Monday, August 14th, 2023 – Safeway
Off to another exciting week of TrashWalking. So far, today was the warmest morning of the year for our walk.
When we travelled to New Orleans this June, it was hotter, but we didn’t TrashWalk.
It took two trips into the street to remove a very messy rabbit but we found money.
A very shiny dime in the travel lane and a not-so-shiny penny in the gutter. Not a bad way to start the week.
A few weeks ago, we covered our illicit early-morning traffic control. The new crosswalk warning lights kept repeating “Change password” and we thought it strange that you would need a password to cross the street. However, it’s been a month and they are still nagging to change the password. Yesterday, on our day off, we did some online research and found a user manual for the device. It told us the device is Bluetooth enabled, described a phone app and provided the default password. It was too much to resist.
This morning we opened the app and it showed a Bluetooth signal near the crossing. After selecting the device and entering the password, voila!
There are a bunch of settings like speech volume, button press force, and others including adding optional voice prompts. It was tempting to change the button prompt to “Ouch!” or better yet, “Change password.” But we quit the app and didn’t even change the password, so it wouldn’t nag us every morning.
So much for fun. We did find another tool today.
It had been run over, but it may be usable with a little work.
Someone puts free stuff out in this spot: a sink, an air compressor, and now,
An old Nordic Track ski machine. The other stuff disappeared within a week. We’ll see how long this one lasts.
We came around a hedge along a driveway and were startled by a deer about ten feet away.
At first it stared at us like a deer in the headlights, but we had turned our flashlights off. It trotted about thirty feet away into some bushes and waited for us to move on.
A half-empty can of PBR.
We can understand them not finishing it. When Chuck was in the Army, the unit generally had a single beer choice at any given time depending on what got delivered. Mostly it was either PBR or Carling Black Label. They were only ten cents a can, but still.
Down a side street, we saw a piece of trash. When we got to it, it was a Trojan condom box.
This isn’t uncommon, normally they are packages of three, but this one was a package of twelve. When we got home, we found that, although flat from being run over, it was still wrapped in cellophane with all the condoms. Her: “Hi Sweetie, are you ready for the big date I promised you tonight?” Him: “Yep, I’m ready and I have a dozen Trojans right here and… what the… where’d they go?”
We found a Safeway receipt with an address scrawled on the back.
We know some people who live in that area, so we checked the address in Google Maps, and it was a restroom in a park about four miles away. Guess when you gotta go, you gotta go. When the guy was at the Safeway check-out and asked the cashier where the nearest restroom was, why point him to a park instead of the one in the store?
Tuesday, August 15th, 2023 – Park-and-Ride
This morning was even warmer than yesterday.
It was a bit uncomfortable, but not too bad and the temperature actually dropped a couple of degrees during our walk.
We removed a roadkill bird today and found a bit of money.
A very small bit. So far this week we’ve been nickel-and-dimed. Well, yes, there was the penny too.
We also picked up a small bit of tool.
A drill bit to be exact.
At the Tolt Pipeline, someone left a bottle and a jacket.
The bottle was a broken Life Bottle, sixteen bucks on Amazon, but not broken. The Jacket has a logo on it of Tidal Rescue with a house with wings, but we cannot find any information about it. We could make something up about a team that airlifts houses being threatened by high tides, but then there’s that fake news thing.
The park-and-ride can be hit and miss. Today it was hit. We came across a knotted plastic bag.
We opened it and found a Chefman Air Fryer that looked to be in good condition, but we didn’t want to deal with it. At this point we were already fried and we were thinking about our first cup of coffee at home. Now if it were a coffee maker… Anyway, we wrapped it back up and placed it next to the bus stop trash bin.
A pair of underwear.
The photo looks like they are dirty, but they were clean with some plant residue on them. We had a brief [get it?] discussion whether they were men’s or women’s because they were small, very light and stretchy, but with the unique front design we decided there were men’s underwear. And we weren’t wrong. Google Lens found them on eBay for $9.81 shipped for free from China. They are described as “Men’s Solid Color Anion Seamless Boxer Breathable Underwear Comfort.” They were kind of silky and Chuck thought they might not be too bad, but Janet just rolled her eyes and we threw them away. By the way, in case you’re interested, we found them on Alibaba for three bucks a pair with free shipping from China on orders over five dollars. But what the hell is “Anion Underwear” anyway?
We found a toy that we thought was a character in the movie, “How to Train Your Dragon.”
However, it is a character named Frankie related to the American Heart Association’s “Kids Heart Challenge.”
Finally, we found these two items near a car.
No, we did not look in the car. The Metro needs to put up a sign, “No Riding in the Parking Lot”, but that might be confusing to most folks. And yes, it was a three-pack.
Wednesday, August 16th, 2023 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
Today was a rather uneventful walk. We didn’t come across any roadkills but found more bits.
The gas station gave up two bits. Okay a quarter, but we like the term “two bits.” “Shave and a Haircut, One Quarter” just doesn’t cut it.
Very near our house is a small old-folks home. No, not our home, but close in a couple of senses. Anyway, there is a car parked on the street that belongs to a person who used to work at the home. It has not moved for over two years. Today a note appeared.
Good luck with that. We have not seen the guy for a very long time, and we figure he has not seen the car for long time either.
It’s an uneventful day, so let’s check out Chuck’s vest pocket where the items that are not really interesting but fit to print are stored.
Starting in the upper-right, there is Jonathan’s gambling card for the Angel-of-the-Winds Cassino about forty miles north of us. An Apples-to-Apples card for a kid’s game, a Sun Moon Rising card for adults and teens game, and an unopened condom for an adult game.
The metal piece in the center is a mounting plate for a rearview mirror. It’s glued to the windshield and the mirror attaches to it. Obviously this one was not glued very well. A badly mounted mirror reflects poorly on the installer.
At the top, the smallest Sharpy we’ve found, a comb, and a Human Rights Campaign member tag which was cruelly discarded. A generic chap stick with no markings, and a small butterfly. The Butterfly is a toy from a Kinder Joy egg.
Kinder Joy probably took a page from the Cracker Jacks play book. How many boxes of Cracker Jacks were purchased only because the kid wanted the toy?
Thursday, August 17th, 2023 – 160th to 124th Street
Today we picked up a lot of trash and found no roadkills. At an abandoned equipment cabinet on NE 160th Street someone hung out for a while eating some snacks, drinking some beverages, and checking scratch-and-lose lottery cards.
While we were picking up the trash, something caught our eye on the concrete base of the box on the left.
They left us a penny, which was good because it was the only money we found this morning.
Another lost and damaged wheel cover.
A Honda this time. It’s refreshing to find one other than the Toyotas we normally seem to pick up.
A urine bottle to keep our weekly string going.
This one looked very pale but was definitely a urine bottle.
Baby needs a new pair of shoes.
At least one shoe anyway. We were able to find a pair of these on Amazon for forty bucks, so this one should be worth twenty. Okay, it might lose some value with only one. We tossed it in the garbage.
Someone got a 12-pack of Sprite at the Safeway on 124th Ave NE and lost it making the turn onto NE 160th Street.
We gathered the cans together for a group photo. They were all damaged and we recycled all but four that were still sealed.
We found another CD and this one was playable.
“MYMP Songs.” We thought they meant “My MP3 Songs,” but we found that there is a group called MYMP which stands for “Make Your Mother Proud”. We normally find discs with music we don’t find pleasing, but these songs were very good.
Or are we just showing our age?
Yep, the park-and-ride again.
Perhaps we should purchase a trail camera…
A discarded banana.
It reminded us of the line in the “Beverly Hills Cop” movie.
Friday, August 18th, 2023 – 100th Ave NE
Today was a full ten degrees cooler than yesterday morning which made for a comfortable walk. We removed a roadkill rabbit from Norway Hill and found money.
First at the service station air pump, a penny. Then at Janet’s favorite drive-thru, three dimes and a penny. At a church driveway, another penny, and finally, on Norway Hill, another dime. A total of forty-three cents. We did find the penny in the church driveway. Perhaps we should tithe and give 10% to the church. No, not 10% of the money, just 10% of the penny we found at the church. Of course, we do round off to the nearest penny.
We found a couple of tools.
A small pair of channel-lock pliers, only about five inches long. It had been run over and the main handle was missing, so you couldn’t get much leverage with it, but it might be okay for delicate work. Also, a putty knife that was not cleaned after the last use. Perhaps that’s why they tossed it. We don’t think it will take much to clean it, it’ll be like putty in our fingers.
We found another set of keys in the construction area of 100th Ave NE.
We placed them on a nearby fire hydrant for someone to find.
Wow! That’s a big rabbit.
Oh, it was a horse. Don’t people who own horses need to pick up after them like people with dogs? Do they even make horse poop bags? Yes!
Okay, this is more like a diaper. Are horse owners too hoity toity to get off their high horse?
We found an unopened bag of twinkies.
But didn’t Hostess quit making them several years ago? But then again, didn’t they purportedly have an infinite shelf life? We’ll put it on a shelf in our TrashWalking Museum to test the theory.
And this irks us.
If he were a veteran, the Veterans Administration has programs to help homeless veterans.
Saturday, August 19th, 2023 – Riverside Drive
Another comfortable day to walk and we found no roadkill and found some money.
A single penny for walking eight miles and cleaning up two freeway ramps and three parking lots. It doesn’t make cents. Our total for this week is eighty-six cents, but at least we found some money each day. That hasn’t happened since the week of June 26th.
We did find three tools, though, all in good shape.
A Torx screw bit for a quarter-inch drive socket, a squeegee used for applying tinting film to car windows, and a Farberware knife. We weren’t familiar with the squeegee but found an interesting how-to video on YouTube.
We came across two more signs today.
A sign by the trailer park for a King County Drainage System. We had seen this in the past but got buried, (eaten?) by the berry bushes. We checked Google Maps to look back at old images.
So, sometime between 2019 and 2021. It was probably the Pandemic that did it. A lot of things disappeared during that time.
Week 7 of King County inaction.
Guess it could be in action, too.
Rats!
They put locks on the school zone light switches. There goes our early morning recreation. And just when it was getting really dark when we start our walk.
A pair of tennis shoes at the park-and-ride.
They are Van’s and are worn out, not suitable for Goodwill. We tossed them in the trash.
Finally, the tray that contained the rancid chicken on the freeway on-ramp was mild enough to be tossed in the bus stop trash receptacle.
It only took four weeks airing out in the hot sun.
On Brickyard Road, we found a discarded condom package.
No condoms, though, either used or unused.
We think we’ve solved a long-standing TrashWalking mystery. Periodically we find these small vials.
Last week we found another and were able to find them for sale online. Today, we found this.
Rhino Male Enhancement package with two of the vials in it. The package was opened, and the vials are empty. The manufacturer can afford to ship each capsule in its own vial, a two-capsule package seems to sell for about $85. Perhaps this explains the large number of condoms we are finding lately.
With that, we wrap up another walking week. Our take this week,
- 86 Cents.
- 20 Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans.
- 15 Condoms, three used.
- 7 Tools, mostly unbroken.
- 6 Balls, mostly tossed back over fences.
- 3 Water bottles.
- 1 Urine bottle.
- 1 Pair of underwear.
- 1 Deer in the headlights.
- 1 Air fryer.
- 1 Mirror mount, badly mounted.
- 1 Banana, not in a tailpipe.
- 1 Solved mystery.
Have a great week and consider how to disable a Tesla with a banana.
Trash Walking 