Monday, February 20th, 2023 – Safeway
The week today started out great, with a temperature today of a relatively mild 44°F (6.7°C) with no rain. We found no roadkill but acquired some money.
A nice shiny penny at the service station, so our assets are already up for this week.
Then we found this sign.
It was free so we took it, so still looking good for the week’s balance sheet.
Chuck arrived home a bit earlier than Janet. When she arrived, she said she was distracted. In the ditch a few hundred feet from our home, she found this.
It’s about seven inches long and two inches in diameter. We don’t know whether to put this in this week’s assets or debits column. It probably depends on your point of view.
Tuesday, February 21st, 2023 – Park-and-Ride
Today was a fast walk with a bit cooler temperature and a slight rain. We did find a few things of interest in the park-and-ride.
A nice knit cap with a couple of eye-looking mountains on the front. It’s dirty, but washable. Hat’s off to whomever left it for us.
We also picked up a lost insulated drink cup.
We find lots of these, but mostly run over or so scraped up they are useless. This one was in great condition and is an Ozark Trail Tumbler, eight bucks at Walmart. Just great. We find a fifty-dollar Yeti tumbler that is run over and smashed but we find an eight-dollar tumbler in pristine condition. Even if it is the same length and twice the diameter as the object we found earlier this week, it just doesn’t have the wow factor.
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
The weather was colder today with some very light snow as we started our walk. We didn’t find any roadkill, but found some serious money.
Okay, “serious” is relative, but twenty-one cents is not bad given our late track record. We were walking along a parking lot, saw a piece of trash and walked over to pick it up. On the way out by the driveway were the coins.
Our legislature should pass a law that everyone who litters must toss out a few coins to reward the folks to pick up the trash. Like, sure, that would work. Well, we’d vote for it.
We were awarded the purple heart on our walk today.
No, not that purple heart, a heart shaped ball by the KinderCare. Chuck had stubbed his toe, but Janet made him toss it back into the KinderCare. Chuck wasn’t pleased. He thought it would have looked good on his vest.
Since we have been walking there was a sleep center near Safeway that went dormant during the pandemic. After a while, some renovations started and today, the sign out front changed.
It is now the Kirkland Family Dentistry building. Talking to one of the workmen, we found that they have twenty-six chairs, one of the biggest in Washington. Remember the old barbershop signs, “Haircuts. Three chairs, no waiting?” Now it’s “Teeth pulled. Twenty-six chairs, no waiting.” We’ll pass. Well, unless they give free toothbrushes…
The week continues to deteriorate. Monday it was 44°F, Tuesday 39°F, and today we started our walk at 35°F and dropped to 32°F at the end of our walk with increasing snow.
As we neared home, the show increased. We almost felt we were in the book, The Call of the Wild that Chuck read in his teens. Okay, this is a stretch, but the book is great. At least to a long-ago teenager.
Thursday February 23rd through Saturday the 25th
The temperatures the rest of the week dropped into the twenties reaching a low of 23°F (-5°C) on Friday. It was too cold to venture out, so we will skip to next week.
Monday, February 27th, 2023 – Safeway
W00t! We are magically into next week. We missed three days of walking plus a Sunday, and we paid for it today. There was a lot of uninteresting trash, and we did not find any money. And we removed three animals from the road. A very unsatisfying day.
Outside the apartments on 112th Ave NE we came across a large plastic bag tied to street sign.
We untied the bag and reluctantly looked into it. It contained normal garbage. It could have been worse. We’ve found similar bags containing dead rats and squirrels, one time we found a bag with six dead squirrels in it.
On first inspection, this one looked to be random garbage, so we decided to untie it and haul it to the end of the street, about a hundred yards away and pick it up later with the car. As we carried the opened bag we noticed a strong musty smell and as we reached the end of the street, we decided to split up the bag and dump it in the next available receptacle instead of putting it in our car.
Shared between us, it wasn’t a heavy load, and fortunately, there were no expired squirrels.
We found an unbroken egg by the side of the road.
We weren’t sure what kind of egg it was. It could have been a chicken or duck or some other type of fowl. When we got home and broke it, we determined it was a hard-boiled egg. What species is that?
Because of our walking hiatus, we found 12 Mike’s Lemonade cans on Norway Hill. Most required climbing down steep embankments, but we found two together right by the side of the road.
The Mike’s Litterer must be feeling sorry for us to give us such an easy find.
Tuesday, February 28th, 2023 – Park-and-Ride
Today was a relatively-warm 37°F (1.8°C) and we ventured out without our heated gloves. Heated gloves make us feel like what we imagine astronauts feel like trying to pick up a dime. Which we didn’t today. No money and no roadkill.
We found an ear-phone case.
It was very colorful, but also very empty.
Some large vehicle lost a pulley.
It was a pulley for a serpentine belt.
Most cars have these, but they are mostly made of some light alloy like aluminum. This one was three-to-four inches in diameter and made of steel. It also weighed three pounds, and we found it just as we started the trek over the hill. Great.
This was a bad day for gas caps.
We found two of them near service stations.
Both of them had a warning stating that a loose cap will cause the “check engine light” to turn on. So why isn’t a “loose gas cap light” on. Or better yet, a “you are about to lose your gas cap light?”
Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
The temperature dropped again to 30°F (-1°C), so back to the heated gloves. We did find a quarter at the gas station.
This is shaping up to be a good week, or a week-and-half because of the snow days.
By the side of the road on Norway Hill, we found a jogger’s head band and wrist band.
They were next to each other, half buried, so they had been there a while. There was no sign of the jogger, though we didn’t dig too deep.
Thursday, March 2nd, 2023 – 160th to 124th Street
Hey, the temperature was back up to 37°F (1.8°C). Great, no heated gloves. This was a big mistake. It was raining and blustery and our fingers, and other extremities were chilled to the bone. So much so that Janet tried to convince Chuck to abandon the walk and go straight home.
Fortunately, Chuck took the higher ground and continued the walk. Within a quarter mile, he found this.
Folding money next to the sidewalk. It was worth the pain and suffering. Yes, pathetic, we know, but it’s a dollar.
Two bicycles were at a location near where we know some homeless people are living.
They have mostly stayed out of sight in the woods. Maybe they have some overnight guests?
About six weeks ago, a wrecked car appeared that we assumed had been abandoned. Then, earlier this week we were surprised to see it was gone.
But someone had only moved it farther down the street and parked it better. There is some law about having to move a parked car periodically, but it must be less then six weeks.
Then, on the freeway offramp, a cracked crack pipe.
More like a shattered crack pipe.
Friday, March 3rd, 2023 – 100th Ave NE
The temperature today was a relatively mild 36°F (2°C) with no rain. It was better than yesterday but was still breezy with added wind chill.
Today’s walk was a bit more interesting than the last several days. To begin with, we didn’t need to remove any animals from the road. Well, if we’d found an aardvark or something, it would have been interesting, but we have been finding a lot of rats. Then we found more money. Not folding money, mind you, but still significant from our point of view.
Two quarters at Janet’s favorite drive-through. And they were just lying there in the open, no fishing coins out of cracks or any heroics. Normally, Janet would have preferred more of a challenge, but it was cold, so she didn’t complain. And she wasn’t above taking the coins.
We picked up a cap.
It was branded OSGEAR but we could not match it up with anything on the web, but it is probably a skullcap worn by bicyclists under their helmets. Or it’s a small shopping bag. No, certainly not a condom.
Someone pitched a fork.
It landed stabbed in the ground, handle up in the dirt. There is the saying, “Don’t dig your grave with your own knife and fork.” Meaning “Do not overeat or pollute your body with unhealthy food and thus hasten your own death.” So, which was this guy doing with the fork, tossing it, or digging his grave with it?
Then, someone pitched a pitchfork.
This guy was serious about digging his grave until his pitchfork broke. At least that’s our pitch. And if you don’t like it, get your own fork, and go… never mind.
Someone lost or tossed a bag of trash.
As we approached it, we noticed a flashing red light. We’ve seen plenty of movies where a flashing red light means danger like a bomb count down or the airplane is out of fuel or beer. But curiosity got the best of us. There was already a small hole in the bottom of the bag, so we fished out the device.
It was a remote control for a drone.
Our first thought was that it controlled drones in Ukraine. But the labeling indicated that it was for a Spiderman drone. We disposed of the bag up a side street in a garbage bin that was set out for pick-up today. After removing six AA batteries from the controller, we recycled the controller in our recycle bin.
It’s Friday, time to see what accumulated in Chuck’s vest pocket.
Two fake fingernails, sorry, artificial fingernails, one used and one not. A pencil eraser that looks like it would leave a bigger mark than it removed and another Nerf bullet. A smashed, single button remote control that had no markings other than a European Union CE mark, so we don’t have the remotest idea what it was for.
Another scratch-and-lose lotto card. This one was a Grab a Grand or Lose a Buck. Guess which this was. Then there was a scrap of cardboard with an interesting picture on it. We tried to use Google to determine what it was to no avail, but our best guess is a game card from a bondage game for kids, ages five and up. Then the face plate of another unknown remote control.
Google did help identify the doll head. It’s from an LOL Surprise Boy doll.
Part of a series of anatomically-correct dolls. Last week we found a headless doll and created FrankenDoll.
It looked older but we couldn’t tell what its anatomy was now.
The last thing in Chuck’s pocket was a piece of candy. We found Mr. Rooney’s Gummy Bear!
Saturday, March 4th, 2023 – Riverside Drive
This morning’s walk lasted for almost five hours. It was 37°F (2.8°C) and raining, but there was no wind to speak of. Overall, we were comfortable until the batteries died on our heated gloves. The walk was long partly because we missed last Saturday due to the cold weather, but mostly due to the mornings are getting lighter and we can see more stuff to pick up. We removed a bird and a crow from the streets. Yes, we know they are both birds, but we keep crows in their own category because they remember people who wrong them. And we remove roadkill that could be perceived as us infringing on their territory. We wouldn’t want that, so we are very careful around them.
Anyway, for taking the risk of removing a crow from the street, we were rewarded.
We found another dollar, the second this week, and a dime. We hope we haven’t been missing money just because it was dark. Maybe we need better flashlights.
Here is a flashlight that “starts fire and cooks eggs.” This would be handy on cold mornings, and we do find eggs periodically. It uses three 18650 batteries and ours use only one. But the batteries only last 30-100 minutes and the expected bulb life is 60-1000 hours. Okay, these are marketing numbers. Expect a battery pack life of 50 minutes and a battery life of 100 hours. On average we walk three hours a day which means we would need to carry four battery packs and each bulb would last a month. And we couldn’t find a replacement bulb on the net. So, it’s already a nonstarter for us even if we don’t consider it weighs about three-quarters of a pound.
We did find a tool.
A rusty, crusty trawl. We’ll need to decide if we want to add it to our found-tool collection. The overall condition of our collection is already low. Adding this won’t help.
Okay, enough of a digression. We find a lot of water bottles, mostly empty. Today we found an unopened one full of water and these two.
A urine bottle and a cigarette-butt bottle. We went a few weeks without finding either of these and today we find both.
Then in the same area, we found two condoms along the road.
Please don’t let these be connected to the water bottle.
A few weeks ago, we found that a guardrail along our route had been destroyed. Today, the guardrail had been replaced.
But the mess created by the accident was still there. This includes several construction signs from previous projects dating back to 2018. The sign in the foreground was from a project by FORMA Construction Company that refurbished a pedestrian bridge for the Bothell Senior Center. When the project was complete, we sent an email to the company notifying them of the sign.
Their automated response was “Your email has been received and will be reviewed. Thank you for contacting FORMA Construction Company. ” And that is the last we heard. To be fair, it didn’t say they would respond.
That wraps up another TrashWalking week, or weeks in this case. Our inventory:
- $3.11 including two one-dollar bills. Things are looking up; new vests may be in our future.
- 28 Mikes Hard Lemonade cans.
- 6 Road kills.
- 4 Balls, three returned.
- 2 Forks stuck in the ground in grave condition.
- 1 Sex toy, no batteries required.
- 1 Purple heart, unearned.
- 1 Bag with no dead squirrels.
- 1 Egg, possibly cooked with a flashlight.
- 1 Spidey remote.
- 1 Anatomically correct doll head, which makes no sense.
- 1 Gummy Bear, Mr. Rooney’s.
Have a great week and remember, in life change is good but dollars are better.
Trash Walking 