Monday and Tuesday, August 5th and 6th, 2024 – Spokane, WA.
Yes, we started out the week out of town in Spokane, Washington to visit family. We took a few short walks but were not intending to pick up any trash. In the end, we picked up a few items and put them in nearby bins. The only thing we brought back was a lost tire weight. But it was a genuinely nice one if you are into tire weights.
Wednesday, August 7th, 2024 – Safeway & 100th Ave NE
It felt good to be back into our routine and pick up with our normal Safeway route. We found some small change.
Exceedingly small change, three cents. One was in a parking lot, one in Janet’s favorite drive-thru and one in the crosswalk of a busy intersection. This week’s contest: Guess which one was in the crosswalk. The first right answer wins a matched set of five Mike’s Hard Lemonade can pop tabs.
Outside the KinderCare, we found a modest discarded doll.
We tossed her back over the fence, fig leaf and all, and no, we did not peek. Well, maybe a little.
Another urine bottle.
It was very pale, so the person may be very hydrated, which could explain why he needed to use the bottle, but not why it was only about a quarter full. Maybe he has a small bladder.
While we were out of town, we had a visit from some old friends.
Well not exactly friends, more like old nemeses, the McLitterers. In the past, we’ve found over fifty of these McDonalds’ messes. They always contain the same thing: Two clean platters like for pancakes, two tea cups and tea bags, and unopened utensils and condiments. We used to find these in white plastic bags two or three times a week. Now we find them every couple of months and in paper bags since McDonalds quit using plastic.
A couple of weeks ago, we found a discarded gift card along Juanita-Woodinville Way.
We find a lot of these and always check if any credit is left on them, but in this case, they wanted a zip code to check the balance and ours wasn’t accepted. So, tentatively we used it for a 99-cent purchase in the self-checkout line at Safeway, and it worked. Over the last two weeks, we used it periodically and tracked the expenditures. Today, it ran out. The total was twenty dollars and twenty-three cents. Score! However, we do not count gift cards, either given to us or found by us as found money. So, our weekly intake so far remains at three cents. We need to start a GoFundMe page.
Someone tossed a quarter bag of artificial sugar.
When we got home, we saw there was a single ant in the bag. We listened closely and in a small, squeaky voice, we heard, “Team, this is Explorer 12, do not follow, repeat, do not follow! This stuff is fake! Pull me out now guys. Guys? Guys?”
Thursday, August 8th, 2024 – 160th to 124th Street
This morning was very warm and humid at 63°F (17.2°C) and 90% relative humidity. Yes, we feel the eye-rolls from the east coast, but we are Seattle Snowflakes, we are not used to this.
We finally found some significant money today.
We picked up a quarter on the freeway on-ramp and another penny at the 7Eleven. Yes, not a huge find, but a lot better than three cents.
We came to a spoon in the road.
When we find a fork in the road, its direction is obvious, but with a spoon, it is just pointless.
We removed a crow from the on-ramp where we found the quarter. We saw the quarter a little into the travel lane and waited for the traffic making a left-hand turn onto the ramp to pass by. As we watched, a crow flew up over the cement barrier and into the side of a car.
It attempted to fly over the car but encountered the large carrier on top. In the left photo, you can see it falling to the pavement in the travel lane. The car was the last one turning and the crow fell into the lane, fluttered a bit, and sat quietly. We went to the bird and used our picker to gently pull it out of the lane to the side of the ramp then went back to retrieve the quarter. When we got back to the crow, it was either comatose or it had broken its neck and had expired. We dropped it over the barrier into the bushes. We assume it was dead, but if it awakes, it is in a safe location.
Friday, August 9th, 2024 – 100th Ave NE
It was warmer and humid this morning and was getting uncomfortable toward the end of our walk, but we found change scattered along our walk.
The top-center quarter was the first find sitting on the curb across from Safeway. We put our bags down and snapped the photo. When we picked up the bags, we discovered a penny under the bag. Sloppy work on our part. The penny on the right was found in the 100th Ave work zone and the coins in the bottom at Janet’s favorite drive thru.
We also picked up a couple of tools.
A very run over box cutter and a not run over pair of lineman’s pliers.
We picked up what could be construed as another tool, a flashlight.
We didn’t know what it was at first, but Google Lens found it. It was QuioliteX light designed to clip on your pocket, so you don’t need to carry a flashlight.
It sounds like a clever idea. This one was taped together and caked with dirt, but after rinsing it off and charging it up, it worked! In fact, too well. It won’t turn off. We can cycle through several modes including a strobe mode that flashes blue and white, but it will not turn off. Examining their website, this one is an old model, but evidently a very persistent one.
Well, this is different.
We have found over fifty hats of different shapes and styles, but never one like this. We found it online. It’s a hat with a “red and black buffalo check pattern often associated with train engineers and workers.” We seldom see any trains travelling down Juanita-Woodinville Way, though.
In the middle of the construction on 100th Ave NE, we saw a run over sunglasses box and about twenty feet away, the sunglasses.
The box was in bad shape, but the sunglasses were in perfect condition.
The brand is Maui Jim which we were unfamiliar with, but we found these on Amazon.
Woof! Expensive sunglasses.
We pick up a lot of car parts, mostly broken plastic.
Today we picked up a metal trim piece in decent shape. We carried it for a mile past Safeway and left it in a dumpster. Later, we used Google Lens to see if it could find a match, and it did.
We should have hung onto it, at least longer than the Mercedes did.
Saturday, August 10th, 2024 – Riverside Drive
This was supposed to be another warm day, but a marine layer had moved in, and we had a slight breeze, so the walk was comfortable. We removed a roadkill rat from the street but did not find any money. Based on the money we found in the last two days, we expected more today, but instead we got snookered. We did find some tools, though.
The first item was a hammer tacker, $28 at Home Depot. Unfortunately, it was very hammered and ended up in the recycle bin. Then a 3/8th-7/16th-inch open end wrench in particularly good condition, a kitchen knife missing the handle, and a discarded 25-foot tape measure. We don’t understand why someone tossed the tape measure; you can still measure things with it. It’s a little unwieldy to roll up, but when you need it again, it unrolls itself.
Another Toyota wheel cover on the freeway on-ramp.
It was in good condition, but Goodwill won’t take them. The Internet had several ideas for them including using it as a bird bath, a mirror or clock frame, a planter, or recycling it. We selected the latter. If we made bird baths out of all the wheel covers we find, we could become a very hygienic rookery.
A refrigerator magnet.
Great. The Cat Woman has gone P.C.
For the second week in a row, we found bridesmaid apparel.
Guess all those June weddings are wearing a bit thin.
We picked up a fouFIT pacifier latex toy for dogs.
With the noise it makes, it certainly would not be pacifying to us. That’s probably why it got tossed.
That wraps up a shortened TrashWalking week. Our take,
- 73 Cents. Not too bad for a short week.
- 8 Mike’s Hard Lemonade cans.
- 6 Tools including an unwieldy tape measure.
- 3 Articles of clothing including a fig leaf.
- 3 Roadkill including a dying crow.
- 1 Ball.
- 1 Urine bottle.
- 1 Abandoned ant.
- 1 Persistent light.
- 1 Pair of expensive shades.
- 1 Surprise gift card.
- 1 Bashful doll.
- 1 Dog toy whoopy cushion.
Have a great week and remember, don’t count your crows before they die.
Trash Walking 