence of drug use.

A burnt piece of tin foil.

We’ve been noticing several cars that have been parked in the park-and-ride. Today a few of them had citations on them.

“No vehicle Storage.” It wasn’t stored, it was abandoned. The Metro officer could have also checked “Parked over 72 hours.” Try 72 days. And how about “Prohibited Activity.” Like the burnt foil and all the used condoms we’ve found. They need more check boxes.

Another lost lug nut.

This wasn’t one of the decorative ones we normally find. This one is pure utility. Pure run-over utility.

We did find tools.

A very rough socket. It’s in our tool collection, but the vote was close. We also found an S2 T30 in very good condition. In our estimation the different types of screwdriver drill bits are out of hand. Whoever comes up with a different design makes it and markets it. How about a spikey hedgehog design.

Whoa. This is a whole new area for Disney. Marketing toy bits for kids. “Now you can screw Jasmine.” Whoops. Scratch that.

A fifteen pack of Diablo sanding disks in good condition.

Now, if we could only find a sander.

Friday, August 14th, 2020 – Safeway

The mundane week continued today. No money and we removed a small roadkill bird. The one big thing we noticed was the construction that has been blocking 100th and our Wednesday route has finished and the road has reopened. We didn’t venture down there, but the detour signs were hidden or removed. It didn’t seem to make much difference with the traffic pattern, though.

Early in our walk, a truck stopped on Juanita-Woodinville Way to talk to Janet.

It turned out to be one of the guys that keeps passing us with a boat. He informed us that his boat is green and white, not blue and white. He must be reading our blog. This is the only place we’ve been mentioning the blue and white boat. But, then again, why should we believe this guy? No boat.

We found another pair of Apple ear buds.

Every iPhone user has several of these, but no need to toss them on the street.

We found a give-away-leash from Juanita Hills Animal Hospital.

The hospital is about a five-hundred feet from where we found it. Not a very appreciative customer.

We thought the week was picking up when we found another bikini.

But it was just some discarded construction pennants to block off streets. We’d like it modelled as a bikini. At least Chuck would.

Weird. Near where we found the sanding discs yesterday,

Yesterday’s were for a five-inch sander. Today is a 6-inch. Perhaps he littered the wrong size yesterday and needed to buy this kind to litter. Two packs of sanding discs and we still haven’t found a discarded sander.

We passed this guy at the top of Norway Hill.

He was eating apples on the ground in front of the fence. As we approached, he went through a gate to get farther away from us. Two points for social distancing. Minus five for not wearing a mask. Then again, neither were we. So he’s still ahead of us on points.

Saturday, August 15th, 2020 – Riverside Drive

This has been a very mundane week but today made up for it. We didn’t remove any roadkill from the road, but we did find some money.

Thirteen cents, two separate pennies and a penny and dime together.

We found a pair of gardening gloves.

They were separated by about a half mile but they match and are right- and left-handed to boot – “to glove” doesn’t make any sense.”

Speaking of gloves, here is the week in gloves and poop bags.

Fifteen gloves and nine poop bags, slightly more than last week but way below the peak.

Wow. Someone wasted a sheet of toilet paper.

Folks don’t remember the shortages six months ago. This was sent to us this week.

What is it with people who keep losing clothes?

The weather is hot. Perhaps she is from New York and was waiting for the city to open the fire hydrant and took off her top. Then forgot it. Chuck may start hanging around fire hydrants.

We found a very nice pair of pliers.

Husky pliers about eight inches long. We always knew these as Channellocks or Pump Handle pliers. But we found that Channellock is a company name and the proper names are, “Tongue-and-groove pliers are a type of slip-joint pliers. They are also known as water pump pliers, adjustable pliers, slippy pliers, groove-joint pliers, arc-joint pliers, Multi-Grips, tap or pipe spanners, gland pliers and Channellocks.” Ok, Education Hour is over.

Yet more unopened food.

A bag of Pop Corners and half a box of individually-wrapped Dark Chocolate Nutrition Bars. Dark Chocolate sounds nutritious to us. We didn’t count, but it seemed half full. The box was a 50-50 split of Coconut Almond bars and Sea Salt Almond bars. Wonder which one they didn’t like?

Rock Hard Weekend.

We found the box then found the contents about a block later. He ate all the pills including the bonus pill in a block? He must be planning for a really long weekend.

We found an empty paint can outside a trailer park. Our assumption is someone in the trailer park set it out by the road so as not to deal with the remaining paint. We left the can by the trailer park entrance. We were wrong.

In front of the second trailer park, someone dropped the paint can on the street leaving the lid and a big splotch of paint. We picked up the lid but left the paint. It was dry.

What the heck?!

Did they just sanitize the road against the Coronavirus or what? We’re anarchists, we didn’t remove our shoes. And we weren’t wearing masks either. Well, we were carrying them, though. Maybe we’re just rebels.

We found this in a ditch.

This looks like a game played at a bridal shower. But why was it in the ditch? Perhaps the bride and groom decided to test the game before the wedding, got into a big fight, called the wedding off and spent the next year trashing each other on social media. Or maybe some guest tossed it. We’re guessing the former.

We picked up a sign that obviously fell off a Metro Bus.

Frank is Vehicle Maintenance Employee of the Year! Wonder if he attached this sign that fell off?

At the top of Brickyard Road we walked past a guy sitting on the sidewalk apparently waiting for the bus.

We said good morning as we passed and he gave a single slow nod. On the sidewalk in front of him were a cigarette lighter and some other items that we could not discern at our pace and we didn’t linger. After we passed him a bus stopped, but he didn’t move and the bus continued on.

We didn’t know what this item was.

After some Googling, we identified it as a pollen press or herb press. It compresses marijuana into pucks to improve the shelf life and potency.

At the parking lot in downtown Bothell, we noticed the hill next to the lot has been collecting a lot of trash and have decided to slowly start cleaning it up. We call it grooming. It is mostly paper, cans and bottles, but there was a wooden box filled with clothes.

We left it in the lot.

We also pulled a duffle bag from under the weeds.

It had, among other things, an XBOX game console in it. We left it and came back later with the car to pick it up.

It contained several items including a Jumanji video cassette, 1995 Robin Williams version, and Braveheart and Raiders of the Lost Ark DVDs among other things.

An XBOX console and several games, a knife and a cheap video camera. The games were all copyrighted 2001 through 2004 and the camera had a single blurry photo on it dated 2007. We’re guessing this has been buried a while. After letting things dry out in the sun, we plugged in the XBOX and it powered up enough to eject the disc tray but we didn’t check its operation beyond that.