Sunday, December 24th, 2023 – Safeway
Yes, Sunday, Christmas Eve, so we decided to do our Monday route today. There was very little traffic, but it was cold. Much of the trash, including cigarette butts were hard-frozen to the road. Case in point, we picked up a discarded pair of gloves.
We put then in our bag and when we got home, they were still frozen solid.
We didn’t come across any roadkill which is a good thing. We wouldn’t want to deal with trying to pry it off the road. We did find some money at the service station.
Two dimes and a nickel, none of which were stuck to the pavement.
We found these in an intersection.
They probably tied it on with Peruvian yarn instead of screws and nuts. Bad idea.
Near Safeway, we saw something hanging in a tree.
A headband. We’ve heard it said, “A band in the hand is worth two in the bush,” or something like that.
We picked up a scrap of cardboard.
“The Perfect Mule.” That piqued our interest. We were pretty sure it wasn’t the animal, so our best guess was slippers. However, it turns out to be ginger beer.
“The Perfect Mule” refers to a Moscow Mule drink. It would be more fun if it were the animal mule. We suppose you could feed a Moscow Mule to your animal mule. A real party animal.
We came across a small cloth bag.
It was labeled Lilgadgets and contained an eighth-inch stereo audio cable, but the “Lilgadget” was missing. The company makes headphones for kids.
In this case, it’s the headphones that are removable.
As we crested Norway Hill, the sun was just waking with the official sunrise still thirteen minutes away. We were cold and anxious to get home and did not want to hang around for sunrise.
Tuesday, December 26th, 2023 – Park-and-Ride
Well, we made it through our family Christmas. Lots of food and fun, a couple of football games on TV and watching the movie Elf again. All was good. We hope you had a great Christmas too.
When we left the house this morning, we still had two grandkids asleep in our house. We’ll figure out who they belong to when we get back.
This morning’s walk was much warmer. It rained overnight but quit by the time we left the house. The mostly-full moon was bright in the sky.
It’s called a waxing gibbous moon. We found that gibbous derives from the Latin gibbus meaning “hump.” We think it’s a good idea to stick with a gibbous moon. We think people would take hump moon too literally and we find enough used condoms and pregnancy tests as it is.
Well, okay, socket to me.
We found a giant socket spill.
Okay, maybe not giant, but the most we have found at one time. We’ll add them to our socket collection. The largest one is a DeWalt 24mm Deep Socket, thirteen bucks on Amazon. We tried to determine if this is the biggest socket we’ve found but our TrashWalking technician is on Christmas break. Who authorized him a Christmas break anyway?
We saw that a vehicle hit a telephone pole.
Interestingly, there were not plastic car parts scattered around. We are guessing it was something like a 1957 Cadillac.
No shattering plastic parts here. And probably not a dent either.
On the freeway off-ramp, we found a lug nut and a tire weight.
We grabbed the lug nut, but the tire weight was weighted down in the asphalt, and we were anxious to get home to our grandkids. So, we will wait to decide what the right amount of time to wait for the weighted-down weight to be retrieved is. So, wait for us to decide about the weight.
Wednesday, December 27th, 2023 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
This morning the temperature was a very warm 48°F (8.9°C), about 11°F above normal and we were overdressed for the walk. But better overdressed than underdressed. We encountered no roadkill today and found some money.
Seven cents at the gas station. That’s pretty sparce for the halfway point of our walks.
Early in our walk, we found a couple of unused Naloxone HCL Nasal Sprays.
Naloxone is a drug that “rapidly reverses an opioid overdose.” We don’t know why someone would toss these out the window.
We picked up some scattered Christmas treats.
It included an unopened Walmart give-away bag with some more treats in it. The bag also included a card asking you to rate our experience shopping at Walmart. Isn’t giving treats with a rating card kind of like bribing the jury?
A Honda hubcap.
At least it is not a Toyota hubcap like we normally find.
It’s time to check what has accumulated in Chuck’s vest pocket over the week.
On the upper-left, a Goldman-Sachs credit card that had been runover several times. It’s made of steel and is bent in half. We have found credit cards made of metal before, but not one this thick.
Two room key cards, one from the Hotel Blue Horizon in Vancouver, BC and one from the Hilton that states, “Let me go.” And somebody did. At the bottom, a very small screwdriver, probably part of a glasses repair kit.
Back to the top, a lens from some reading glasses. The screwdriver would be no help here. Part of a Toyota hubcap, like we normally find. An empty key ring and a small compass in case our phone batteries go dead.
In the middle, three unopened condoms, probably tossed by guys that didn’t get the Christmas gifts they were hoping for.
A WD-40 No-Mess Pen. We have not seen these before, but it is a pen that contains (surprise) WD-40 designed to deliver the product in a precision manner rather than the normal spray. Sounds like a keeper, but this one is empty, thus why we found in on the road.
A Santa, some Seuss Merry Christmas stickers, and a Pokémon Charmander doll. We still don’t understand that game.
A paper bird that might be a bookmark and an audio CD. Well, part of an audio CD that may be beyond playable, but we tried to decern what it was.
We didn’t find the CD. With Google’s help, we determined that it is a Romanian Christian CD titled “Who’s Like Him?” The first two tracks are “The Table” and “Blessed” but that is about all. The copyright appears to be AMS Studio, but we could not find anything on the Internet about it. And we spent too much time on it already.
Thursday, December 28th, 2023 – 160th to 124th Street
Today we found no money and removed a very dead roadkill opossum from the street. It took four trips into the street to remove it. We have a video of it, but we will spare you the gory (literally) details.
We did find a tool, though.
A 3/16-inch socket. It may be part of the socket spill on Tuesday.
We picked up some cell phone screen pieces on the overpass.
But we did not find the main part of the phone. The TrashWalking judges won’t let us count this as a cell phone find, though, so we are still holding at nineteen cell phones.
Someone lost their cap.
Progression Tree Care. One of their services is tree removal. Wonder how much we can charge them for cap removal services.
We also found a set of keys.
One looks like a house key, but the other appears to be safe deposit box key. Maybe we can swing a profit this week after all.
Friday, December 29th, 2023 – 100th Ave NE
Today was unbelievably warm for the end of December. It started out at 52°F (11.1°C) and seemed to get warmer during the walk. We removed a very large roadkill raccoon this morning and we found more money.
Two pennies and a quarter at Janet’s favorite drive-thru, and from their condition, they’ve been there a while.
Another anonymous wheel cover.
These replacement wheel covers are less expensive than the factory ones, so you aren’t out as much money when you lose them again.
Gummi Peach Hearts.
Whoa. Seventeen bucks at Walmart. Guess peaches with hearts are more expensive than peaches with pits.
It’s that time of year.
The deer-cars are starting to shed their antlers. We normally find several of these each winter. We should save them and build one of those arches like the one in Jackson, WY.
We’re taking off for the weekend so we will wrap up things today. Our take this week,
- 59 Cents, quite the letdown from last week
- 12 Mikes Hard Lemonade cans.
- 5 Tools, all sockets.
- 3 Unused condoms.
- 2 Roadkill, an opossum and a raccoon.
- 2 Unused Nalaxone nasal sprays.
- 1 Lost tree care cap.
- 1 Peruvian plate.
- 1 Waiting weight.
- 1 Key to treasure.
- 1/2 of a Romanian CD.
- And a headband in the pear tree.
Sorry, couldn’t help ourselves.
Happy New Year!
Trash Walking 