Monday, November 29th, 2021 – Safeway
Today was a nice walk except for the trash. But we were able to handle it. We didn’t pick up any roadkill, but we did find a lost jacket.
In the pockets were several pebbles and fifty-one cents in change. There was nothing else to identify the owner, so we can count this as found money. The jacket was supposed to be waterproof but was waterlogged. Go figure. It was heavy, but we hauled it home. It was fifty-one cents, after all.
We did find a badly damaged wheel cover.
It was generic. What’s the price of a Ferrari 488 Pista? “With a starting price of $330,000, the 488 Pista isn’t a supercar accessible to the masses.” Okay, but with generic wheel covers, it is only $329,000.
This little fellow came across our path.
We are not sure what it is. Perhaps a ladybug with a trumpet on its head? We just pick these up, we don’t need to explain them. If you need an explanation, we need to charge a higher subscription fee.
Someone lost a Masonite cover of some sort.
It was four pieces of Masonite, two small and two large. It was manageable, bulky, but not heavy. No problem, we carried it home and broke it up for our organic trash. However, probably during the manipulation of the pieces, Chuck lost his flashlight. This is his new flashlight. We drove our car slowly back over the hill to find it with no success. We ordered another flashlight but will keep our eye out for our lost one.
Okay, not really on our walk, we spotted a bag down the hill from our house. We picked it up intending to recycle it. However, it was a bag of meat.
A Butterball turkey breast roast and a ham shank. These were worth major bucks; the ham shank alone was $28.15. However, they were already overly ripe, and we left them in a convenient dumpster. We tried to count this as found money, but those turkey-stupid judges didn’t allow it, the pigs.
Tuesday, November 30th, 2021 – Park-and-Ride
This morning was again, relatively warm for November with some off-and-on drizzle. We picked up the normal amount of trash, found no roadkill but did find money.
This brings us up to fifty-two cents this week. Okay, okay, you might call this our only hard-found money this week, but we are taking full credit, because this is the only thing of any interest we found today. Well, except that we did find Chuck’s lost flashlight.
We knew within a mile of where it was lost, so we were looking for it. Near a fire hydrant we saw something shiny that turned out to be the flashlight reflector. We were happy to find it. We also have another on the way.
Wednesday, December 1st, 2021 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
Another boring day with no money and no roadkill. This is the day that we extended our Safeway walk down south on 100th Ave NE past a once-messy, now relatively clean bus stop, except for the continual beer cans. We missed this route last week because of our travels, so we expected ten or so beer cans.
We were surprised. The beer-drinking bus driver left only six beer cans, a beer bottle, and a plastic water bottle. The water bottle was probably not his. He must have taken Thanksgiving off also.
We picked up what looked like a plastic blow-up pillow.
How uncomfortable would that be? Sweaty, squeaky, and popping sounds. Don’t worry, the popping sounds stopped after the pillow popped. No, we didn’t pop it, it was popped when we found it. But we can imagine.
Thursday, December 2nd, 2021 – 160th to 124th Street
Again, today, no more money and no roadkill. It was another moderate day with light rain and the temperatures in the low fifties. This is the walk where we cover a newly adopted area along 116th Ave NE to the Tolt Pipeline. It is the most densely trashed of any part of our walks. It seems that people pull off the freeway to do one or more of several activities. Buy some fast food, eat, and toss their refuse, get amorous and toss their refuse, do drugs, and toss their refuse, or do some other activity and toss their refuse. Yes, we have found all the above.
Today, it was drugs and food. Drugs:
A partial roll of tin foil. This is a sign of drug usage when the users use the foil to cook their product. We have several partially used rolls of foil we have picked up. We tossed this one into recycle.
Today we also found fast food.
Okay, it was a six-pack of empty 4-Hands Wine cans. No, it does count as fast food. It was probably purchased nearby, and the bag contained an empty Lays BBQ Chips bag. See, fast food. And they drank responsibly by not drinking on an empty stomach before continuing on the freeway.
We did find some car parts, naturally.
The first was a shock absorber. This was a first for us. It was heavy, but fortunately, it was near one of our standard drop-off dumpsters. The other was a lug nut which was found, disturbingly near our home.
Also found very near the end of the walk was the remnants of a birthday present.
“Gee, thanks grandma, just what I always wanted a can of Modelo Beer. I’ll keep it and cherish it always… burp, toss.”
Friday, December 3rd, 100th Ave NE
Whoa, after several days of mild weather, it turned. This morning was dry and 36°F (2.2°C). It started out a bit uncomfortable but was comfortable as we warmed up.
The first thing we found at the end of 112th Ave NE was a discarded bag with a single paper plate in it.
It was a reusable plastic bag with the message, “This bad can be used as many times as you choose.” They chose “once”. We added it to our garbage collection bags and we will reuse more than once.
Okay, outside the KinderCare, we made an archeological find.
Not really, but being a dinosaur, Chuck decided to toss it over the fence himself. Embarrassingly, it took him three tries. We would show the videos, but somehow, they disappeared. And the dinosaur was much larger than it appears in the photo. Really.
This should have been a fast walk, but on Juanita Woodinville Way, just past Safeway, we needed to clean up a mess.
Someone evidently bought a bag of groceries, put it on the top of their car and drove off. The identifiable food groups were butter, eggs (six, count then, uncracked), half-and-half and a package of corn tortillas. There appeared to be about two packages of paper towels, but we cannot be sure. It took about twenty minutes to clean up and get to the nearest dumpster. Major downer.
However, we did find an audio CD.
Okay! This is something we can get into. After cleaning it up and trying to play it, no dice. It was unplayable. More fodder for the recycle bin.
Saturday, December 4th, 2021 – Riverside Drive & Brickyard Road
The last day of our walk week was a cool 38°F (3.3°C) and with moderate rain. Not a nice walk. We missed this walk last week so there was two-weeks’ worth of random trash. We removed a roadkill rabbit but found no money. So, we end this week with a total of fifty-two cents. Not bad compared to the last several weeks.
During this week, we made several trips into Woodinville driving under the freeway interchange and saw several pieces of trash that probably came off vehicles on the freeway above. One of them was a 50-pound sandbag.
It turned out it was empty and split down the side. This worked out because we put the other large trash in it and carried it to the apartment dumpster.
But today, we found zero.
We looked around and didn’t see any mailboxes it might belong to, so we now have zip in our recycle bin.
More thoughtful apartment dwellers leaving furniture out for those less fortunate.
Yes, we can get sarcastic, especially when we are cold and wet.
Someone needs a new mailbox.
Over the years of walking, we have seen this mailbox down over three times. The owner keeps standing it up and wrapping more tape around the broken pipe. Okay, tape is cheaper than a new mailbox, but still.
Near the end of our walk, we found a Brinks combination lock.
It was open and the combination was set to 3322. We left it open to see if there was a way to reset the combination. After checking several YouTube videos, the locks all come with a factory-set combination of 0000 and this one requires a small key that you can buy for eighty-five cents. The videos indicate that to close the lock the combination needs to be set, the shackle held shut and the combination scrambled. So, we decided to close the lock with the 3322 combination expecting it to close but pop open if it is the correct combination. Of course, it snapped shut. Rats.
We tried 2222 and 3333 with no success. What the heck, what about the factory-set combination of 0000. It unlocked. So, whoever had this lock never changed it from the factory setting.
Trash Walking 