Monday, April 11th, 2022 – Safeway
Starting the week today was cool and breezy, but bearable. We didn’t need to deal with any roadkill and found no money.
Someone must have been working on their car this weekend. As we left the house along 112th Ave NE, we found a socket.
A very nice Craftsman’s deep, 10 mm socket. Then, farther along,
an empty bottle of carburetor cleaner and an empty bottle of STP brake fluid. We have no idea what the eggshells are for, unless the guy got hungry? Or perhaps he had a radiator leak also.
We found another baseball cap to add to our ever-growing collection.
This one was branded by The North Face. So, do they have another to wear if they are going south?
Along Juanita-Woodinville Way, someone else gave up golf.
They are Costco Kirkland brand golf gloves. Not being golfers, we expected these to be a pair of gloves like all other pairs of gloves we find, but they were both left-handed. After some research, we found that golfers only wear one glove. If you are a right-handed golfer, you wear one glove on you left hand and if you are a left-handed golfer, you wear one glove on your right hand. If you don’t know your left from your right, you are screwed. We’re screwed.
Well, I’ll be a dirty bird. On Norway hill, we found a dirty bird.
It looked very plain and subdued. But then we found its wings. We’ll work on getting them glued back on.
BTW, “I’ll be a dirty bird” is a catchphrase of George Gobel, a comedian in the fifties.
And yes, we are old enough to remember it.
So, this was a first for us. Chuck was walking down NE 145th St and got a hand.
He was very flattered and decided to take a picture of it. He stopped, got out his phone and bent down to get it focused for the photo.
Evidently, a good Samaritan thought Chuck was having trouble bending down to pick it up and scooped it up and handed it to him.
Chuck said, “Uh, thank you.” She cheerfully replied, “You are welcome” and was on her way. Chuck continued around the corner up Norway Hill, replaced the hand on the road and took the above photo. Okay, it was a reenactment.
Tuesday, April 12th, 2022 – Park-and-Ride
It was a little warmer this morning but dropped a couple of degrees during our walk but didn’t precipitate on us. We did get some money.
On Simonds Road, we picked up a cellophane bag and inside was a nickel. Score! This is the fourth time something like this has happened. The first, and best was someone mistakenly leaving their change in a littered McDonalds bag. We found eleven dollars and change. The second was a rubber glove with a penny in each of the five fingers and the third was a cigarette box with a dollar in it.
We also found a tool.
Yes, another socket. And yes, another 10mm socket.
We found another disintegrated knife in the road.
We will give it to our friend, Lindsay, who claims he can get repair parts for free from knife manufacturers. Good luck on this one.
A lost gas cap.
Another across from the 7-Eleven. We should start a collection, but we have too many lost trash collections as it is.
At the park-and-ride bus stop, someone lost their clothes.
A sock, a pair of jeans and two pillowcases. We put the clothes in one of the pillowcases and carried them home. Obviously destined for Goodwill unless, of course, the jeans fit one of us.
We picked up a plastic bag with some items in it and some packets of hot sauce.
In the plastic bag was an assortment of items.
It looks like a crack safe smoking kit. Everything you need except for the crack. According to this article, the two glass tubes are the crack pipes, the two stripped copper wires act as filters in the glass pipes and the wood dowel is a push-stick to push items into the tubes, and the plastic tube acts as a mouthpiece. There is no mention of a paper clip. The condoms are obvious. The kit is made for two.
We have no idea what the hot sauce is for.
Wednesday, April 13th, 2022 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
This morning was cold, as it appears it will be for the rest of the week. We found a lot of miscellaneous trash, but little of interest. We did find a jeep hubcap.
We accidently caught a selfie of one of us in the pic. This week’s contest is to guess which of us it is. Only one entry per person and the winner gets the hubcap. If there are multiple winners, we will keep it.
At the top of the Tolt Pipeline, someone drank a bottle of California Champagne and tossed the bottle in the bushes.
It was heavy, but we hauled it home and weighed it. Educational fact: A Korbel California Champagne bottle weighs 2.5 lbs. (1.13 kg). We should have left it in the bushes.
Thursday, April 14th, 2022 – 160th to 124th Street
Today was cold again with a very slight mist. We are ready for some warm weather. We’ll even take wet, warm weather.
We did find a penny on the freeway onramp.
And it looked like it had been there a while. It was not a pretty penny.
Today is the day we walk the ditch along 116th Ave. NE where people pull off the freeway for whatever reason. There was the usual random assortment of beer and wine cans and other random trash, plus two unopened loaves of bread.
Guess that makes us the breadwinners today.
Along NE 160th Street, we found some kid’s cloths.
A pair of shorts and a tee-shirt. They were dirty and tattered so got tossed. They weren’t our size anyway.
Someone lost a trailer ball mount on the freeway overpass.
It was very heavy, 7.5 lbs. (3.4 kg) according to the specs. We carried it for about a quarter of a mile to the park-and-ride and picked it up later with the car. Later, we gave it to a friend who has a truck.
We also found a bottle of Coconut Flavoring Essence.
We had no idea what it is used for, so we checked the ingredients, which didn’t help much:
- From Wikipedia, “Propylene glycol (IUPAC name: propane-1,2-diol) is a viscous, colorless liquid, which is nearly odorless but possesses a faintly sweet taste.” Slightly sweet propane?
- Ethanol, plain old alcohol.
- Water.
- Artificial Coconut Flavor.
So, what is “artificial coconut flavor?”
Also on the label is this statement.
So, what are the ingredients that require this label? We are guessing it’s the artificial flavor.
Friday, April 15th, 2022 – 100th Ave NE
Not on our walk, but we had some animals stampede through our yard.
Okay, it was more of a waddle. Obviously, the male had his ducks in a row.
We picked up a sweatshirt today at Safeway.
It was in reasonable condition, so will be washed and sent to Goodwill.
Someone lost this.
It will help us comb through our trash. Yes, we have used this line before, but what else can you say about a comb?
Another errant gas cap.
We find a lot of these, but this is the fifth one this week, a record. We figure folks are in shock when they see the cost to fill up and forget to put the cap on.
Don’t cross Blake.
It’s Friday, time to see what has accumulated in Chuck’s vest pocket.
- TLG Learning pen. They teach technical classes for about $100 a session. That may seem pretty steep, but it includes a pen.
- Sheerlon Beyond Seven condom, unused or it wouldn’t be in Chuck’s pocket.
- Utility knife blade that shouldn’t be in Chuck’s pocket.
- Skateboarding alligator sticker. We don’t know what an alligator on a skateboard signifies. Probably nothing.
- Washington State Lottery scratch-and-lose coin, slightly bent.
- Joe’s Car Salesman business card… scratch that, he is a “Sales and Leasing Consultant.”
- Stephanie’s Metromile Proof-of-Insurance card. It expires next week, so she probably already has her new card, so it makes sense to us why she littered it – NOT!
- Then, there is the marriage announcement from the year 2000. Guess the early fish got the wormley.
Saturday, April 16th, 2022 – Riverside Drive
Today was cold but mostly clear and sunny, when the sun rose, that is. We removed a roadkill rabbit from the street and found a nice shiny dime.
Yet another lost lug nut.
It was large, probably from a truck. It was near a construction site in downtown Bothell, so it may be from one of the work vehicles.
We have a collection of thirty-three hats we have found over the last seven years.
This will not be counted as the thirty-fourth.
In quick succession near the freeway overpass, we found three identical discarded bags.
A total of nine “Thank-Yous” and they still tossed three reusable, heavy-duty bags. We will recycle them.
We strayed past the Bothell City limits into Woodinville today and stumbled upon a disintegrating small handbag.
Nearby was a bunch of jewelry that had probably been in the bag.
Judging by the bag, the jewelry had been there a long time and shows some signs of rust, so probably not gold, dang it.
Natasha?
We found two tennis balls today.
One in good condition and one broken. That guy must have one hell of a serve.
We also picked up some tools.
A Phillips screwdriver, broken, a sledgehammer, broken, and a half-inch socket, unbroken. It’s really hard to break a socket, otherwise, it would also be broken. We left the sledgehammer and will return to pick it up with the car. It weighed almost eight pounds. What is it with the heavy stuff this week?
That wraps up our walking week. This week’s take:
- Sixteen cents.
- Twenty-one Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans
- Two rats and a rabbit.
- Three sockets.
- Five gas caps.
- One unpair of golf gloves.
- One helping hand with a hand.
Trash Walking 