We Got a Hand!

Monday, June 17^th, 2024 – Safeway

We started our week out well with no roadkill, a little rain and some money, about as good as it gets this time of year.

Yes, another dime, and if you followed last week, Chuck is getting a little nervous. We also found a tool.

Actually, two tools. Two small replacement paint rollers. Normally, we would expect push- back from the TrashWalking judges who returned from their vacation last week, but they are suffering jet lag and dozed during the hearing. We’ll take it.

It looks yummy, but not for breakfast.

A tub of olives, mushrooms and other tidbits in oil, but it wouldn’t go with our scrambled eggs. Thanks anyway.

Behind some electrical boxes on Juanita-Woodinville Way, we found another dumped box of items.

A storage box filled with several items including cooking utensils, clothing, oil and a hedge trimmer. Yet another tool find, and one that the judges can’t argue with even if they did wake up. It was more than we could carry, so we left it. We may come back with the car to retrieve it, but hopefully someone else will get interested.

And, the highlight of the week so far, a celebrity guest appearance.

The return of the McLitterers. They were very prolific litterers early in our walks, and, though we have not kept an accurate count, we have picked up well over fifty of their McDonalds bags. They always have the same trash. Two clean trays used for pancakes or waffles, unopened packages of plastic utensils, unopened condiments (butter, syrup, salt and pepper) and two cups with matching used tea bags. The difference now is that McDonalds has quit giving out heavy white plastic bags shown below.

The more recent ones are now paper, which is fine with us. We still have a drawer full of plastic McDonalds bags.

Tuesday, June 18^th, 2024 – Park-and-Ride

We found neither money nor roadkill today, but we did find a tool.

An 18-inch pry bar six bucks at Harbor Freight. When we got home, we noticed the handle of Chuck’s picker was very dirty as was his glove. We traced the source to the handle of this tool. We gave it a good scrubbing, and it looks ok, but we’ll keep it away from prying eyes.

At a bus stop on Juanita-Woodinville Way, we often pick up rubber gloves discarded by a rider. Today we picked a glove out of the bushes and saw a box of rice down a bank.

We worked to retrieve it and found it was a 4.5-pound unopened box of Minute rice. We understand why the person who threw it did so. It’s supposed to be minute rice, but it takes five minutes to cook. False advertising.

We did a good deed today. We have been passing a fenced lot near the freeway with a can just out of reach of our pickers.

Then, they mowed the area and left all the trash visible. We decided to go around the fence and clean up the area.

It took about twenty minutes to clean up the bulk of the trash including that annoying can. You’re welcome.

At the park-and-ride, we found another earring.

A Kokopelli earring. Too bad, he probably looks silly with only one.

Wednesday, June 19^th, 2024 – Safeway & 100^th Ave NE

This morning was perfect weather for our walk. We didn’t find any money but did find a gift card.

It has $7.99 left on it which is a big score for us. However, gift cards do not count as found money, so our money total today remains at zero.

However, we found tools.

First, a Titan Straps tie-down strap, a pair of rusty wire strippers and a bicycle multitool by Crank Brothers, thirty-two bucks on Amazon, but today’s money total still remains at zero.

We also picked up two unused condoms.

They look to have been run over and one was out of the package. The expiration date on the packages is May, 2009.

Evidently the guy got tired of waiting and tossed them.

Thursday, June 20^th, 2024 – 160^th to 124^th Street

Today is the Summer Solstice, the beginning of Summer and the mornings are warming up into the low fifties. Of course, it also means the days start getting shorter meaning we are headed toward the cold winter. We found no roadkill but did find some money.

We thought it was a penny because it was tarnished, but it was yet another evil dime.

We scored a pair of “voetbal” shorts.

Here we would call it soccer, but in the Netherlands, it is “voetbal.” Yes, it is close to the European “football” for soccer, but real football players don’t wear shorts as uniforms.

A cracked crack pipe.

We have found several of these over the years, mostly broken like this, but some whole. They are in the drug section of our TrashWalking Museum.

We thought we had found some CDs, but it was only the case.

It was Neil Diamond’s double CD album of his In the Round Tour, 1991-1993. We attended one of his concerts in December of 1979. At the time, we lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho and drove 200 miles to Salt Lake City to attend the concert, and we would do it again. Too bad there were no CDs.

In the park-and-ride, more condoms.

One used and two unopened. We’d like to know the story here. We assume these are newer than the ones we found yesterday. If so, these have an expiration date of 2028 which implies that the expiration date is about five years. That means the guy yesterday purchased the condoms around 2004, twenty years ago. You have to appreciate his patience.

Friday, June 21^st, 2024 – 100^th Ave NE

It was even warmer today, so we were dressed in our summer gear, which was still too much, but we do need to guard against berry bushes. Again, we found no roadkill and did find some money.

A quarter and a dime at Janet’s favorite drive-thru.

As we left our neighborhood, someone had put up several signs celebrating Pride Month. There was a tall lost-cat sign along with several pride signs.

Today, some of the pride signs were gone and the cat sign was down. A new sign appeared. We are not sure if the new Vandalizing sign is because of the pride signs or the cat sign.

At the apartments on 112^th Ave NE, another sofa was abandoned.

That makes three sofas on our routes now. Two on Riverside Drive and this one. We’ll see how long this one remains.

It looks like someone got kicked out of their room.

A bunch of bedding, women’s clothes and other random items including a golf club. But why here at the bus stop? Why not at Goodwill just down the street? Another TrashWalking mystery. We did not have the means to deal with it, so we will leave it to the Metro guys.

Someone lost their monitor on Simonds Road.

The screen was fractured in the center, so it was not in working condition and useless.

But this would come in handy.

We had fun with it on the rest of our walk using it to wave to folks. We approached a school bus stop on Norway Hill with students and one of the kid’s dad. We have talked to him several times. This time, he was talking to his daughter with his back was to us. We came up behind him and asked if we could give him a hand. They got a kick out of it and so did we.

Remember the One-Armed Man from the movie, “The Fugitive?”

Well, we’re looking for the One-Armed-“Man-nequin.”

Saturday, June 23^rd, 2024 – Riverside Drive

It was a little cooler this morning with no rain, which was fine with us, and we found more money.

A shiny quarter at the park-and-ride. We thought we had found more money.

But it was just another fake movie prop. And only a fifty-dollar fake movie prop at that.

We did find a tool, of sorts.

A pivoting quick-connect coupler for a pressure washer. Twenty-one bucks on Amazon.

Two years ago, Bothell did some drainage work on the road down the hill toward Riverside Drive. They installed some large aluminum drains.

Then, a few months later, someone missed the turn and destroyed the drain.

It was a safety concern, so we reported it to the police. The city promptly installed a new one. A few months later, we noticed that someone had run over it again, hopefully not the same person, and broke out a couple of fins, but the drain was still functional. Today, we found that it had again been destroyed.

It might be cheaper for the city to move the drain rather than to keep replacing the aluminum caps.

In the Bothell parking lot, someone left their car overnight and left a note on the windshield.

This guy is really mad at Audi. He should cool off.

The Riverside sofas are gone. Eight months ago, two sofas appeared in front of the apartments.

Today, they were gone.

Perhaps someone moved from the Riverside apartments to the 112^th Ave NE apartments, took them with him and had room for only one in his new home?

Brickyard Road is a long hill, and we routinely find balls at the bottom that got loose.

This one did not quite make it down and got caught by a twig. Nice clean tennis ball, though.

We picked up another urine bottle on the freeway onramp.

At the bottom of the Tolt Pipeline we found more condoms, but we didn’t check the expiration date.

And after the county put up the “no dumping, no camping, no RV camping, no parking” sign.

Well, they didn’t explicitly prohibit that activity.

That wraps up another TrashWalking week. Our take this week,

• 80 Cents, and a fake fifty.
• Zero roadkill.
• 8 Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans.
• 8 Tools, even without Zeke’s help.
• 7 Articles of clothing.
• 5 condoms, 3 unopened, two from a very patient person.
• 4.5 Pounds of rice.
• 3 Balls, including one stuck on a hill.
• 1 McLitterer McMess.
• 1 Earring.
• 1 Eight-dollar gift card.
• 1 Neil Diamond CD case, no CDs.
• 1 Sofa.
• 1 Re-busted drain.
• 1 Urine bottle.
• 1 Arm that comes in handy.

Have a great week and remember, “If the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy” – Red Green.