Lost in Translation?

Monday, February 5^th, 2024 – Safeway

This morning was a bit colder with some light rain throughout our walk. We found no roadkill but did find some money.

One thin penny. Normally, we would call a dime thin like in “Little Egypt.”

But in this case, it was a thin penny. There are some rare minting errors that cause thin coins, but the theory is that most are caused by nitric acid.

Too bad, we would love it to be worth like one billion dollars. It would really help our hourly wage. And what kind of sicko would raise our hopes by tossing a thin penny in front of us?

As we left our neighborhood on 112th Ave, we found a mess in front of the apartments.

We cleaned it up as best we could and put it across the street so we could pick it up later. Why do people break the bottles? Folks walk their dogs along here.

We found a tool.

A nice pair of needle-nose pliers, but they were left where someone had been working. It was tempting, but we left them. For now.

A lost receipt for some cupcakes.

$222 for 20 cupcakes? Thats over eleven dollars per cupcake. Much higher than our TrashWalking hourly wage. ”Boy, those are some expensive cupcakes, they must be hard to sell.” ”Yeah, but we only need to sell a few.”

Another lost license plate.

This was just lying by the side of the road. According to the Internet, it belongs to a 2000 Honda CR-V EX and the tags expired a year and a half ago. So, unless they want to drive around with no license plate, they will need to pay for a new plate and their registration too.

At the park-and-ride, we found several of these small plastic items.

These are tar filters for cigarette smokers. From their website,

Compact and Convenient – Simply “use and toss.” Just great.

Tuesday, February 6^th, 2024 – Park-and-Ride

Another rainy day with no money and no roadkill, but we did find another tool.

And Chuck knew exactly what it was, a spark plug gap gauge. It sells for three dollars on the AutoZone site. We already have about four other sets that we have not used in years. But now we have five sets to not use.

We found half of a spiked dog collar.

We got on the Internet, googled spiked dog collar, and found this.

Uh, probably not.

We picked up a rare pair of lost shoes on the freeway overpass.

Unfortunately, since they were on the freeway overpass, they were not in good shape and no longer suitable for Goodwill.

Someone changed their motor oil in the park-and-ride.

So, who can afford to buy motor oil from a Mercedes-Benz dealer, but must go to the park-and-ride to change it? The bottles were full of the used oil, so we left it for the crew that gets paid to remove it.

Wednesday, February 7^th, 2024 – Safeway & 100^th Ave NE

Today was cool and dry. We removed a roadkill frog from the street. It could have been a salamander, it’s hard to tell when they take a direct hit. We also found some money.

Janet found it during her Wednesday trip to her favorite drive thru. Better than nothing, but not much better.

We found a cloth bag with a pull-string for closing it.

It had the brand name LOTUS and we were able to track it down as a produce shopping bag, and there are a lot of them on Amazon. The reason appears to be that California banned plastic produce bags.

At the bus stop on Juanita-Woodinville Way, someone left a Goodwill shopping bag and some other trash.

But we didn’t know they sold these at Goodwill.

After going months without finding needles, we’ve found one each week for three weeks in a row.

Thursday, February 8^th, 2024 – 160^th to 124^th Street

We found no money and no roadkill today but did find two used condoms, one close to our home.

We thought we heard some commotion last night.

A whole pair of sunglasses.

Well, all the parts are there anyway.

On the freeway onramp, someone lost a hubcap.

We also found a few of the fake lug nuts. It’s strange that wheel covers were initially meant to hide things like grease caps and lug nuts. Now they make them with fake lug nuts. No doubt next will come the fake grease caps too.

Friday, February 9^th, 2024 – 100^th Ave NE

This morning was cool and dry, and we found no roadkill but did find money. Under protest, we’ll rephrase that. Janet found the money.

At the gas station where people vacuum out their cars, she found a dime. Then at her favorite drive-thru, she found a quarter, two dimes and eight pennies. Later on, NE 145^th St, she found another quarter. That makes a total of eighty-eight cents. 

Janet could have acquired more. In the crevasse at the drive-thru, she saw a dime and a quarter.

She got the dime, but when she tried for the quarter, it slipped away. She was in a foul mood the rest of the day. Did we mention that Chuck found none?

Another urine bottle next to 7Eleven.

Really people? They have restrooms in 7Eleven. ”Hey clerk, where is the bottled water? I need to pee bad.”

Good grief, yet another used condom.

Is it the cold weather and people trying to keep warm?

And another rubber.

That is, a rubber duck. This is the tenth we’ve found, all different and all from the same factory in China. They are sold at the Dollar Tree and must be very popular based on the number we find.

Someone lost their pills.

The bag and prescription were nearby. We contacted the person, and he said it wasn’t his. After some discussion he said it was from a pharmacy he has not used in a long time. Sure enough, we checked the prescription date, 7/26/2022. Why it would suddenly surface almost two years later is another TrashWalking mystery.

Well, this is sad.

People throwing away a perfectly good kangaroo.

Saturday, February 10^th, 2024 – Riverside Drive

This morning was dry and colder. When we left the house, it was 35°F (1.7°C) and by the time the sun rose, it had dropped to 32°F (0°C) and we were seeing bits of ice on some of the trash we picked up. We removed a roadkill rabbit from the street and found some more money.

A dime on the freeway onramp and a penny in the gutter along Juanita-Woodinville Way. They were both found by Chuck making partial amends for his miserable showing this week.

We also picked up some more tools.

A utility knife and a universal socket extension. The knife is labelled Fixwel Rostfrei Germany. Rostfrei means stainless in German. There is a company Fixwell with two L’s that seems to be legitimate, so this knife may be a knock-off. It still counts as a tool, though.

Yet another used condom.

And TWO more urine bottles. 

Do you judge a guy by the size of his urine bottle?

Someone has a smoking problem.

This was in one driveway on Riverside Drive. Three empty cigarette packages and a whole bunch of butts. We picked them up, but if the butthead does it again, we’re leaving them.

We pulled a University of Washington Husky blanket from a ditch.

It was stuck together with some substance, so we decided to bag and dispose of it. Normally we would wash it and put it on our Goodwill pile. However, we have seen some pretty disgusting “stuff” on towels and blankets and didn’t want to deal with it.

We found several items of apparel today.

A nice pair of Fox Racing Dirtpaw gloves, another single glove and sock, and another sock that does not match the first one. Also, three hats.

A knit cap and a wool beanie and what looks to be a fishing hat. Under the brim is “DAY TO HAVE A DAY.” We have no idea what that means.

We found the only unopened food of the week.

An OMG! Caffeine-Free Kefir Soda. OMG stands for orange, mango, and ginger. It was unopened but leaking. Also, a Sashimi combo with salmon and tuna slices, fifteen dollars. We opened it to dump the contents and it reeked. The date on the package was nine days ago, so it deserved to reek.

We found another audio CD.

We cleaned it up and listened to parts of five of the seven tracks, the other two were unplayable which is fine because the music is not our cup of tea. However, we wanted to get more information, so we fed the title, “Az Khoda Khasteh” to Google Translate:

Well, that wasn’t very helpful, but wait, it detected Bulgarian, but the tracks appear to be Persian. So, we decided to manually change it to Persian.

That is even less helpful. But it showed us something in Persian that we couldn’t read, and asked if that is what we meant. So, what the heck, go for it.

We don’t think they would make a CD with that title. We finally got smart and looked the album up online and found the title in Persian. Then we fed that into the Google translator:

That makes more sense.

With that, we wrap up our TrashWalking week. Our take,

• $1.03.  This is the most we’ve made in a week since late December.
• 13 Mikes Hard Lemonade cans.
• 7 Articles of clothing.
• 5 Quarts of expensive used motor oil.
• 4 Condoms, used.
• 4 Tools.
• 3 Urine bottles.
• 2 Roadkill.
• 2 Unopened food containers, one leaking and one reeking.
• 1 Ball.
• 1 Expired license plate.
• 1 Spiked collar.
• 1 Rubber duckie.
• 1 Sad kangaroo.
• 1 Untranslatable CD

Have a great week and remember a day to have a day.