Monday, March 20th, 2023 – Safeway
Today was probably one of the best walks for weather. Otherwise, one of the most boring. On one hand it was 46°F (7.8°C) with only light rain which made for a very comfortable walk. On the other, we removed a rat from the road and acquired no money, and little else of interest.
Well, there was this engagement ring in a parking lot.
This is probably a toy ring since it has an expandable band so it can grow with the child. Then again, perhaps it is an antique from the 1800’s when the legal age of marriage for a girl was 12. But we are guessing not.
We did pick up an unopened bag of potato chips from Panera.
Janet did her volunteer taxes today at the library and took these as part of her lunch. She returned home, so they must have been OK.
A skinless. baseball.
Janet did not take this for lunch. So, what is it good for? One Internet idea is for educational purposes: “A skinless baseball can help teach the anatomy of a baseball and the materials used in its construction. It can be an interesting visual aid in a classroom or coaching setting.” Right. Baseball Anatomy 101. We are sure you would have a ball in it.
And finally today, a lost ladder.
This guy learned the hard way.
Never stand on the top rung of the ladder to success. The next step is disaster.
Tuesday, March 21st, 2023 – Park-and-Ride
This morning was much like yesterday with a temperature of 44°F(6.7°C) with a very slight rain. We can live with this. Again, we found no money and we needed to remove a rabbit and a salamander. For every ten rabbits we find, we find only one salamander and we include frogs in the salamander category. So the current count as of when we started keeping count five years ago. During that time, we removed 270 rabbits and exactly 27 frogs and salamanders. So, that is approximately ten percent.
From our point of view, salamanders “run” very slow compared to rabbits. But we don’t know their relative reproductive rates. After playing twenty questions with ChatGBT, we came up with this:
Us: “Okay, on average, compared to rabbits are they faster or slower in Washington state?”
ChatGBT: “Salamanders have a slower reproductive rate compared to rabbits. While rabbits can reproduce several times a year and produce litters of up to several dozen offspring at a time, salamanders generally reproduce only once or twice a year and produce fewer offspring.
In Washington state, the native species of rabbit is the mountain cottontail, which can produce up to four litters of 1-6 offspring each per year, while the most common species of salamander, the long-toed salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum), typically only reproduces once a year, laying around 50-200 eggs at a time.
So, on average, compared to rabbits, salamanders have a slower reproductive rate in Washington state.”
So, it seems as though Salamanders need to either pick up their speed or their reproductive rate if they are going to keep up with rabbits. Then again, do we want highly-reproductive, fast salamanders?
But we digress. Today was a day of cans.
There is a gully on Norway Hill that we have been delaying for better weather conditions. Today, we decided to dive in and clean out some of the accumulated debris. Our name for this gully has morphed over the years based on the predominate trash. Originally, it was Gatorade Gully because of the number of Gatorade bottles filled with water and cigarette butts. Those faded out and then it was mostly Bud Lights and Coors. Today, we found twenty nine beer cans, mostly Coors and Buds but did find two bottles and a butt bottle.
At the park-and-ride, we found a cache of about twenty cans from a party. We recognize that the park-and-ride is an underground party venue. Not “underground” in the literal sense, but in the social sense. It has to do with the ambience of glaring halogen lights, the freeway noise, and the aroma of stale beer. Of course, there is the entertainment of watching the salamanders procreate. Very slowly, of course.
On the freeway offramp was another lug nut.
This was another of the spline “locked” variety, but it didn’t matter. The stud had snapped off. It’s a good thing it was on the offramp.
Three days ago on Saturday, we found a neatly-wrapped dope pipe. Today, we found another.
This one was not neatly-wrapped but laying on the sidewalk undamaged. At this rate, we might start a pot shop: “Dopes R. Us.”
We found a hubcap.
It says “Eagle Alloys.” But it is made of plastic. Go Figure.
At the park-and-ride, a small bottle of Isopropyl Alcohol.
Our first thought was self-made hand sanitizer. But the Pandemic is over. But wait, this is the park-and-ride, a place for drug injections. Okay, this makes sense.
Yesterday, we found the potato chips. Today it was “Cheddar Cheese Sandwich Crackers.”
Janet would have nothing to do with them. Janet hates those crackers. If it were a KIT KAT bar, it would be a different story.
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
The weather cannot determine whether it is Winter or Spring whether we like the weather or not. It turned colder at 38°F (3.3°C) but without rain. We needed to remove a roadkill rabbit from the road, but we found money.
Eleven cents, both by Janet at her secret sources. She seems to be finding all the money now and Chuck hates to be a kept man.
Other than the money, it was a boring walk today. We found a non-tool.
A tie-down strap with one badly-bent hook and one missing hook. We didn’t even try to submit it to the TrashWalking judges. Yes, there is some stupid TrashWalking rule that valid tie-down straps must have at least two working hooks at the time of discovery. It’s in Chapter 23, Section 18, Paragraph 47 if memory serves. Which is not a safe bet.
There was one other thing of mild interest. As we turned up Norway Hill, an aid car turned up the hill.
As we climbed Norway Hill, at one point we could look down and see where the aid car had stopped. We could see folks milling around in no particular hurry. Breakfast?
Give us a break. We have very little material to work with.
Thursday, March 23rd, 2023 – 160th to 124th Street
The weather warmed today to 47°F (8.3°C), but was very breezy which brought wind chill into consideration. Just as we thought things couldn’t get worse, they got worse. We found no money and removed another roadkill rabbit. And it took two trips. It wasn’t pretty.
The only other thing we found was a nondescript knit hat.
It will get washed and put into our Goodwill pile.
Ok, because there it nothing else to talk about we took a photo of this.
This is our continuing low-level rant about abandoned construction equipment. This pylon is at the corner of NE 160th St. and 124th Ave NE in Kirkland. We do not remember when it first appeared, but it was on or before 2018 which is like five years. When we first found it, we contacted Big-D construction by email and never received a reply and of course, here it stands.
Yes, we are stretching things.
Friday, March 24th, 2023 – 100th Ave NE
Today was again cooler at 39°F (3.9°C) with a slight breeze and a few sprinkles. It was a slightly more interesting walk in that we found some money.
Okay, another penny and we did need to remove a small bird from the road. We think a penny is fair trade for a small bird in this economy.
We found a large plastic bag.
The label stated it was a miniskirt. Chuck’s first thought was, “Wow, a transparent miniskirt!” Then in became transparent to him that this was only the bag.
After some Google searching, we found an add for the exact skirt.
“Made in Ukraine. Shipped from Estonia, 245 Euros.” Wow. Two-hundred and sixty-five bucks. Does that include the Estonian girl too?
Okay, it is Friday, time to check out the accumulation in Chuck’s vest pocket.
First, a couple of cards. “He is Risen!” On the back of this card was an invitation to hear the story.
We are fortunate to have heard this story before, so we didn’t call.
Then, the card of the Director of an Assisted Living Facility. No thanks, we are not yet ready for that. Parts of a pair of sunglasses, but the earpieces did not match and one of the earpieces led to this site. Mick and Keith’s Midnight Ramble. From the image on the site, the two earpieces and the lens do not belong to the same pair of glasses which means this was a bad week for sunglasses.
A fancy hair band and yet another rubber ducky to add to our collection from the same factory in China. A small pair of dog paws of unknown origin and below it another small, well-camouflaged heart.
Another Pokémon card that we seem to find weekly, and we don’t know how to play the game. However, this card is different, the description is in Japanese. We used Google to translate it.
After studying the English version, we still don’t know how to play. And we should, it’s “all the rage.”
A 7 of Spades which we do know some games for, and a paint can opener. No, we can’t count it as a tool. In the past, the TrashWalking judges called it a beer opener. When we responded that a beer opener is a tool also, they just adjourned and headed for the pub.
Finally, the two dominoes. They were the loan survivors of a set someone lost or tossed in the Starbuck’s driveway.
Most of the pieces were broken up, and looking at the container, it’s amazing that two survived. This was a “Vintage 1998 Cardinal Double Six 28 Collectors Dominoes Jumbo Color Dot,” Vintage because it is on eBay and over 20 years old.
Saturday, March 25th, 2023 – Riverside Drive
The temperature dropped to 34°F (1.1°C) this morning and it had rained/hailed/snowed during the night. Most of the trash we picked up had a thin layer of ice on it and the metal pedestrian bridge across the Sammamish River was slippery. The roads were fine, though. We did see several cars with a layer of hail covering them and one that had about two inches of snow on it. It made for a cold walk.
We didn’t come across any roadkill and found a penny.
Barely. It had been run over several times and the copper plating was wearing away, but it still counts as one cent.
Chuck did some wading into the brambles today. First, earlier this week, we spotted something in the bushes as we were driving down Riverside Drive. This morning we saw it was an old gas can about three feet into the berry bushes.
As berry bushes do, they had a strong hold on the can and our picker couldn’t pull it out. Chuck gingerly waded in and grabbed the can by the spout. We left it in a pull-out about half a block down the street and will pick it up later with the car.
Then, across from the apartments on Woodinville Drive, we spotted two knotted plastic bags that had been tossed into the berry bushes. One was only about six feet in and at this time of year, the bushes are beaten down by the weather in places.
Again, the picker was useless in this situation and chuck gingerly made it to the first bag and tossed into the parking area. Because the bag was knotted, we just carried it home as-is. Eleven empty Modello cans. The second bag was another five feet in so got left to the elements.
On the freeway onramp, we found another urine bottle.
A two-liter Pepsi bottle but, fortunately not nearly full of urine. We dumped it out left the bottle at the bus stop trash can.
Also on the onramp, a WeatherTech Door Protector.
Fifty-eight bucks on Amazon. Of course, that is for a pair, and we only found one. According to the photos, this goes on the inside of the door, so how did they lose it. Well, unless the dog jumped out and took it too. Hopefully not.
Yet another spline lug nut.
We seem to find a lot of these relative to normal lug nuts. Maybe they can’t be tightened as tight and loosen on their own. That kind of defeats the purpose of “locking” lug nuts.
At the bottom of the Tolt Pipeline a double dog poop bag.
We don’t recall seeing one of these. While picking them up, a dog walker came by and thanked us. She had two dogs… No, they are way too small to produce bags this size. At least we hope. Maybe that’s why she thanked us?
That wraps up our walking week. Our take:
- 12 Cents. Didn’t even get close to a dollar.
- 21 Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans.
- 9 Balls, about half returned to the owners.
- 6 Roadkill including one slow, unreproductive salamander.
- 2 Unopened food containers, one consumed by Janet.
- 1 Dope pipe.
- 1 Ring, cheap.
- 1 Double dog poop bag.
- 1 Small, brown miniskirt, minus skirt and girl.
Have a great week and remember, support Ukraine; buy Estonian miniskirts.
Trash Walking 