Monday, March 15th, 2021 – Safeway
For those following along at home, remember we missed our Friday walk because of Chuck’s reaction to his second COVID shot. And we do not do this route on the weekend. So, we have not walked a major part of this route for four days, and we paid for it. We were out for three hours and we hauled home a lot of trash.
And to start things off on the wrong foot, this is the first thing we found.
A used condom very near our house. The nearest convenient parking area is about three-quarters of a mile up Norway Hill at the top of the Tolt Pipeline, and yes, we have found plenty of evidence there. So to find a condom here, either the couple was practicing unsafe driving our they used someone’s nearby driveway… Oh, hell no!
Floating balls.
Two balls floating in a ditch. One was a dented, orange ping pong ball. It got recycled.
The soccer ball got tossed over the fence into the nearest back yard. Of course, there’s no guarantee that is where it came from. It could have floated a block to this point. Imagine the homeowner: “Damn, another flat soccer ball in the backyard.”
More stolen mail.
Under a tree, someone stashed some stolen mail. Nothing important, so we didn’t try to return it, but damn, people, get locking mailboxes.
By the Safeway, an unopened bag of Romaine Hearts.
There are often panhandlers at the Safeway exit. “Hey buddy, got any lettuce you can spare?
Some landscapers removed some vegetation, but not the debris under it.
Random trash, beer cans, a hat and a car battery. We cleaned up the area and put the battery in the parking lot where hopefully someone will dispose of it. The hat will probably go to Goodwill if it is in good condition. We pass many bushes. Please do not remove any more of them.
We found a baby bottle full of milk.
Fortunately, no baby, though. We’re done with them except for grandkids, of course.
Near Safeway, we also met a pedestrian walking toward us. He stopped and thanked us for cleaning up and gave us two boxes.
He explained they were lights to help drivers see us better. We thanked him and he went on his way. He had a vest on that had about a dozen, flashing 1-inch lights.
Great, not our style. So we worried about do we wear these and become billboards or do we not and risk insulting him. When we got home, we discovered that these are actually very subdued with a flashlight in front and a small triangular pulsating beacon in back. It reminded us of the movie, “Predator.”
Great, we’ll have a target on our backs.
Tuesday, March 16th, 2021 – Park-and-Ride.
Okay, we thought wearing the lights was probably a good idea, but had not opened them and figured out how they worked so left them at home. Of course, we crossed paths with the light guy again and gave him an unlit wave. Tomorrow we will definitely wear them.
Now that we have embarrassed ourselves, we had a need to embarrass someone else. At the Park-and-Ride, we found evidence of a park and rode.
Some tissues and an empty bottle of personal lubricant. We are feeling better about not wearing our lights already.
At home, we have some left-over nonrecyclable house paint we have been having trouble getting rid of. Today, we found some paint left by the side of the road.
Gee, why didn’t we think of this? We may have stumbled on the solution to a major ecological problem. Just dump stuff by the side of the road where it deteriorates harmlessly over about five thousand years. We’ll apply for a grant to study this idea.
Near a Church, we found a large jug of unopened apple juice.
Well, we weren’t thirsty, but we also were not looking forward to hauling it home. We placed it on curb in the church parking lot hoping someone would dispense of it.
While we were placing the jug, we spotted an overturned container. When we up righted it and reassembled it, it was a “Tin_Lilly cure dogy geo caash.” [sic].
We are very familiar with Geocaches. We took it home, dried it out, added a small token to the cache and added an entry into the log book.
Wednesday, March 17th, 2021 – Safeway
Today, we emerged with our multiple layers of vests, rain jackets and sporting our new safety lights. Of course, we did not see the guy who provided us with them. Maybe tomorrow.
Very near our home, we found a condemn wrapper. A very thin condom wrapper.
It did not appear to be opened, but it also was very thin. This may be Skyn’s ultra thin condom. “Oh, yes, it’s on. It is just so thin you can’t see it.”
A house key in a crack.
So, this key probably caused the owner to change all the locks in their house. We added it to the jar with the rest of the many keys we’ve found whose owners have also changed all their locks. It gives us such a feeling of power.
Thursday, March 18th, 2021 – 160th to 124th Street
Again, the light guy was a no-show. This was our newest walk and, it turns out, one of the most boring. We did find two tools.
A run-over putty knife.
We did find several pieces of the handle in the area, but it was not worth trying to glue back together. Recycled.
A cigar cutter.
We found this at the top of the Tolt Pipeline. It may be related to pot use, but it could be someone sitting in the rain enjoying his cigar.
Later in the day, we were running an errand in the car. We took the “geo caash” from Tuesday back to the church parking lot where we found it. We also looked around for the bottle of apple juice. Someone had tossed it back close to the street. Really? We disposed of it.
Friday, March 19th, 2021 – 100th Ave NE
We have been wearing our safety lights and today, we crossed paths with the light guy. He was on Janet’s side of the street on 100th Ave NE and passed her just as Janet went into a Safeway driveway after some bit of trash.
He was wearing his vest with the bright flashing lights on the back when he almost got hit by a car turning into Safeway.
He started running and the car did stop at the last second. See, the damn things are targets.
Another lug nut.
This one was kind of boring compared to the ones we normally find, but it went into our lug nut jar anyway.
On Norway Hill, we found more stolen mail.
First, we found a credit card. Then we started finding more mail including the envelope that contained the credit card, so the card was not activated yet. All the mail was from a single apartment building on Riverside Drive. We returned it with a note.
This was a sad sight.
A Raggedy Andy doll in a garbage bin. It was a bit moldy but otherwise in good shape. We gave it a bath and a home with our TrashWalking artifacts.
Saturday, March 20th, 2021 – Riverside Drive & Brickyard Road
This morning was warmer with intermittent rain. Today was the first day of spring and we could hear frogs croaking in the wetlands, calling for a mate. We also removed two roadkill frogs that made the mistake of searching for a mate.
Another sign of spring?
The second empty bottle of personal lubricant this week.
Another tool for our collection.
A cheap screwdriver like you get for listening to a timeshare spiel. Us? Never. Well maybe once, but we did not bite.
Outside our favorite (not!) trailer park on Riverside Drive, someone left construction cones and some pieces of metal. We pulled a tarp out of the mud and picked up some car parts and a large water bottle to add.
We’ll see if it disappears, sits there, or gets scattered again. We are guessing it will sit there for a while.
At the freeway ramps, instead of walking one of the ramps, Janet decided to clean up the bushes at a corner where a beggar often sits.
Lots of trash including a sign, unopened food, an unopened “Gospel of Mark” and a chair. We’ve never seen him in the chair. We left the chair but picked up everything else including some money.
A very decimated, folded dollar bill. Of course we count it, after all, more than half of it is there. We think.
Trash Walking 