Monday, January 23rd, 2023 – Safeway
This morning was cool again at 36°F (2°C) and we again donned our heated gloves. At one point, our phone alerted us that snow flurries were imminent, but they never arrived. We found no roadkill and started the week out nicely with twenty-six cents.
A penny and a quarter. These were stuck in a crack in the pavement at a gas station, and we were able to coax them out. There is also another quarter that we could not reach, but we vowed to return with the proper tools. After all, our motto is no money left behind.
Outside the KinderCare we picked up a small plastic plant.
Chuck mentioned that he had tossed it back last week and Janet said she had also. This might be someone playing games with us again. We took the photo and tossed it back over the fence. We’ll see.
A Moving Sale!
They neglected to pack their sign. Wonder if they left a forwarding address?
We found some tools today.
Someone tossed a Sawzall blade. It was dirty and rusty, but still sharp. Remember the old saw, “One man’s junk is another man’s saw blade.”
Also, another kitchen utensil to add to our collection.
A nice curving knife.
Oh, No! Someone lost their safety equipment.
A lost safety helmet.
Oh, No! Someone else lost their safety equipment.
An unopened condom.
And an empty bottle of male enhancement pills.
For $84.50, we hope they worked. The bottle states that there are six tablets for a week’s supply. But last we checked, there are seven days in a week. It could explain the tossed condom.
Tuesday, January 24th, 2023 – Park-and-Ride
It was dry and slightly warmer this morning, but we still wore our heated gloves. They do keep our hands warmer, not toasty, but warm enough that our fingers do not get painfully cold. We found more money today.
A well run-over penny on the freeway overpass, and a shiny dime in the park-and-ride. Eleven cents. This week is definitely off to a good start.
We also removed some roadkill. A rat and a few feet away, a hawk.
This is a photo of the hawk after we removed it from the road. You can tell it’s not the rat, no skinny tail. How did two roadkill occur so close together? We figure that the hawk swooped down and landed in the road, unfortunately in front of a Ford F-150 pickup. The rat seeing this ran out to his evident feast and got nailed by a Tesla. What, you think you can come up with something more plausible?
We did find a nice tool.
An eight-inch socket extension, a little blurry, but other than that in good condition. We’ll add it to our ten or fifteen other socket extensions we’ve found.
And what week would be complete without a wheel cover.
Yes, yet another Toyota. We have picked up a lot of lost wheel covers, and the vast majority are Toyotas. Do a Google search for “toyota missing hubcaps” and see how many hits you get. Here are a few.
Anyone notice the abundance of missing hubcaps from Toyota Corollas? : tampa (reddit.com)
Keep losing hubcaps. Replacement suggestions? : cars (reddit.com)
There are probably grounds for a class action suit here. If you hear of one, let us know. We have a Toyota, but we have not lost a hub cap. But we’re willing to jump on board. You know how we are with money.
We’ve been finding fake one-hundred-dollar bills here and there for a couple of weeks. Today at the park-and-ride, we found the motherload.
The arrow on the right is a traffic marker. It is not pointing to a bill that was real, but we checked and it wasn’t. We picked them up to throw away, but then thought, what if someone bought some movie money and as a practical joke mixed one real one in. We brought them all home.
We will check them out, but they were wet and dirty, so we separated and brushed the debris off them and laid them out to dry. Does this make us money launderers?
Wednesday, January 25th, 2023 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
This morning was an outright balmy 42°F (5.6°C). Okay, not that balmy since there was a light mist that lasted most of our walk, so there was that wind-chill factor. We didn’t use our heated gloves, but perhaps we should have. We didn’t come across any roadkill and found more money, the real stuff this time.
Another quarter. It was the other quarter from the service station on Monday. Tweezers and perseverance prevailed.
We found another tool of sorts.
We had a discussion with the judges, and they finally gave in and let us count it as a tool. This is part of a Ryobi EZClean accessary kit which is part of a tool, the Ryobi One+ EZCLEAN power cleaner. It’s touch-and-go with the TrashWalking judges.
Oh, No!
More lost safety equipment at the bus stop. It must be dangerous riding the bus, just check out the number of bus accident lawyers there are in Seattle.
More male enhancement product, empty.
We’ve found this stuff before in both liquid and pill form. The FDA reports that it contains the active ingredient in Viagra. All right! FDA approved.
Thursday, January 26th, 2023 – 160th to 124th Street
It was balmy again but with no precipitation and that made a big difference. No money and no roadkill. In fact we found very little today.
This is the day we walk the road that parallels the freeway offramp, and even that was relatively clean except for cigarette butts and 14Hands wine bottles.
Too bad. We were missing two pins.
Oh, No!
This doesn’t look safe at all. This is probably another abandoned car. It was parked at an angle like it was pushed into place. It had a broken windshield, front-end damage, and the grill and hood were duct-taped in place. We’ll let it sit for a week or two then report it to the police. No one abandon’s cars on our walking routes. Well, unless they are across from the apartments on Woodinville Drive. There are too many to report.
At our turnaround point at the intersection of NE 160th Street and 124th Avenue NE, they changed the stop light settings and it took us a while to figure them out. While waiting, we unearthed an old sign.
It advertised the Relaxing Station in downtown Bothell, $39 for an hour massage, walk-ins only. This sign looked like it had been through the wringer, or perhaps a massage. It ended up relaxing in a nearby dumpster.
Well, didn’t find money today which broke our three-day streak, but we did clean the fake money we found on Tuesday.
Fifty-nine-hundred and fifty dollars. And yes, we pressed them too. We are good money launderers.
Friday, January 27th, 2023 – 100th Ave NE
Today was much like yesterday except it rained the entire walk. It is Seattle after all. However, today is better because we found more money.
Only a penny but we’ll take it. Remember, a penny found is a penny earned. Or something like that.
We did find a tool, another nozzle.
But the judges didn’t allow it to be included with the tools. We shouldn’t have approached them before their three-martini lunch.
We picked up a very small tennis ball, about three-quarters the diameter of a regulation tennis ball.
Janet said it was a dog ball. Chuck thought that is stupid, dogs don’t play tennis. No, he didn’t say it out loud, he’s not stupid.
An army fence.
“First and fourth platoons, fall out!”
Oh, No!
More lost safety equipment.
We came to the fork in the road. 
It gave us a clear direction home. Not like last week’s wish-washy rubber spoon.
It’s Friday, time to check out the treasures in Chuck’s vest pocket.
Not much, actually. Google helped us identify the first item that looks sort of like a person, and it may be. It was made with Perler Beads which we had not heard of. If you care to learn more, there are YouTube videos about them:
A llama sticker, a plywood pencil, and a calling card for Rock International Playboy. This looked interesting but it turned out to be a photographer of rock music performances.
We think the orange item is a lost zipper pull, but neither we nor Google could identify the logo. The hub cap is probably the most expensive one we’ve found just because of the symbol on it.
A small die we found outside of a game parlor in Bothell. We could give it to the store for their lost-and-found, but it would be dicey.
An almost-full pack of tissues, and a Goodwill Gift card. Goodwill has gift cards? We had no idea. So we tried to check the balance on the card, but evidently it is so old that they migrated to a different type. Oh, well, we tend to take stuff we find to Goodwill, so we don’t want to buy it back.
Then there is the Mad Dog 4/20 marijuana package, empty. Chuck doesn’t know why he picked it up, but the name sounded familiar from his early drinking days.
“MD 20/20 (often called by its nickname Mad Dog) is an American fortified wine. The MD actually stands for its producer: Mogen David. MD 20/20 has an alcohol content that varies by flavor from 13% to 18%. Originally, 20/20 stood for 20 oz at 20% alcohol.”
It was really cheap.
Saturday, January 28th, 2022 – Riverside Drive
Today was cool again but turned into a nice walk with partly-cloudy skies when the sun rose. We removed a rat and a rabbit from the road and found money.
Yes, another penny. We found money every day this week except for Thursday. Pretty good given our recent money-find history. We thought we found another penny.
But we were mistaken. It’s an iron slab 2-1/2 inches in diameter by 7/8 inches thick and weighs the same as about 200 pennies. Also, it didn’t have an image of Lincoln on it.
On our way down the hill to Riverside Drive, a urine bag.
We much prefer urine bottles. Wait, let’s rephrase that. We hate these more than urine bottles. We used our knife to slice the bag to let it drain then put it in our trash bag with our pickers. Maybe we should rethink our position on bags vs. bottles. With a bottle we pick it up, unscrew the cap, dump the contents, crush the bottle, replace the cap, and put it in the trash bag. With the urine bag, we don’t need to touch the bag with our hands… Nope, we still prefer the bottles.
We found a tool.
An awl, but that’s not all. For those of you listening at home, we’ll rephrase. We found an awl, but there’s more.
A Philips screwdriver in two parts. We tried to call it two tools, but the idiot judges wouldn’t let us. A socket ratchet in very good condition. A Robert’s knife with a strange blade, but after some research, it is a carpet knife with a broken blade.
Finally, we found two bungee cords in separate places. No, let’s not revisit the argument. Bungee cords are considered tools. We had to take that one to the TrashWalking Supreme Court.
Oh, Yes!
Someone finally used his safety equipment.
On Brickyard Road, a pair of women’s undies.
Size XXL, in case you’re keeping score.
On the freeway onramp, we found a wallet.
It was empty, so most likely stolen, contents emptied and tossed. It is the sixteenth wallet we’ve found on our walks. It was well hidden from casual view and may have been there for a month or two.
Finally, there was this in the park-and-ride. 
Today’s youth are just downright embarrassing. Dagnabbit, in our day we knew how to properly TP a car.
That’s it for our walking week. Our highlights and lowlights:
- 64 Cents, with consistency.
- 59.5 Hundred-dollar bills.
- 15 Mike’s Lemonade cans.
- 11 Tools in varying condition.
- 8 14Hands wine bottle bowling pins.
- 5 Pieces of safety equipment. One used.
- 4 Balls
- 4 Road kills including a hawk.
- 1 Stolen wallet.
- 1 Pair of undies, large.
Have a great week and remember, keep your safety equipment safe.
Trash Walking 