We Got Needled

Monday, July 1^st, 2024 – Safeway

We are starting off a new week with a new month and our days are [finally] consistently getting warmer into the seventies. We removed another rat and a rabbit from the street and found money.

The quarter was across the street from the 7Eleven, and the penny was in a parking lot. Twenty-six cents is a great start to the week. Sure, unless you want to take the bus, buy a pack of gum or anything else. But we appreciate it.

We found some car parts.

Part of a car body, apparently undamaged with no other shatter-scatter around. It seems to have fallen off. We don’t know what kind of car it was, but it certainly won’t help its J. D. Power ratings.

This was found just around the corner.

A discarded car alternator. It looks old and used, but undamaged. If this also fell off the first car, J. D. Powers will certainly want to hear about it.

We found a kid’s toy kite.

The head/kite part is only about five by seven inches in size. We think this is not a real kite but just a decoration. But we will check if our theory flies or not.

The Bothell City Mowers have been at work attacking the weeds on Norway Hill. At one location, there were bushes out to the edge of the road. The mowers cut them back about twelve feet exposing several cans and, inexplicably, a cheap beach ball tangled in the limbs. Chuck went in to clear out the obvious trash.

He could have gutted the ball and hauled it home to our trash, but we put it in a close-by yard. We’ll see if it ends up back in the street.

As we approached Safeway, a pickup truck with a fishing boat in the back passed by and a plastic bag flew out.

We picked the bag up and saw where it was from.

So, it appears they had a bad fishing trip and wanted to bring home some trophy catches. We want to see the photos.

Tuesday, July 2^nd, 2024 – Park-and-Ride

Today was another pleasant walk. We found no roadkill but found more money.

A very beat-up penny on Juanita-Woodinville Way and another on the freeway overpass.

We found a note on Norway Hill.

The note was in the ditch, so how did that work out for them?

At the bus stop at the freeway entrance, we found a keychain, strawberry weed pipe.

What will they think of next? And what were they smoking? Fun for everyone, the perfect gift for your friends and kids.

This is the first part of July, time to count our pop tabs. See the Pop Tab page.

This is the official photo of the pop tab jar and the tabs on a towel to dry after being washed. This half-year, we picked up 2029 tabs that average about that number of cans bringing our total calculated can count to 27,223 cans since we have been keeping count in mid 2018, about six years. You are welcome.

Wednesday, July 3^rd, 2024 – Safeway & 100^th Ave NE

This morning we removed a very road-killed rat and found yet more money.

Janet made an unscheduled stop at her favorite drive-thru and found a quarter and dime just lying there for the taking. Even better than growing on trees.

Plus, we found a tool.

A Husky-brand utility knife with a wooden handle, not run over and in good working condition, twenty-six bucks on Amazon. We’ll find it a new home or add it to our collection of about ten others we have found.

We found what looked like a handle to something.

We used Google Lens to get a handle on it and found it was not a handle at all, but a bicycle brake pad. We tried, give us a break.

We thought we had found another strawberry weed pipe like yesterday.

But it was a real strawberry. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

This sucks. On 112^th Ave NE, someone dumped yet another sofa.

We went for eight months with two sofas outside the apartments on Woodinville Drive and now we have two dumped on 112^th Ave NE.

We found this at a bus stop on Juanita-Woodinville Way.

We didn’t know what it was, but Google Lens found it immediately. It is a VOXX Singtrix Portable Karaoke controller. They sell a starter system for $400 on Amazon that includes a microphone, speaker, and other minor items to get you singing. We don’t know if it works or not, because it is missing a power supply, but the results are impressive.

Wonder if our church will let us set it up when we try to sing hymns?

Thursday, July 4^th, 2024 – 160^th to 124^th Street

Happy Independence Day! It was a pleasure to walk this morning because of the absence of traffic. We didn’t find any roadkill and found money.

Eagle-eye Janet spotted two pennies in the dirt by the sidewalk and found a dime in a small strip mall parking lot. How good is that?

But it got better because we found a tool, a 10mm socket.

The 10mm socket is the most lost tool in the world and there are even jokes about it like, “Why did the mechanic go to therapy? Because he couldn’t cope with the wrenching feeling of repeatedly losing his 10mm socket.”

Whew, a week wouldn’t feel right without finding a urine bottle.

This one was on the freeway on-ramp. Yes, it is a Gatorade bottle that might contain liquid tinted this color, but the bottle is labelled “Strawberry.”

We picked up a baby’s Cloud B background noise maker that is designed to fit into a plush toy. Sadly, we did not find the plush toy, so we cannot count it as roadkill. So good luck getting the kid to sleep now.

It has some controls to set a timer, 23 or 45 minutes, a power/volume knob and four arrow buttons. Two seem to change the sounds to ocean waves with seagulls and ocean waves with some chimes that may very well have been played by seagulls. We tried to find out what the other two buttons did, but we fell asleep.

Friday, July 5^th, 2024 – 100^th Ave NE

This morning was warmer, and the traffic was a little heavier, but still below normal. We removed two roadkill, a squirrel and a small bird, but we did find more money.

It was a very tarnished nickel found on 100^th Ave NE. On the opposite side, we can barely see the image of Monticello, so it’s a real nickel.

This was one of our longest Friday walks, both in time and distance. Early in our walk, we found someone dumped some stolen mail on 112^th Ave NE.

The mail thieves typically do mail grabs scooping up everything then when they have a bunch, they park somewhere like the 112^th Ave apartments, sorting through the mail separating the junk mail from the personal mail and dumping the junk. That is what we found. It was mostly junk with some personal mail with bills, credit card offers and such. Then they take off to open the “interesting” stuff. We spent a good twenty minutes sorting through the mail and deposited the pure junk mail into a nearby recycle bin.

Later in our walk, we picked up an envelope that had once held a greeting card, and a little later, we found the birthday card in the middle of the street. The address was the same as some of the stolen mail we found earlier. So, the thieves drove this way opening and tossing the personal mail. As usual, we will take the personal mail to the post office to be redelivered.

We found a couple of wheel covers.

They were both run over. The left one was generic, and the second is an aftermarket cover, so we don’t know what lost it. But both were recycled anyway.

Along a stretch of Janita-Woodinville Way, we picked up some baby items.

On the left was a baby inflatable splash pool that someone tossed out. Then a “Mommy’s Mini” onesie was also tossed out. We didn’t find it, but we hope the baby did not get tossed out too.

We mentioned that our walk today was long in “both in time and distance,” The distance was because we walked quite a way up Simonds Road. Instead of our normal six miles, we put in 7.2 miles according to Garmin. And it paid off. We picked up a lot of trash including this.

Another Urine bottle. We should have taken the holiday off.

We saw a bear butt.

No, it’s not a misspelling, it’s a bear butt.

Warning, rant follows. And yes, two weeks in a row.

<RANT>

A few weeks back, we found four-hundred-and-fifty used syringes in a bus stop. After reviewing the requirements, we packed them into five containers, suitably taped up and labeled. Then we spent an inordinate amount of time on the Internet attempting to find out where to deposit them. The problem with websites is, when they are published, they may be accurate, but when the rules change, they need to be updated. The same is for the “phone trees” that provide information. Both supply information which can, at best, be misinformation.

Finally, one day we were determined to find a solution. We landed on an official King County website for hazardous waste. We did a search for syringes, and it indicated they did not accept them. However, going through the website, we found there were four locations in the Puget Sound area that did take them. So, we went to the website for the location closest to us and it indicated it did not accept them. So, we called the contact number and endured an extremely long phone tree. That one told us a different location accepted them. Of course, when we went to that website it said they did not.

Then we decided to go through the phone tree, refusing to be proffered the website diversions to alternate routes through the phone tree and finally reached a human. He told us the first location would accept them. When we pointed out that the website said they did not, he put us on hold and called the site. He said that they were open and would accept two containers per person per day.

We told him that this was ridiculous, and we will just take them back to the bus stop and dump them. [Silence] We told him we were just kidding. Anyway, we took the five containers of needles to the dump location, and they accepted two of the five. So, we have three more to give them, which means two more trips. Unless they change the rules again.

The Seattle area is rife with drug problems and needles, and they give out needles to the drug addicted people to keep them healthy. You would think they would have a more efficient way to get rid of needles that citizens find.

</RANT>

Saturday, July 6^th, 2024 – Riverside Drive

This morning was the warmest of the year at 58°F (14.4°C) and rose eight degrees during our walk. We found some roadkill. A small rabbit and a snake.

A very flat snake. But we also found more money.

Two pennies together in front of the apartments on Woodinville Drive and a quarter on Brickyard Road. This makes the second consecutive week we’ve found money on every walk.

We found another tool.

A Gerber Paraframe Knife, twenty-five dollars on Amazon. A nice one to add to our collection.

We picked up a run-over hat on Riverside Drive.

It is difficult to read, but it is from the Break Even Brewery in Amador City, California. It’s warm here, but in Amador City today, it’s supposed to reach 110°F (43.3°C). The guy who lost this probably came here to cool off.

Another broken pair of glasses.

It must have been a spectacular accident.

We found more stolen mail.

Again, we sorted out the important mail and recycled the rest. Finding two batches of email in one week seems like it is probably the same perps.

Under the freeway we found another urine bottle tossed from above.

Is this taking a pit stop to a higher level?

The cement retaining wall got tagged again.

Not only did they further deface private property, but they littered the empty paint can. A friend once told us that if you “X” over the tag, it cancels it. And we had a spray can that may have had a little paint left. But if we tried it, we would probaby get caught.

On the freeway off-ramp, someone tossed out a CD.

The Best of the Doors, Disc 2 of a 2-CD set. Very playable, too. So, why only toss out the one? We would have picked up both.

Then on the on-ramp we found an air freshener still in the package.

“New Car Scent.” It didn’t smell like a new car to us, but Chuck put it in his vest pocket. The odor was so strong he put it in his recycle bag instead. Now his bag smells like a new car, or at least what someone thinks a new car smells like. We have a friend who just purchased a new car. Next time we ride in it, we’ll tell him it smells like a garbage bag.

Our take this week:

• $1.07.  A good week, not a great week.
• 16 Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans.
• 7 roadkill.
• 3 Tools, including two knives.
• 3 Balls.
• 3 Urine bottles.
• 2 Batches of stolen mail, returned to the post office for another try.
• 1 Strawberry
• 1 Strawberry weed pipe.
• 1 Karaoke box, silent.
• 1 Broken Break Even hat.
• 1 Bear butt.
• 1 Trash bag with a new-car smell.
• 1/2 of the Best of the Doors.

Have a great week and remember, don’t pick up needles in King County.