Monday, December 4th, 2023 – Safeway
This week started warm for this time of year and mostly dry with a light mist as we arrived back home. We found little of interest, but we did start out the week with money.
One penny, overexposed. The photo, not the penny.
We did find a tool, or it was found for us. Walking along 100th Ave NE, we heard a car run over something.
It turned out to be a power saw blade and the car pulled over. A man got out and inspected his tires and saw that there was no damage and was very happy and went on his way. We picked up the blade. Think it might be good for cutting curved cuts?
We picked up another “locking” wheel stud that doesn’t really lock.
If these really locked, we wouldn’t find so many of them.
We found a piece of modern art for our TrashWalking museum.
We’ll put it in our regular art wing since we don’t have a wing specifically for modern art. We also asked Google Lens to identify it and it said it was a pair of earmuffs, eight bucks on Amazon. That just shows how little Google knows about modern art.
Tuesday, December 5th, 2023 – Park-and-Ride
Woof! Today was a torrential downpour for the Seattle area. It rained hard throughout our walk and we again, got thoroughly soaked. Along the way, we removed the leaves from several drains to try to relieve the minor flooding, but some drains, like this one, were not clogged but simply could not handle the water volume.
The water was over the curb and extra water was flowing across the intersection. The weather services call this an “Atmospheric River” or the “Pineapple Express.” From the weather map today, you can see why.
There was a river of water running directly over us from the Hawaii area. In fact, the temperature today when we started walking was 57°F (13.9°C). The average low for this day is 42°F (5.6°C), a full fifteen degrees colder than today and we are liking it, except for the rain, of course.
We didn’t find any roadkill but did find some money. When we left the park-and-ride, we were ecstatic to find a two-dollar bill.
This is only the second two-dollar bill we have found’ and this would be a fine one for our tip jar. Then, a few feet farther on, we found another.
Wait, what? We started finding more money including one- and two-dollar bills. As we continued, we also started finding some credit cards.
These were scattered in the middle of the street, and we spent about twenty minutes collecting items.
Finally, in the middle of the street we found the wallet.
Janet claims it’s a clutch, but Chuck knows a clutch is part of a car, so after we picked up the wallet, we were very wet and decided to cut our walk short and head straight home.
After breakfast, we took the wallet/clutch to the address on the driver’s license, but nobody was home. We left a note on the door to contact us. We were worried that she would panic and start cancelling the numerous credit cards before we could use them [Joke]. We were able to contact her health insurance primary care provider and convince them to contact her. She contacted us within about twenty minutes.
She turned out to be an Amazon driver and needed her driver’s license in order to work. It all worked out well and we were happy to be able to return her purse/clutch to her, except our tip jar is still lacking.
Wednesday, December 6th, 2023 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
Today was more mundane except we got totally soaked again by the Pineapple Express of rain.
We found more money, two pennies.
The first was at the gas station where folks vacuum their cars and fill their tires with air. The second is a mystery. We found it our garage floor at the end of our walk today. It may have been one we dropped at the end of one of our previous walks, but we keep accurate records of the money we find, so we doubt we would find a penny, then lose track of it.
Our conclusion is that it may have fallen out of either the wallet/clutch we found last week or the one we found this week. We considered contacting each person to see if they were missing the penny, but then it could get dicey with heated arguments about whose penny it was, and it’s really hard to split a single penny 50-50.
The only other thing of interest was a knit cap.
Gather is some apartments in Bellingham Washington, but we have no idea if this cap came is from there. We’ll wash it and send it to Goodwill.
Let’s check out the meager offerings in Chuck’s vest pocket.
Two, half credit cards. Actually, the Washington Quest card is like food stamps except the user can also get cash from an ATM machine. A small card advertising resources to find houses of worship that welcome the LGBQT+ community. A makeup brush to use at the long lights at the freeway on-ramp.
A cigarette lighter. We haven’t heard of the Evergreen Market, but what kind of store has their advertising put on lighters? Well, a pot store, of course.
On the right, at the bottom, a hair band and a cheap ring. A socket that should not have been in the pocket, a new-style wire nut, and a very small domino.
We were able to track down the interesting piece of metal with Google. It’s a device designed to carry dog poop bags on walks. It is attached to the leash with the hole and the two notches allow two knotted bags to be carried. “Hey, Zeke, my human is carrying my poop because he respects me.” We suppose one could attach it to the dog’s collar. We’re sure that would help his esteem.
Thursday, December 7th, 2023 – 160th to 124th Street
Today we had light rain for the first half of our walk then the Pineapple Express hit us again and we returned home soaked. But the money just keeps flowing in. Slowly.
A penny in the middle of the sidewalk on NE 160th St. That makes four cents over four days.
We found a syringe.
But it doesn’t have a needle. It appears to be an RSO (Rick Simpson Oil) Syringe for dispensing a tar-like form of cannabis THC.
That’s a new one on us. It is empty. Yes, we checked.
We found a very nice Yeti tumbler on the freeway on-ramp.
Unfortunately, the top was off and got runover. Too bad, it costs forty-two bucks on Amazon. But we found we can get a lid for it six bucks. We’ll think about it.
Friday, December 8th, 2023 – 100th Ave NE
Today, we found some significant money.
Janet checked out her favorite drive-thru and dug out ten coins but couldn’t tell what the denomination of some were. When we got home, we found we had three dimes and seven pennies. We figure they had been there for a long time and the recent heavy rains loosened them from the accumulated dirt. Well, for whatever reason, we’ll take it.
We also found another “tool.”
We shouldn’t need to rehash this with you guys, but bungee cords, tie-down straps and the like are accepted as tools according to a hotly-contested legal battle that reached the TrashWalking Supreme Court in a landmark decision in 1916, TrashWalkers vs. Litterers. So don’t even try to dispute this. We still haven’t found enough money to pay for those legal fees.
This is a bit weird. We picked up two wheel covers.
Counting these, in the last three wheel cover finds, we have found three Nissan covers and zero Toyotas. The world has turned upside down. By the way, none of them matched and none matched our car either.
We found a pair of socks at Safeway bus stop.
So, what happened here? The bus rider takes off his water-logged shoes and the bus comes. “Sir, you cannot come on the bus wearing socks!” So now we have a pair of socks for Goodwill.
For a couple of weeks at the park-and-ride, we spotted a piece of PVC pipe that probably fell off a truck entering the freeway on-ramp. We finally picked it up in the car.
It had a plastic electrical box on it, so being curious sorts, we opened it up. There was a GO disc in it. After some research, we found that it is a device that broadcasts messages to nearby Android phones via Bluetooth so businesses can broadcast messages to potential customers. The company, Asirvia started operations in 2016 and ended in 2018 due to several difficulties. These devices have a two-year battery, and it has been sitting in this box for at least five years. So, it is probably discharged and disillusioned.
Saturday, December 9th, 2023 – Riverside Drive
Today was colder without any rain. However much of what we picked up was waterlogged. The trickle of money turned into a flood.
First, we found a nickel.
Then later along Juanita-Woodinville Way we found two pennies in the gutter. As we were taking the photo, we noticed more coins.
They were spread in the gutter for about fifty feet, and it took us a while to collect them. We counted them when we got home. We found 1 one-dollar coin, 4 quarters, 12 dimes, 12 nickels, and 58 and 2/3 pennies. Yes, one penny got run over and lost a third of its value. The total was four dollars and thirty-eight and two-thirds cents.
But it didn’t stop there we went to the center of the street to pick up a water bottle and saw a five-dollar bill.
However, this was the same vicinity as the clutch/wallet we found on Tuesday. We texted the lady whose wallet it was and asked if there where any fives in it. She responded that there were three, her daughter’s birthday money that she was keeping in her wallet. We said we would drop it of later in the day which we did, and we did add two more fives to the envelope and wrote happy birthday on it.
We also found some more tools.
A six-inch socket extension and another bungee cord. And no, we’re not having that discussion again.
We also found some toys.
A Hot Wheels rescue car, a dog chew toy that needed rescuing and an plastic orange ball which has nothing to do with rescuing.
At the park-and-ride, someone was parking and riding.
We came to a fork in the road.
We find a lot of these and have become experts at reading their signals. We immediately made a U-turn and headed back the way we had come.
Today we passed by the Iron Man, and someone covered his lower extremities.
They put a kilt on him. Oh, no. Don’t tell us they put a skirt on Iron Man.
With that, we wrap up another week of TrashWalking. Our take this week,
- $4.85 rounding up the two-thirds of a penny.
- 11 Mikes Hard Lemonade cans.
- 4 Tools.
- 3 Balls.
- 2 Wheel covers.
- 1 Soggy wallet/clutch.
- 1 Diverse card.
- 1 Stopped Go Disk.
- 1 U-turn fork.
- 1 Modest Iron Man.
- 0 Roadkill. We have not had zero roadkill in a long time.
Have a great week and remember, keep your mind in the gutter where the money is.
Trash Walking 