Monday, September 11th, 2023 – Safeway
We began our walk week with a warm morning and little of interest. Well, there was some money.
A dime and a penny, both at Janet’s favorite drive-thru. A nice start to the week.
We also found a hat with no logo.
A baseball cap from Chef Works meant to be worn in the kitchen, thirteen bucks on Amazon. There were strict cleaning rules on a tag.
It’s no wonder the guy just threw it away when it got dirty.
These are the marketing bullet points from the Amazon ad.
Imported? It’s made in China, of course it’s imported. Ninety-nine percent of items on Amazon are imported.
Tuesday, September 12th, 2023 – Park-and-Ride
Today was a bit more interesting. We removed a roadkill rabbit and found more money.
A lone penny on the freeway overpass. Yes, it made it a penny-ante walk.
The weather was cool and clear, and the moon and Venus put on a nice show just before sunrise.
Trust us, it looked better than the photo.
Some litter at the Tolt Pipeline.
At least they were neat about their litter. They probably had to leave when they ran out of room on the post.
Someone scribbled a bible verse on the side of a switchbox.
It would have more impact if they had a spellchecker.
Another empty bottle of a male enhancement product.
We have written about this product before and found that a man named Nam Hyun Lee was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to four years in prison for making these products. That sure took the product off the market.
We found these together.
“Hello, Ajax Pharmacy? I need a few condoms and it’s kind of an emergency. Can you have them FedExed to the park-and-ride ASAP? Thanks!”
He probably used the Rhino.
Wednesday, September 13th, 2023 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
This is more like it. Today we didn’t find any roadkill but found more money.
Two dimes at the drive-thru and another penny at the gas station. That makes thirty-three cents so far this week. It also marks nine straight walking days that we found money, a new record.
We also found a tool today.
Yes, we are a bit embarrassed to call it a tool, but we’re grasping at straws here. Or at least grasping at paint can openers. Why do all paint can openers also have a beer bottle opener on it?
We found a mystery cover in the gutter.
It has snaps at the top and a zipper that splits the bag apart. It has no markings or brands, but it could be a golf club rain hood that snaps onto the golf bag and unzips to access the clubs. Or, in case of rain, you could just zip it up and head to the 19th hole.
This is ominous. We pass a landscaper’s home on our walks and last winter he attached a snowplow to one of his trucks to make money clearing snow from parking lots. Today the plow was attached.
Oh, come on, it’s only mid-September. Don’t tempt fate.
It’s time to check out the accumulation of items in Chuck’s vest pocket.
On the left are the cards. Anirudh’s BILT Mastercard. BILT is a credit card designed for renters, and it is one of those heavy metal cards that are good for jimmying your apartment door when you get locked out. There were also pieces of four other credit cards, and a Subway gift card with no money on it. That’s a good thing because we would not like to be forced to go to Subway for a sandwich. Nothing against Subway per se, we just like other places better, like Jimmy John’s.
Then there’s an expired parking permit for a resort in central Washington near Grand Coulee Dam, a business card for Vicky Cleaning, and a tag with messages in foreign languages. We sent it to Google Translate to check what it was for.
Google must be using AI and it made a mistake, apologized profusely, and provided the correct translation.
Back to the top, a Michael Jordan Nike key chain fob going for between eight dollars and six-hundred dollars on eBay, and yes, the six-hundred-dollar description had the word “vintage” in the title. Someone’s index card for a speech so he doesn’t forget what the speech is about, and a pair of unopened earplugs found in the construction area on 100th. A black nylon screw, and a feather bookmark. You can get a set of thirty feather bookmarks for nine bucks, which for us would be a lifetime set of feather bookmarks with enough left over to put a feather in our caps.
A pair of AARP sunglasses that were retired and an unrelated sunglass lens. Someone fought an eye for an eye by tooth and nail except we only found one eye and no tooth. An Office Depot ticket number 294192, hopefully not the customer service wait queue, a small button and part of a “Lighter Clip and Jar” retractable lighter tether. Forty dollars for a jar of twenty-four.
This comes in handy because you don’t want to lose your lighter when smoking dope. And buy a jar full for when you lose the retractable lighter tether. Lighters not included.
Finally, on the bottom-right, a stylized piece of jewelry depicting a stork.
It was a few days before we realized it was a smashed eyeglasses frame. We may try to sell it on eBay for twenty dollars. Wait, we’ll add “vintage” into the description. Two hundred dollars.
Thursday, September 14th, 2023 – 160th to 124th Street
We found more money today to keep our streak going.
Barely. One penny. It almost seems someone is toying with us, keeping us on edge. Each day, the pressure is intense until we find our first coin.
But we also found another tool. This one was a real tool, not like yesterday’s paint can opener.
Okay, it was only another socket, but it was a heavy-duty impact wrench socket. Really.
A lone sock at a bus stop.
Is this how the lost socks from the laundry end up? Starving at a bus stop for lack of bus fare?
We found what appears to be more stolen mail and other trash near the freeway.
When we got it home and sorted through it, the mail was over a year old and not worth trying to process through the post office. We recycled the lot.
We found a Pooh handkerchief.
Not Pooh’s hankie, but probably some kid’s hankie. Like the CEO of AT&T would have a handkerchief like this. Disney, maybe, but not AT&T. We’ll try to give it to Goodwill, but they will probably just poo-poo the idea.
Along NE 160th Street, we found a few photographs. Then at a bus stop, we found a bunch of them.
After taking our granddaughter to New Orleans for a Gymnastics tournament in June, we think that these photos may have been in conjunction with a gymnastics event.
Teenage girls doing what teenage girls do.
Friday, September 15th, 2023 – 100th Ave NE
Today we found several roadkill: A snake, two squirrels, and two rabbits. We also kept our money streak alive at eleven walking days.
Another dime at Janet’s coin mine.
We also found another tool.
Another tire pressure gauge that couldn’t withstand the tire pressure. Not the inflation tire pressure, the tire pressure of being runover. But we are still counting it as tool.
At a turnout on Simonds Road, they put up a sign to warn people to expect delays due to road construction.
We found this at the turnout.
That must have been a long delay. Or maybe a short one, but we’ll stop there.
Another urine water bottle.
This was found in the construction on 100th Ave NE. They really need to bring in some Porta Potties for the workers.
We found a can of Tattoo Goo.
It seems to have two uses, first and foremost, it helps alleviate the pain following a tattoo, and second, to enhance the colors of the tattoo. “Like wow, man, with that balm on, you can see the scabs clearly.”
We did pick up another audio CD, but alas, it was not playable.
However, the album was from Sarah McLachlan, “Surfacing.” We listened to a few songs online. Why is it the discs we find with music we don’t like are playable, but the ones we like are not? Where is the justice?
So, being gluttons for punishment, this morning we had a car maintenance appointment and had two hours to spend in downtown Kirkland. So, we walked the area. We weren’t there to pick up trash, though it could use it. We were constantly stopping at the sight of beer cans tossed under bushes and such. We did pick up some trash, but mainly observed.
We picked up two more tools.
The tool on the left is called a toe dolly and is used for fixing dents in cars. It weighs almost three pounds and goes for fifty-two bucks on Amazon. We thought the second tool was a long landscape nail, but after closer examination, we think it’s a screwdriver with the handle destroyed. It’s kind of hard to hang up on the tool rack.
We came across several tire weights and other items.
A shattered mirror in the gutter. We left it. You know that seven-years-of-bad-luck thing. And to prove a point, nearby was a lost lug nut from the car that ran over it.
Saturday, September 16th, 2023 – Riverside Drive
Today was a weird Saturday walk for us. Normally on our downhill route into Bothell we may meet four or five cars. This morning there was a steady stream of cars including a couple of tractor-trailer rigs.
At one point, we checked Google Maps and found that the southbound lanes of the I-405 Freeway were shut down due to a bad accident.
The traffic was heavy all along our route until we reached the top of Brickyard Road when the freeway opened, and traffic began to return to normal.
Along the way, we removed more roadkill: one squirrel, two rats, and three rabbits, possibly due to the amount of traffic. We removed six roadkill rabbits this week pushing the total rabbit count to over three hundred since July of 2017.
We also extended our money streak to two full TrashWalking weeks, twelve days.
A penny on Woodinville Drive and a dime at the park-and-ride.
We also found some more tools.
A bungee cord, a tiedown strap and a small socket, all runover, but they still count.
We recycled another damaged hubcap.
Including a self-portrait.
Another urine bottle.
Not that we are bragging, but this is the second urine bottle this week.
We also found two unopened bottles of beer.
One for each of us.
As we were passing the Tolt Pipeline, a jogger stopped to thank us and shake hands.
We showed him our dirty rubber gloves and he said he didn’t mind, so we shook hands. Wonder if knowing we’d dragged six roadkill off the streets today would have changed his decision?
With that much-appreciated gesture, we wrap up our TrashWalking week. Our take:
- 55 Cents – A big drop from last week, but not too bad.
- 12 Roadkill, including six rabbits.
- 8 Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans, much fewer than normal.
- 6 Balls, one per day.
- 8 Tools, mostly runover.
- 3 Emergency condoms, unused.
- 2 Smashed pairs of glasses, one artfully so.
- 2 Beer bottles, full.
- 2 Urine bottles, half-full.
- 1 Hat with a lot of rules.
- 1 Misspelled Bible verse.
- 1 Sorry Google translation.
Have a great week and remember, instead of saying something bad about someone, you may want to hold your tounge.
Trash Walking 