Saturday, December 30th, 2023 – Riverside Drive
Okay, we lied last week. We couldn’t help ourselves and snuck in a very abbreviated walk on Saturday before we headed on our New Year’s journey, and it paid off.
We found a penny on the freeway off-ramp. It looks like it had a very bad 2023.
Also, to close out the year, another wheel cover.
Congratulations, Toyota wins the Wheel Cover of the Year Award. We will contact then. They will be thrilled.
And to close out the year, we found not one, but count them, two urine bottles.
We certainly hope this is a fitting salute the end of 2023, and not a harbinger of the year to come.
Sunday/Monday, New Years – Kalaloch Washington
To celebrate the New Year, we typically travel to the west coast of Washington to Kalaloch Lodge in the Olympic National Park. We explore the beach, look for eagles and hope for a nice sunset.
The eagle watching was a bit disappointing this year.
It was raining and overcast and most of the eagles we saw were not cooperating.
The beach was good, and the weather was much warmer than normal.
Kalaloch has its own tree of life.
Long ago, a small stream of water eroded the soil under the tree, but somehow it keeps thriving even though the roots are hanging in the air.
The lodge.
We saw this lady with fishing gear and a baby on her back.
We have never seen anyone fishing on the beach. We asked her if she had ever done this before and she answered, “No.” We wished her luck and went on our way.
We did get a nice sunset.
We have had better ones here, but given the overcast conditions, we were happy to even have one.
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024 – Park-and-Ride
Today is our first walk of the new year. However, we found little of interest. We have been in a two-week lull with no school traffic due to the Winter break and the holiday week. We think things will pick up (literally) this week.
We found no money and no roadkill. We did find some Bose headphones.
Bose noise-cancelling headphones. We couldn’t find any model number on them, but they seem to go for about $250 per pair but these were runover and damaged. Hopefully they weren’t someone’s Christmas gift.
At the park-and-ride, someone tossed two CDs.
When we got home, we listened to a few tracks. The one on the left is Feeling Strangely Fine by a band called Semisonic. According to this article, this album reached 43 on the top fifty charts in 1998. We like their music. On the other hand, the green CD on the right is Ill Communications by the Beastie Boys and didn’t impress us. We think the title says it all.
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024 – Safeway and 100th Ave NE
We picked up quite a bit of trash this morning but did not find any money and no roadkill.
The first thing we found was a license plate near our house.
We tried to find it on a license plate look-up site, but it couldn’t be found. That’s strange because it appears to be registered for the year 2024.
More unopened food but it had been pecked at by a bird.
Janet was eyeing the package. Chuck imagined that she was running through recipes in her mind, but Chuck made sure that it made it into the garbage can.
We found some discarded photos.
So, we tried to determine where these were taken. The breakthrough was the picture in the upper left. There is a sign for Andamooka Hospital. Searching for Andamooka brought up a lot of articles for Andamooka Opals. Andamooka is the location of an Australian opal field. Also, the sign in the photo on the upper left stating that “This is a Woomera Board Managed Facility.” Woomera was established in 1940 to support cold war weapons research. The two sites are about an hour drive apart. We assume the other photos are also from the same trip.
We found two remnants from of the New Year Celebration.
Could the same guy have been wearing both caps? He must have shown up with hat in hand and condom on… Never mind.
Thursday, January 4th, 2024 – 160th to 124th Street
Today we had light rain for our entire walk. We didn’t come across any roadkill but did find some bread.
Okay, the eating kind, not the spending kind. We are still sitting at no money finds so far in 2024.
But we did find a tool today.
A Milwaukee-brand, 1-1/2-inch Forstner drill bit, thirty bucks on Amazon. And, in case we want to drill a bunch of 1.5-inch holes, for another twenty-five bucks we can get three replacement blades for it. Or we’ll just wait and see if some extra blades show up in the gutter sometime.
At the park-and-ride, a couple items of clothing.
A kid’s jacket and a knit hat, both in good condition, headed for Goodwill.
At the continuation of the Tolt Pipeline Trail parking area, we found someone had left some human excrement under a rag.
Happy New Year. Perhaps it’s time to review our why we wear rubber gloves page.
As most are aware, we collect pop tabs from the beverage cans we pick up and every six months we weigh them.
Visit the Pop Tab page for more information. For the last six months, we collected 1.76 pounds which equates to 2,835 pop tabs, each pop tab representing one can that we picked up. By our count, since we started keeping track in 2018, we have picked up 15.61 pounds of pop tabs equating to 25,194 cans. Our litterers really have a can-do attitude.
By the way, we decided to determine number of tabs per pound we are picking up. We weighed out 0.5 pounds of pop tabs and counted out 807 pop tabs which give us 1614 pop tabs per pound. However, while counting the tabs, we found a quarter. Then a nickel. At this point, we decided to sift through all our current stash of three bags, about ten thousand pop tabs with a magnet and found several items that should not have been there including a ring and a couple of tire weights.
We made a correction to our total weight of about a 0.23 pounds. Great, the TrashWalking judges are going to bring in some auditors.
Friday, January 5th, 2024 – 100th Ave NE
This morning we had an early appointment, so we kept our pace up. We found no roadkill but did find our first money of 2024.
Janet was able mine a dime from her favorite drive-thru. Not exactly a sparkling start to the year, but we’ll take it.
Someone left some stuff at the bus stop on Juanita-Woodinville Way.
It looked like some bedding and a scooter. Perhaps someone is setting up a homestead, but the Metro will probably have something to say about it. Since we were on a tight schedule, we let it be and may take care of it later.
Periodically a not very creative, but highly-efficient litterer visits the party store, and purchases a confetti cannon filled with shiny, gold acetate.
The guy has learned how to litter more in seconds than it takes one-hundred cigarette smokers. And it gives us something to do for weeks to come.
Finally, on Simonds Road, a walkie talkie.
It is a Motorola Talkabout; It appeared to be live and tuned into channel 17, but it was silent. Later, we researched the radio, and it is a discontinued model that you can get on eBay for about twenty-two dollars including shipping. We changed it to channel 18 and got some communications between two guys, one going to Costco. So, the device is active, but do we care? We’ll probably send it to Goodwill unless the guy tells us there is a great deal on toilet paper at Costco.
Saturday, January 6th, 2024 – Riverside Drive
Today it rained on our entire walk and as we arrived home, the sun came out. Figures. We encountered our first roadkill of the year, a small rabbit, but we also found money.
A shiny quarter at the park-and-ride. That makes thirty-five cents for the first week of the New Year. We have not had a week this low since mid-November. Not a good start.
On our way down the hill, someone backed into a drain cover and dislodged it.
We’ll need to contact the city and let them know. It’s off to the side and only about two-and-a-half feet deep, so not really a danger to anybody.
There has been some construction going on under the freeway.
Today we found they had cleared all the growth, mainly blackberry bushes, and uncovered a bunch of trash. We picked up the bigger pieces, but there is still a lot laying around. We need to find out what they are doing. They didn’t ask our permission to do this.
Apartment Living. On Woodinville Drive, more trash in front of the apartments.
The two couch sections have been there for several weeks. The dog-poop bag is no surprise, there are always poop bags here. New this week is a vehicle wheel. Some people take no pride in where they live.
Also, in front of the apartments.
A pair of men’s underwear. Your guess is as good as ours. We can guess what was going on in the park-and-ride, but here with about fifty apartments facing you?
On Brickyard Road someone tossed a large plastic object.
With the help of Google, we were able to determine that it is a car CD carrier. It’s no wonder they tossed it. Who uses CDs anymore?
More Apartment Living. Behind a tree in front of the apartments on 112th Ave,
Twenty-two cans to get our pop tab count off to a good start this year.
Finally, someone left us food for a hamburger barbeque.
Hamburger, chopped onions, cheese, and beer, of course. All were unopened. Okay, a critter got into the hamburger, but it’s the thought that counts.
That wraps up our first walk of 2024. Our take:
- 36 Cents, including a penny from last Saturday.
- 15 Mikes Hard Lemonade cans.
- 6 Unopened (mostly) food items.
- 6 Photos from down under.
- 3 Items of clothing including a pair of underwear.
- 2 Balls.
- 2 Urine bottles.
- 2 Audio CDs, one good and one bad, but both playable.
- 1 Roadkill rabbit.
- 1 Tool.
- 1 People poop.
- 1 Radio with lots of static.
- 1 Foreign license plate (Indiana).
Have a great week and remember that old song, 25,000 cans of beer on the wall.
Trash Walking 
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