Monday, June 14th, 2021 – Safeway
Well, this was disappointing. After a weekend with one day of sunshine and the rest rain, this morning was overcast and misty. Also, we found no money and no roadkill. We did find a rat, we think, but Janet decided we couldn’t count it. No real reason other than the Rules Committee would reject it.
When we reached the end of 112th Ave. NE, we found the traffic lights were out. Everyone knows or should know that when a traffic light is malfunctioning, it reverts to an all-way stop. As we passed through the area, we saw several vehicles on Juanita-Woodinville Way sail through the intersection.
Some folks did stop, but the majority did not. We also saw one close call.
The grey car in the middle had stopped as required as did the black car on the right. The car on the right made a left turn from of 112Tr Ave NE. The white truck did not stop, even when the black car passed in front of it.
This study found that Washington State is the hardest state to get a driver’s license. Maybe they should try harder.
Near the 7-Eleven, we found another wheel cover.
It was nondescript and badly damaged on the reverse side. We fed it to the 7-Eleven recycle bin. Nice front side, though.
We thought we found another pair of gloves.
But they were probably a pair of balloons or, they could be one-fingered gloves, good for a favored hand gesture, but no, they were balloons.
We found a Boston Varsity shirt.
Not sure what school this is, but we are pretty sure it is not in our neighborhood. Perhaps somewhere in Seattle, but probably not.
So this is a bit strange. Over a year ago, a sign was erected stating two new luxury homes would be built on the site of a single-family dwelling.
Nothing happened for a long time, then some sporadic activity. Today, someone added a caricature of the saleslady. Good likeness. We’ll see where this goes from here.
We did get a couple of gifts today. At the secluded parking spot near Safeway, we found an unopened Pepsi.
Thank you, but we have not had a Pepsi or Coke for probably over 50 years. Now if it had been an IPA…
Also, someone left us a gift card.
Okay, it was in the gutter and may not have any value, but we will check. Update: No value, in fact, it was not even recognized as a card. Probably a counterfeit card from China.
Tuesday, June 15th, 2021 – Park-and-Ride
Today started and finished with a sunrise and blue skies. In the middle was a ten-minute downpour. Very strange. We did remove a roadkill squirrel but also found a penny.
Yes, yes. We know it isn’t much, but at least we know we will not get shut out for the week.
Well, this may be the key to success on our walks.
Or not. It was under a leaf and looks like a mailbox key. We may try it in some nearby mailboxes. We find a lot of worthless stolen mail. With a key, we may find some worthy mail. But then, we would be the stealers. We need to think about this.
We found this blocky duck by the side of the road.
It is called a pixelated duck based on the Minecraft game. Sorry, just weird. Or maybe it is us. We are pretty weird.
About three-quarters of the way through our walk, we found some old signs that were tossed behind some bushes.
We will go through trouble of contacting the winners, but will probably end up picking up all of then.
Okay, this was not on our walk, but we saw it later in the day.
We saw a Puget Sound Energy person evidently securing a construction area. He used a random assortment of cones and two Black Raven beer kegs. Very resourceful. Wonder if the kegs were empty…
Wednesday, June 16th, 2021 – Safeway
Today was a beautiful walking day. We removed another roadkill rabbit from the road but found money. And not just another trifling penny.
We found a whole dime worth ten trifling pennies. This week is looking good.
Along the same lines, we found two scratch-and-lose Washington State Lottery coins.
Along with a losing Scratch-and-Lose Lottery card. Yes, it was a loser.
We found a ball across from the KinderCare.
We figured it was probably tossed across the street and returned it to their yard. Too bad. I would have made a good addition to our ball collection.
The dumped TV is still across from Safeway.
Six weeks and counting since we reported it to the City of Kirkland.
Down a hill, we spotted a piece of foil.
We edged down the hill to pick it up with our pickers. It unrolled into a large sheet further down the hill. We have found several of these in our six years of walking and they are mostly related to cooking drugs.
Near Safeway, someone’s discarded shopping list.
Just a helpful hint Carolyn B. When you litter, do not use your personalized note paper. And did you really need to add the “Safeway” heading? Or perhaps you might have accidently gone to Home Depot?
We walked near the good La Corona Mexican Restaurant and picked up a discarded receipt. Let’s see what they had for dinner.
Okay, make that one rum, one rum, one rum, and for dessert, another rum. Sounds like a square meal to us.
We found another receipt that caught our eye because of its length.
It was a receipt for $135 from an adult toy store. The bottom part of the receipt was basically stating that you cannot bring anything back. Seems reasonable given the products. We went to their website, in private mode of course, and looked up some of the items. We found we, thankfully, live a very sheltered life.
The receipt had the person’s name on it as a rewards club member. Really? A rewards club for an adult toy store?
Thursday, June 17th, 2021 – 160th to 124th Street
Another beautiful morning to walk with no rain and warm temperatures. We removed another roadkill rabbit from the street and found another penny.
But on closer inspection, it was a piece of plastic. Litterers can be so cruel.
We found two tennis balls with no obvious home.
After a bath, they ended up in our ball collection.
We found these two items together.
A broken hairbrush and a broken car mirror. So, is there a story here? Like someone trying to brush their hair in the mirror and both get broken? Sounds very painful. No, we did not find a loose head laying around.
We found a still-valid Airbnb parking pass.
“a dog’s dream natural pet supply.” It sounded a bit weird, but it appears to be an Airbnb rental by the owner of a pet supply store in the Georgetown suburb of Seattle. The main feature appears to be the proximity to five craft breweries including the Georgetown Brewery that produces our hands-down favorite IPA, Bodhizafa. But then, there is the Lucille, maybe that’s our favorite. Then again, there is Manny’s. Georgetown Brewery is a great brewery. We may need to book the Airbnb. After all, we already have a parking pass.
Then, we found a Viking helmet.
We are pretty sure it is not authentic. First, we have not heard of any Vikings landing in Seattle. Second, the helmet had an attorney warning: “Warning! This is a toy. Does not provide protection.” Well, duh. It is made of plastic. Also, it was made in China, and we are pretty sure the Vikings never made it to China.
The braided pigtails do offer some authenticity, though. Perhaps the Vikings did visit Seattle. We do live on Norway Hill and sometimes have the urge to plunder.
Friday, June 18th, 2021 – 100th Ave NE
Another beautiful walking day, and, unlike yesterday, we found some real pennies.
Shiny and not run over.
Yesterday it was the Viking helmet. Today it was a ratty black wig.
At least we hope it was a wig. It was definitely not roadkill, and probably not a Viking, they were all blonde or redheaded.
An 80’s rocker or a zombie, perhaps. Well, they could both be considered roadkill.
A young raccoon, not roadkill, walking a fence.
It must have got suspicious of us and headed up the tree. We get it, we would be suspicious of us too.
THIS teed us off.
No eye-rolling. We can only work with the material we find.
Near Safeway on Juanita-Woodinville Way, we found a drivers license, a key card and a haircut business card.
As we continued down the street, we kept picking up more items from a wallet including three credit cards and a couple of the guy’s realty business cards. When we reached home at about seven a.m., we called the guy’s cell so he wouldn’t panic and start cancelling his credit cards. The conversation went something like this.
- “Hello?” [groggily]
- “Is this Brian?”
- “Yes. Who is this?” [grumpily]
- “This is Chuck. We walk in the mornings, and I think we found some of the contents of your wallet.”
- “I wondered what happened to it.” [awareness]
We explained where we found the items and he had purchased gas at Safeway and evidently left he wallet on top of his car. We gave him our address and he came by later very thankful to get the cards back. He didn’t care about the wallet or other contents.
But the sad thing to us is that someone found a wallet in the Safeway parking lot and rifled through and tossed it. We know there are miscreants in the world who steal purses and wallets. We have found a few on our walks. We are sure most folks would turn the wallet into Safeway or the police. If they were common thieves, they would have kept the credit cards. Whoever did this was somewhere in-between. They would not steal a wallet, but finding one is a gift to be plundered. In our book, they are almost worse than the common thief. Almost.
If you read our blog often, you know we find a lot of lost lug nuts, which is worrisome. But we have found a few of these.
A disc brake pad. These are very hard to lose like this. It means the brake caliper has frozen so there is no braking to that wheel. It also means if someone does activate the brake, the disk will be damaged and need to be replaced. Nothing good can become of this.
But then came the high point of our walk and perhaps year. Chuck had just turned north on 100th Ave NE with Janet a couple of hundred yards ahead on the other side of the road. A car stopped in the center turn lane and started yelling thanks.
Chuck’s hearing is not very good and passing cars were making noise, so Chuck made it over to the turn lane. It was still early, and traffic was light. The driver said he really appreciated what we do, and we thanked him. He asked us our first names and he introduced himself as Paul. He said we need to visit the nearby Starbucks because they really wanted to meet us. He said to tell them that Paul contacted us.
We walk for exercise and very much appreciate the waves, horn honks, light blinks, and thankyous. But we do not want the notoriety of being in a spotlight. It is not in our DNA.
So, what do we do with the Starbucks? There is no way we are going to make a grand entrance with our trash bags and walking costumes. We have decided to wave toward the shop as we pass to acknowledge their appreciation and let it go at that.
Saturday, June 19th, 2021 – Riverside Drive & Brickyard Road
Another nice day for a walk. However, about seven minutes into our walk, Chuck’s trash grabber broke so we needed to share one between us for the rest of the walk.
We found a lot of money today.
Two dimes, two nickels and two pennies, thirty-two cents. Okay, relatively speaking, a lot of money. We only found fourteen cents the first five walks this week. That makes forty-six cents this week, our biggest weekly find in six weeks.
We also found some unopened food items.
Near the freeway, we found some unopened mac and cheese, instant potatoes au gratin, and a can of refried beans. This looks like part of a care package given to the freeway panhandlers. It appeared that crows attempted to peck through the two boxes but were unsuccessful. They need fingernails and an opposing thumb.
Along Riverside Drive, we found an unopened can of White Claw hard cider along with several empties. We also came across a bag of two broken liquor bottles and an unopened Monster energy drink. Finally, at the park-and-ride, a bottle of water. We emptied all the beverage containers and left the food items in the bus stop trash can.
A pair of shoes and socks at the park-and-ride.
We carried them home to put in the Goodwill box.
On the freeway offramp, we found a piece of plastic with a number on it and tossed it in our recycle bag.
Then, about twenty feet farther was a key with a brass tag attached. We dug the plastic tag out and found they matched. Whatever the item is, it is no longer identifiable because they lost the ID tag. It is also inoperable because they lost the key.
These guys are serious.
A crash-tested “Baby on Board!” sign. Wonder how they tested it?
Uh-oh.
More trouble at the apartments.
We came to a spoon in the road.
It just doesn’t have a ring to it like a “fork in the road.” However, it could be silver. When we examined it later, it was stamped “China Stainless.” Okay, not silver, but stainless is good, right? Then we found this answer on Quora:
“Chinese stainless is predominantly made from nickel-pig-iron. Strictly speaking, this is a non-homogeneous metal mixture containing varying amounts of nickel, iron, and chromium. As such, surface rust spots will occur. True 18/10 quality stainless, as produced typically in Europe or North America, is produced from nearly homogeneous mixtures of refined steel and pure nickel and chromium. This true stainless has virtually no rust factors. So, the answer really is: avoid Chinese stainless steel.”
Great! We put it in the dishwasher to later add to our found flatware collection. It’ll probably come out rusty.
Trash Walking 