Monday, October 30th, 2023 – Safeway
Today was a chilly start to a new TrashWalking week. We hit a low Sunday when we do not walk of 29°F (-1.7°C), but today was a slightly warmer 32°F. We found a normal amount of trash, but little of note.
We did pick up a tube of something.
Wait, what? Brush-on adhesive with vitamins? Okay, it turned out to be fake eyelash glue. Fake eyelash, not fake glue. We’re sure the vitamins help your eyelids. We don’t hear many stories about anemic eyelids, probably because they use this glue. Oh, and “DO NOT FREEZE.” Good luck with that with the recent weather.
The other thing of note today was a frozen glove.
It was your typical rubber glove, except the fingers were filled, hopefully not with fingers. When we got home and dissected it, it turned out to be bits of leaves and twigs. But it could be the fingers from a real scarecrow.
Now if we only had a brain.
Tuesday, October 31st, 2023 – Park-and-Ride
This morning was slightly warmer, but only slightly at 34°F (1.1°C).
On Juanita-Woodinville Way, we spotted what looked to be cell phone off the road.
It was heavy, but empty. It was a box with the standard Apple over-packaging.
We picked up another tee-shirt, this one in Japanese.
Fortunately, they provided a translation. We knew Edo is the old name for Tokyo, but we didn’t know who Tokugawa Ieyasu was. However, Wikipedia provided the background, so the tee-shirt is a short history lesson. After all that, why does this tee-shirt exist? To Send to Goodwill, of course.
On Norway Hill, we found a knit cap.
“Northwest Cannabis Solutions.” We are happy someone is working on some solutions. All we see are problems including lots of discarded marijuana packaging. And after you solve that issue, start on cigarette butts.
We have collected a lot of balls during our walks including tennis balls. Today, we decided to clean some of them up to perhaps leave at the dog park. To dry them, we set them in some cardboard boxes in our driveway.
Today is Halloween. Our neighborhood is small and a little isolated, so we usually have only one trick-or-treater, the only young child living in our neighborhood. After we were visited by our trick-or-treater, we dressed up in our TrashWalking “costumes”, closed down the house and went to downtown Bothell where they had blocked off the streets for a Halloween trick-or-treating.
To our surprise, someone recognized us from our walks and thanked us for picking up trash. We just walked through, we didn’t trick-or-treat.
When we returned home, we saw the tennis balls.
We hope no trick-or-treaters came by the house when we were not home and thought we left the balls out for their treats. They didn’t clean up all that well and probably don’t taste good.
Wednesday, November 1st, 2023 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
Today was comfortably warmer and dry, and we found some money.
A nice shiny penny, our first find this week. It’s not much, but a penny saved is a penny earned according to Benjamin Franklin. But not so fast. With the help of ChatGPT, if a penny were put into a savings account in the early 1950’s, with the compound interest it would have grown to eight cents today. Eight-fold is pretty good. But a beer cost about sixty-five cents back then whereas today it is about $5.93, about nine times as much. So, you would be better off having a beer in 1950 rather than saving the penny. Sorry Ben.
We picked up a pair of cheap safety glasses.
They had been runover but were still in one piece which speaks well for them. Of course, if you had been wearing them when they got runover they wouldn’t have helped.
We found a runover ring.
After some searching, we found that it was a bottle opener ring from Party Pants, fifteen bucks for a beer can insulator and the ring. There was no sign of the insulator, though.
This young lady came to us with an envelope.
She gave us the envelope and said she often sees us picking up trash and wanted to thank us. When we got home, we found a card with a nice note plus a Starbucks gift card. We appreciate it.
Time to check out Chuck’s vest pocket.
Starting with the cards, two credit cards, a CapitalOne Mastercard and a Petal Visa card for fuel, and another magic game card. Also, a small card with a Florence Nightengale quote, “How very little can be done under the spirit of fear…” On the back, was a website, live-inspired.com where we found information about the card.
Eight bucks for a set of thirty cards. They have one set titled, “Carpe Diem,” Seize the Day. We looked, but they don’t have one titled, “Carpe Quisquilias,” Seize the Trash.
A giant smiley face that is the back of a postcard reminding someone of their dental appointment. An Allen wrench that should not have been in Chuck’s pocket, and a small gold leaf that might have been covered with gold leaf.
A pencil that has seen better days and is nothing to write home about, a pink wrist band and another mirror. “Mirror, mirror on the ground…” No, we just used that line. If we used it again, it would reflect poorly on us.
Finally, unopened Halloween candy that we found. No, really, we did not go trick-or-treating and we did not eat it.
Thursday, November 2nd, 2023 – 160th to 124th Street
Today it rained hard, and we got thoroughly soaked, but on the upside, temperature was mild. We picked up some random trash but did not find anything that was picture-worthy. Well, except for some foam sheets.
These were fan-fold insulating sheets:
Evidently one or more of these fan-fold packages escaped a truck. Fortunately, most ended up off the road and were not too broken up. We gathered the several pieces that were spread out over a block and stacked them on the lawn of an apartment complex. About one-hundred feet away were some steps leading down to the apartment trash bins.
It took three trips to get all the panels down to the bins.
Friday, November 3rd, 2023 – 100th Ave NE
Today was dry with mild temperatures, much better for walking. However, it started with a failed toss. And this time it was Chuck, not Janet.
By the KinderCare, we found a bunny and a child’s jacket outside fence and Chuck tossed them back. At least the bunny made it back, the jacket got caught on a tree limb. However, our picker was able to free it.
We picked up some book covers made of stretchable fabric.
One black one, opened and an unopened orange one. “4 way stretch fabric.” “Fits all standard books.” Right, they won’t work on our Kindle. Something else for Goodwill.
“Mirror, mirror on the ground…” Oh, never mind.
This is about as broken as you get. Whoever did this is in for a long streak of bad luck.
We found a silver-plated bowl.
Four bucks at Goodwill. We put it into our Goodwill box. They won’t even need to reprice it. Plus, whoever lost it can purchase it again. Or maybe he doesn’t know he lost it and will think he’s getting a matching set.
A fancy Starbucks cup.
“Starbucks Halloween 2023 Oil Slick Rainbow Iridescent Venti Tumbler 24oz,” thirty-seven dollars on Amazon. Ok, ours doesn’t have a cap and straw, so we’ll let it go for twenty bucks. Only serious buyers need inquire.
Saturday, November 4th, 2023 – Riverside Drive
Today the temperature was an amazing 55°F (12.8°C), what we consider to be the perfect walking temperature. However, it again rained the entire walk, very hard at times and we arrived home soaked. But we’re getting used to it.
We found no money and no roadkill. Yesterday evening while driving down the hill, we spotted a roadkill squirrel, but this morning it was gone. Maybe a coyote got it.
We found Minnie in the middle of the road.
Wait, does this count as a roadkill mouse?
Some kid lost part of a costume.
We’ll hold onto it. We may incorporate it into next year’s Halloween costume.
An unsafe safety island.
And we know the type of car it was, which is strange. A Toyota normally loses a hubcap. We pick up a lot of hubcaps on our walks and the majority of them are Toyota.
We found some clothing today.
A nice pair of Calvin Klein jeans, a hood with a leopard-skin pattern, a pair of sweatpants, and a pair of boy’s leggings. They were all found in different locations. We washed them and put them into the growing Goodwill pile. After we washed them, at the bottom of the washer was a penny.
It was shiny and clean. It did go through a wash cycle, after all.
With that, we wrap up our wet walking week. Our take,
- 2 Pennies including a very clean one.
- 15 Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans, about average.
- 11 Pieces of candy.
- 7 Articles of clothing.
- 5 Balls, almost one every day.
- 7 Items for Goodwill, one from Goodwill.
- 2 Mirrors.
- 1 Starbucks gift card.
- 1 Beer opener ring.
- 1 Glove with fingers.
- 1 Roadkill doll.
- 1 Toyota emblem without a hubcap.
- 0 Roadkill. It should have been one except for that coyote.
Have a great week and remember, don’t give out tennis balls for Halloween.
Trash Walking 