Monday, March 21st, 2022 – Safeway
Okay, we missed a week of TrashWalking, but for a good reason. We took two of our grandsons to Valencia, Spain for the annual Fallas Festival. Over 200 neighborhoods in the vicinity spend the year planning, designing and building “stationary floats” or Fallas, some as high as six stories.
Each of the Fallas has a theme, mostly political, but all interesting. During the days leading up to the culmination on March 19th, there are daily fireworks at 2:00 in the afternoon designed purely for noise. Here is a link to one we attended. The video counts down, so the fireworks start at 11:40 with the finale starting at 6:45 and the ending at 5:18. At the peak, the noise is breathtaking.
There are also aerial fireworks every night at 1:00 am in the morning and, of course, at 8:00 am there is a team of “Wakers” setting off firecrackers to make sure nobody gets a good night’s sleep.
We had a week of good experiences, good food and a wonderful time with good friends.
But wait, what do you do with the two-hundred stationary floats? Well, burn them, of course.
Needless to say, the night became very smokey, but we enjoyed every bit of it.
Back to our Bothell reality. We arrived home on Monday afternoon at three pm, cleaned up, went to our local pub, the Hop and Hound. After, we went home and crashed at about eight o’clock, give or take.
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022 – Park-and-Ride
Our week started out the right way with money.
And a drowned worm. We took the penny and left the worm.
Another wheel cover.
It is a Subaru cover in very good condition. We put it in our Goodwill pile.
Someone left us a Starbuck’s beverage of some sort.
It did not look very appetizing, and we dumped it out. We are not sure what was floating in it.
Now this is more like it.
Someone had a Cuba Libre, Rum and Coke. But wait, that is a gin bottle. Gin and Coke? Well, yes there is such a thing, a Cubata. It sounds like a waste of gin to us.
A spoonful of gravel.
Somehow it doesn’t have the same ring to it.
We found three condoms today.
We leave for a week, and this is what happens?
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
Another day, another penny.
We’ll take it, it makes cents to us.
This is something we don’t find every day.
Someone tossed a coffee maker in the bushes. We assumed it did not work and placed it in a nearby recycle dumpster. Then again, perhaps the litterer just gave up coffee for Lent?
Another lost lug nut for our found lug nut collection.
As we descended Norway Hill past the goat farm, they were mowing their grass.
This one wasn’t working on the lawn and only stared at us. Doesn’t he know how silly he looks? Or is that the kettle calling the pot black?
Thursday, March 24th, 2022 – 160th to 124th Street
We didn’t find any money today, but we did find Captain America’s shield.
It was only about a foot in diameter. He must be smaller than he appears on the screen.
At the park-and-ride, we found a lady’s watch.
The back is missing, and there is no brand marked on the face.
However, the movement is labelled, “One (1) Jewel unadjusted Remex Electronics Ltd Hong Kong.” There are some hits on the web for this manufacturer, mainly stating that they are cheap and from the ’50s to ’70s. Note that there is rust around the screws, so it was probably in the park-and-ride for a while.
Another lug nut.
And another condom.
This is like déjà vu all over again.
We thought we found a G-String.
But it was a G-Headband. We have no idea what the “G” means.
Finally, we found another hard-boiled egg.
We know what a Cage Free Chicken is, but a Cage Free Hard-Boiled Egg?
Friday, March 25th, 2022 – 100th Ave NE
We didn’t find any money today but did find a couple of tools.
An unused Edger Blade and a socket. We don’t have an edger, so the blade is useless to us. However, if we did have an edger, we might have been able to use the socket to change the blade. As it stands, the socket is also pretty useless to us.
Along the way, we found a tied-up bag of trash. It was weighty but we carried it home before opening it.
It was mostly empty wrappers, but there was a mostly-full bottle of water and a full 7-Up can. If we had opened it earlier, we could have dumped the liquids and had a lighter load.
On Simonds Road, a dropped box of Wedi Fasteners.
We found about thirty of the discs on the road but only a few of the screws. The screws probably hitched rides in passing car tires.
It’s Friday and time to see what is in Chuck’s vest pocket.
Since we missed last Friday, this is almost two weeks’ worth of accumulation. Several pieces-parts of credit cards. Again, no matches; an unopened pack of antacid pills; a student’s ID; an invitation to an LDS Stake House; a pack of kids’ flossing tools; and a business card for a tennis outreach program.
A fortune cookie fortune, “Now is a good time to explore.” Whoa! We picked this up before we went to Spain. Now that is a real fortune cookie fortune.
An anti-theft tag that obviously didn’t work since it got stolen.
A Volvo emblem that probably wasn’t stolen but fell off.
Two gambling items: a poker chip and a Washington Lottery scratch-and-lose coin. There is also a one-dollar off token for a car wash. That, at least, has some real value.
Saturday, March 26th, 2022 – Riverside Drive
Saturday is our final walk of our week, and the longest and busiest. Because of our trip to Spain, we missed two consecutive Saturdays and we paid for it. We were out for four hours and forty-five minutes, probably one of our longest-ever walks. When we returned, we counted an even ninety pop-tabs meaning we picked up more than ninety beverage cans.
We didn’t find any more money but did find another lug nut.
We didn’t come across a condom, though, so not really a déjà vu moment.
In front of the apartments on Woodinville Drive, someone dumped unwanted items.
Again. We will contact the City of Bothell, again. And they will pick up the items, again. This is like rewarding bad behavior, but obviously the “people” who do this are not the type to be bothered by the mess, so it is not really a reward. It is just frustrating.
Also, in front of the apartments, we found a card.
It appeared someone cleaned out their car and tossed this card, which is not very sentimental. Then again, Gina is about seven and a half years old now, so perhaps she tossed it out.
We recycled a fallen sign.
These appeared a few weeks ago. We have researched these types of signs and they are a scam. They obviously look for people who for one reason or another need to sell their home fast. They show up and offer a “good” base price. Then they do an inspection and find repairs that need to be made and deduct inflated repair costs from the price. If the seller agrees, “Dave” purchases the home, performs the cheapest minimal repairs and sells the house at a big profit. We need to get some “Scam” stickers.
Basketball shoes
Nike Zoom Kobe Venomenon 5 shoes selling for about a hundred dollars. They were dirty, so we rinsed them off and will send them to Goodwill. Anything with Kobe Bryant on it should be a collector’s item.
Arrgh!
There is a trailer park near the bottom of Brickyard Road where periodically someone who likes to eat shrimp but does not want the shells in their trash can dumps them over the fence onto the sidewalk and gutter. And yes, we did sign them up for the Citizen of the Year award.
Near a bus stop on Brickyard Road, we found a partially empty can.
We have had Chicken Marsala, but we don’t know what this is. However, it is 100% tobacco free, so it does have that going for it.
On the freeway offramp, we found this item.
It was from Leavenworth, a resort town not far from here. It was about ten inches long and had liquid in it with some black animals (bears?) and some glitter. Later, we found it was a big ball-point pen. We tested it when we got home and the pen worked. However, we understand why they tossed it.
After walking up Brickyard Road, down the freeway northbound off-ramp and down the southbound on-ramp, we were overloaded with trash. As we approached the bus stop where we would normally unload, we came upon several empty water bottles.
As we were picking these up, a Metro Transit Services Supervisor drove into the Park-and-Ride and parked. We don’t know what a “Metro Transit Services Supervisor” does, but we imagine one thing would be to watch for people illegally using the bus stop to dump trash. We ended up carrying our load all the way home.
Thus ended our nearly five-hour walk.
So, wrapping up our shortened walk week, our total take was,
- Two cents.
- Four condoms.
- Three lug nuts.
- One cheap, vintage watch, not working.
- One-half can of Pan Parag, Pan Masala, Tobacco-free.
- One G-Headband.
Trash Walking 