Monday, September 6th, 2021 – Safeway
Well, today was a banner day for roadkill. We removed, a raccoon, a mole, two squirrels and a rabbit from the road. In return, we found some serious money.
A dollar bill and a dime, both in mint condition. Well, not the dime, but not too bad. We’ve already found more money today than we have found in a full week for a month. We are expecting good things this week.
The first things we found were a pair of USB-C cables.
We find a lot of USB cables, mostly run-of-the-mill and run over. These were thick cables and had color-coded connectors, so these are probably part of some assembly. Well, not anymore.
We did find a nice tool.
A drill-bit extension. At least it was not a 10mm socket we usually find.
We found some 3M ear plugs.
We find lots of earplugs but not like these. They have blue handles to stuff the yellow plugs into your ears. If you really don’t want to hear anything, use the yellow handles and stuff the blue sticks into your ears.
We found some random items on our way toward Safeway.
A piece of pipe insulation escaped from a truck. Then, a women’s faux-leather jacket from a faux cow. Or maybe that is just a bunch of faux bull. And, inexplicably, a lampshade. Too much to drink at the Labor Day party?
Where did this come from anyway? Into the Internet rabbit hole. The answer appears to have originated for the 1917 Charlie Chaplin film “The Adventurer.” If you followed these links, you found some good information and wasted some unrecoverable time. You are welcome.
But we digress. After the insulation, the jacket, and the lampshade, we came across another abandoned Safeway shopping cart. As is our custom, we push these carts back to Safeway and leave them in their parking lot.
While pushing it, we have never felt as though we appeared so homeless in our lives. It was a good thing it was Labor Day and there was very little traffic.
Tuesday, September 7th, 2021 – Park-and-Ride
Today was a bit of a letdown from yesterday. We did not find any money but needed to remove a roadkill rabbit. Also, there was little of interest.
At the park-and-ride we found a very large cigarette.
It turned out to be a disposable vaping device. “Disposable” means disposing in an eco-friendly manner, not in a parking lot with a bunch of other non-ecofriendly cigarette butts, you butthead.
This is a bit of a puzzler.
We found someone’s lost and destroyed gas cap. We normally find these within a couple blocks of service stations like Safeway or 7-Eleven. True, this was found within about two blocks of the 7-Eleven, but they are getting their tanks (you’re welcome) replaced and have been out of commission for several weeks.
Wednesday, September 8th, 2021 – Safeway
Today was the opposite of yesterday. We found no roadkill but found more money.
A nice shiny quarter. This week is boding well for our IRA.
This morning was hot for September. It was 65°F (18°C) when we left the house at 5:15am. But it wasn’t this hot.
It appears someone tried to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Whoever he was, he was not a good egg. Or perhaps it was just a tough egg to crack.
On our Wednesday trip we are extending our walk down 100th Ave NE to 132nd cleaning deeper each trip. We call it grooming.
Today, on our third “grooming” we found thirteen beer cans and a plastic bottle at the bus stop. We may have missed a couple of these before, but most are new arrivals. If this persists, we may need to set up a trail camera.
We found a full pack of Extra gum.
It looked good and unopened so Janet said she might use it. Chuck may need to overrule her unless she says no, of course. Chuck may be a sap, but he is not stupid.
This is a new one on us.
Bulb grease. What? We never greased our bulbs, but it is a pocket pack. We should carry it with us in case our bulbs need greasing.
At the top of Norway Hill, Janet came upon a herd of deer. A herd may be an exaggeration, but it was a total of four.
Janet stood still for a possible selfie, but the animals were uninterested. How deer they?
Along 100th Ave NE, we found a first-of-a-kind sign for us. Panhandlers are going high tech. Recently, we found a QR code to Venmo, now someone selling a book on Amazon. “Antidotes or Anecdotes?”
Thursday, September 9th, 2021 – 160th to 124th Street
Today was a bit cooler and more comfortable. We removed a rabbit from the road but also found a dime!
Last week it was mostly pennies, but this week, nary a penny, so far. The money and roadkill keep coming.
We found a condom wrapper on the sidewalk.
Sounds like distracted walking to us. We had not heard of these before, so we Googled them, with safe browsing turned on, of course. These come in several types: Colored [One should be color-coordinated], Extra Strength [This one. Yes, good to play it safe], Flavored [No comment], Large [Well, that goes without saying], and Ribbed/Studded [Again, no comment].
We found a discarded post-it for an acupuncture appointment.
Yes, we would have pushed it back too. It gives us the willies.
We have been grooming a new area along 116th Ave NE that is a complete mess. It is looking much better since we started a month or so ago, but we are still working our way down toward our goal, the continuation of the Told Pipeline trail across the freeway. Today, while we were down in the ditch digging beer cans out of the dirt, we met a guy who had just started his truck.
He asked what we were doing and, after we told him, he thanked us. Then he talked about all the cigarette butts that are laying around and said it was a woman who lives “down there” and wanders around all day dropping her butts on the road. To clarify, we think it was her cigarette butts.
Friday, September 10th, 2021 – 100th Ave NE
No roadkill today and we found a nickel.
A little beat up, but we’ll take it, and a tool too.
A CR-MO 13 mm impact socket. We wondered what CR-MO meant also. According to this site,
Cr-Mo is a heat-hardened steel alloy, with the inclusion of molybdenum that gives the alloy a property of toughness and flexibility. Cr-Mo will absorb percussive impact better than Cr-V without being brittle. Over time Cr-Mo sockets may stretch and lose their shape, but they are less likely to shatter and cause injury.
Wait, what does Cr-V mean? And define “less likely…” We have been picking these things up for years now, and we had no idea they were likely to cause injury. We need to be more careful with them.
We found another broken egg today, then an unbroken one.
All along our route today, we found bits and pieces of eggshells. Someone must have done some egg tossing in the past few days. We did our part; we tossed this one into the middle of some blackberry bushes.
Then we found another egg.
Well, it turned out to be a Wiffle Junk Ball.
So, we tried it out. It went straight and true down the street. It must be defective.
Tomithy left another sign near Safeway on 100th Ave NE.
This one was not on the sidewalk, but on a signal pole, so we let it be. We are pretty sure Hemmingway, Steinbeck and London did not start out this way. Okay, perhaps Poe.
Down 100th Ave NE, we picked up two car mats in two locations.
These are the fourth and fifth mats we have found recently along this stretch of road. We carried the others home to send to Goodwill. We tossed these two into nearby trash cans. They are heavy.
And it’s a good thing too. At the intersection of 100th Ave. NE and Simonds Road, someone lost a large case of music CDs. There were about 100 CDs in the case that weighed about five pounds.
There was a receipt in the case from the year 2000 with a name and address in Techumseh, MI. Using the Internet, we were able to determine the person’s now local address and contact him.
He responded and said that he has a friend who works at Great Clips in Juanita where we can drop them. We did and she was most pleased and asked if she could do something for us. Too bad that we both just had haircuts.
Saturday, September 11th, 2021 – Riverside Drive & Brickyard Road
We had a good walk today with cool temperatures and mostly sunny weather. We were out a little more than four hours and covered eight miles. We removed a snake and a raccoon from the road and found more money.
Our two-cents worth. One reasonably good penny and one bad penny. Remember, one rotten penny spoils the barrel. Or something like that.
Overall, it’s been a good week for money with a total take of $1.52. Not great, but good.
Well, this is new since last week.
We’ve walked by this house every week for six years. And NOW the tell us? What next, zombies?
When we saw this, we thought it was a Bluetooth speaker, but then a light dawned on us.
These are a set of fifty-dollar solar-powered string lights. Well, they are not worth that anymore. They must have fallen off a vehicle, but why would one put some solar powered string lights on a vehicle?
At the Sammamish River Park, we found a dirty pair if men’s underwear.
No, we do not want to know, and yes, we wear rubber gloves and used our picker. And yes, we do sanitize our pickers regularly. Okay, maybe twice.
This week, we have been finding eggs and egg shells.
A big egg carton with no eggs. Of course not, they are all over the roads.
We found another tool today.
Okay, it was a tool. It was on the freeway onramp and obviously failed to properly merge. But what did you expect, it only had 25 feet. It turns out this $25 tape measure has a “Limited lifetime warranty.” We are guessing this lies outside the specified “limited.”
On our way home, we found a marijuana pipe in front of the apartments on 112th Ave NE.
So, Friday at two am, Joe and his Bro are out front enjoying the last of Summer. At eleven am on Saturday, “Hey man, I’m sure I left my pipe here with my stash.” No, we really did not find his stash, as far as you know.
Trash Walking 