Monday, March 1st, 2021 – Safeway
Okay, this is more like it. It was 40 °F (4.5 °C) and dry. Dry in two respects: First, we didn’t get rained on, and second; the trash we picked up was not waterlogged. And typical for the start of the week, no money and no roadkill. Still a nice walk. We’ll take it.
In the secluded Safeway parking lot, we found two empty Sinus Relief medicine packages.
Either the guy had a very bad sinus infection or he was trying to get high on cough medicine. It turns out overdosing on these only leads to liver disease, so hopefully it was a sinus infection.
We did find a tool in good condition.
Well, better condition than usual. They are eight-inch pump handle pliers. Or, according to Wikipedia, Tongue-and-groove, water pump pliers, adjustable pliers, slippy pliers, groove-joint pliers, arc-joint pliers, Multi-Grips, tap or pipe spanners, gland pliers, or Channellocks. Why make it so complicated. They are pump handle pliers. Period.
A small farm on Norway Hill has goats. Each spring we are greeted by the babies.
Today there were four kid goats frolicking around a tree and inspecting us. As we watched, the mother came over to make sure things were okay. She probably turned us in as playground stalkers.
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021 – Park-and-Ride
Today was much like yesterday, but boring. No, we mean more boring. Even when we passed the goat farm.
We are so yesterday.
Today’s walk is brought to you by the number,
Yes, today was so bad we are plagiarizing Sesame Street.
We did find a ball.
But it turned out to be a piece of fruit. Orange you glad we found this? Oh come on, we can only work with the material we’re given.
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021 – Safeway
It was a beautiful morning today, cold, clear, and sunny once the sun arose.
We found another tool, a 10-mm, universal-joint impact socket.
It was in pretty good condition and would come in handy if we had a 10-mm nut we needed to undo with an impact wrench. And especially handy if we had an impact wrench.
We didn’t have much use for the socket, but this did fit us to a tee.
No, you cannot criticize us if this is all you leave us to talk about. If you do, we’ll get teed off.
Outside the KinderCare, we found two balls and a birdie.
We are pretty sure this is called mixed doubles. In today’s environment, is ‘mixed doubles’ politically correct?
We found two discarded Valentine cards.
We’re pretty sure Olive likes Jack better. Especially since she needed to tape Jils’ finger on the card.
Someone left us twelve dollars worth of unopened marshmallows.
Okay, thank you, we guess. But if you are going to spend that much on marshmallows for us, get the boozy set.
We seem to pick up plenty of Fireball bottles, so you can keep that.
We found an eight-inch medicine ball on the side of the street.
We are not sure exactly how much it weighed, but we’re guessing about ten pounds. Anyway, it was too heavy to carry home so we picked it up later with the car. By the way, these things have a terrible bounce. We’ll take a superball any day, but a superball of this weight might be a bit dangerous.
We met an old friend today.
We’ve found this frisbee outside this fence several times. We have joked that we should apply the three-strike rule. If we find it outside the fence three times, we would confiscate it, but we always toss it back. Well, most of the time. One time, it was down by the fence. Chuck climbed down to retrieve it and gave it to Janet to toss it back. This was the result.
And yes, Chuck did go back down.
Thursday, March 4th, 2021 – 160th to 124th Street
Today was a relatively uneventful walk. Janet had an early appointment, so we kept up our pace. We did get a few honks from folks including two buses. Or it may have been the same bus twice. They all look alike to us: big vehicles with bright headlights.
We found two hubcaps, or wheel covers or wheel skins. Life used to be so simple.
The first one we found was labelled ‘Verde.’
We hadn’t heard of a Verde brand, but it is a high-end custom wheel manufacturer. We’re talking about $6,000 for a set of four wheels or $1500 per wheel. This is only the center wheel cover, so maybe $200 worth? We put it in our small hubcap collection.
The other hubcap, or whatever, was nondescript and beat up. It got recycled. Yes, we are merciless.
The only other thing of interest was a walking cane.
It was absolutely useless at picking up trash. We may sharpen it and try to use it again.
Friday, March 5th, 2021 – 100th Ave NE
This is the only route we walk the entire time on opposite sides of the street. And, one of us, we won’t mention which, took no trash photos, but she needs to get with the program. Sadly, we did start out the walk with a roadkill. We removed a salamander from 112th Ave NE. We don’t know if it was one of the salamanders from last week. There was no way we could identify the body.
Finally, the drought has ended. Today we found money!
On the way up Simonds’ Road, we found two pennies. Then, on the opposite side of the road we found another penny and a quarter. Twenty-eight cents! It has been three weeks since we’ve found money, and it felt good. Now we need to reevaluate our net worth.
We also found more flat disks.
Mini-pancakes. We found a total of five of these along a two-mile section of our route. They could have left us some butter and syrup. They were kind of dry.
We found a Levis tin.
“This tin is made from 99.9% reused material and is completely recyclable. Please keep the cycle going.” Obviously, the litterer did not take this to heart, but we did. Wonder what the 0.10% of the material was? Probably the label.
A Zippo lighter.
It had been run over and smashed. Did someone purchase this and think it was a disposable lighter? “Damn, it’s already out of butane!”
We did find another neck gaiter.
We’ve found nine of these. The first one was way before the pandemic and was a “California Republic” gaiter. We noted it because that week, we found an entire wardrobe to wear.
Since then, we have found more and we use them during the cold weather. But not this California Republic gaiter. Not something we want to wear.
Saturday, March 6th, 2021 – Riverside Drive & Brickyard Road
This morning’s walk needed to be cut short, so we went down the hill to Riverside drive, into Bothell and back up the hill to home. Feeling guilty, on Saturday afternoon, we walked down 112th Ave NE then through the neighborhood and over Norway Hill back home. We found some random trash including a McMess very close to our house.
As part of the mess, we found yet another Ziploc bag with an apparently unused disposable mask. This is probably the fifth or sixth of these we’ve found, some near McDonalds litter.
On Sunday, we decided to do the other half of our Saturday walk. When we reached the Park-and-Ride, we found the usual several Coors Light cans, including an unopened one.
Yes, we know,
But it was too early for us to imbibe. We wouldn’t think of having a beer until at least 8:00 am.
We found another tool on the freeway onramp.
An 8 mm, 1/4-inch drive Craftsman socket. A bit rusty, but most of the tools we find are.
Also on the onramp was a very interesting ring.
It had an inscription in it,
GEORGIVS VI D : G : BR : OMN : REX FID : DEF : + : IND : IMP : TWO SHILLINGS 1941
The + was a small cross. After some research, we found this is abbreviated Latin for,
GEORGIVS VI DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM OMNIUM REX FIDEI DEFENSOR INDIAE IMPERATOR
In case you are not fluent in Latin, the English translation is,
George the Sixth, by the Grace of God, King of all the Britains, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.
This is the inscription on both sides of a 1941 two-shilling British coin.
The ring appears to be a form of WWII Trench Art. Although the ring we found is British, we found an article about Italian POWs in Australia making them out of Australian Florins (two-shilling coins) .
They hammered the edges of the coin causing it to mushroom in on itself. Eventually, the center was then cut out.
This is one of the most interesting finds we have had.
Trash Walking 