A Zero Week

Monday, August 19^th, 2024 – Park-and-Ride

This morning was a bit cool with mostly clear skies. Last night, Sunday, was much like this, but a storm cloud moved through producing strong wind gusts then torrential rains. Twenty minutes later, it was mostly clear again. So, this morning we kept an eye out for any approaching clouds, but everything was fine.

We didn’t remove any roadkill and found money.

A slightly run over quarter. Okay, perhaps a slightly more than slightly more run over quarter.

We found the usual number of car parts, but two are worth noting.

We’ve found this brand before, a third-party wheel rim center cap, thirteen bucks on Amazon. They sell these as single units which means a lot of them are lost. Also, an Iota emblem. We haven’t heard of this car before, but it’s obvious they are trying to ride on the coattails of Toyota. Toyota should sue them for infringement.

Evidently, someone’s taking a trip.

It appears that on September twenty-seventh, they are flying to Athens, Greece, then travelling to Mykonos for a few days. Sounds good, though we’ve never been there. On October first, they are flying to Frankfurt, Germany.

Then, on the reverse side of the page, it states, “Find a town near Lohr,” which we assume means Lohr, Germany and not Lohr, France. There are several towns listed as candidates, including Frankfurt which Chuck visited in his early childhood, and Nurenberg and Rottenburg that we both visited a few times. The others are small towns that we do not remember visiting except for Staufen. We once took a family vacation and stayed for a week with our Spanish friends who lived in Kirschzarten, Germany at the time. We took several train day trips, and one was to Staufen.

Anyway, the Greek trip has a big “X” through it, so we don’t know if the whole trip was cancelled or just the first part. Either way, it would have been fun.

Tuesday, August 20^th, 2024 – Park-and-Ride

We had an early errand to run this morning, so we cancelled our walk. We didn’t even get to sleep in past our normal 4:30 AM wake-up time.

Wednesday, August 21^st, 2024 – Safeway & 100th Ave NE

Okay, back on track. Even though we kept our eyes on the ground, we found no money and no roadkill. We did toss half a very ripe banana into the bushes, but that doesn’t count as roadkill. To be roadkill, the killed thing needs to walk into traffic, and we’ve never seen a banana walk.

Okay, taking a banana for a walk is a different story. We’ll check with the TrashWalking judges to see if this could count as roadkill. It’s possible.

The first thing we found on our walk this morning was evidence of a car break-in.

The perpetrators were gone, and the car was gone, but the glass remained behind. Unfortunately, the glass claimed it saw nothing. It was clearly lying, in both senses of the word.

We did find a hat on 100^th Ave NE.

We are not big basketball fans, but from the Internet, the Laker’s made it to the playoffs but lost in the first round. Probably why we found the tossed cap.

This seems to happen to us every year. We are walking down the street, minding our own business when we start getting pelted with pinecones by a squirrel.

The squirrels strip pinecones at an impressive rate to have them fall to the ground to either be harvested of seeds or stashed as whole pinecones as food storage containers. IKEA could learn a thing or two from squirrels.

Nearing home, we found yet another empty mouthwash bottle.

This is mint-flavored, and 21.6% alcohol (43 proof) used by kids for the alcohol content. “I’ll have a Mint Julep, gargled, not stirred.”

Thursday, August 22^nd, 2024 – 160th to 124th Street

This morning started out overcast and cool. Throughout our walk, the rain kept threatening, but never materialized in force. And neither did the money.

We picked up a penny on Juanita-Woodinville Way with a bonus street sweeper bristle. Then another penny along the construction area. We were really depressed with two pennies, but as we approached home, we found a dime, so we had twelve cents. And we were still depressed.

Alone Juanita-Woodinville Way, someone tossed a jar of cannabis.

The seal was broken, but it looked to be full. We checked it out, online, not physically.

Whoa! Sixty-three bucks a jar. It must really be good for the person to accidentally toss it out the window. This could be their next marketing campaign.

We thought this was going to be a normal Thursday Walk, but we ran into a problem on the I-405 southbound off-ramp. We picked up a piece of aluminum flashing about twelve feet long and folded it up using both hands and feet into something that would, though heavy, fit into our recycle bag. Then as we turned to walk back to the intersection, we found a second one and proceeded to do the same with it. Now the recycle bag was very heavy.

But wait, there’s more. At the intersection, a lot of cardboard was run over, and we gathered it up and stuffed that into the garbage bag.

Having two heavy bags, we detoured across to the park-and-ride and deposited the cardboard into the trash can and left the aluminum for retrieval when we returned with our car. We were now way behind our normal schedule and took a shortcut home, bypassing the Norway Hill summit.

Friday, August 23^rd, 2024 – 100th Ave NE

This morning was much like yesterday except we did get a few sprinkles, but not bad. Given the abysmal money week we’re having, we were hoping for an up-tick today, but, alas, there was a down-tick. We have dealt with ticks in the past and they are generally bad news. The burrowing kind, not the clock kind.

Yesterday, it was twelve cents. Today eleven. Definitely a bad tick.

Even though our Friday walks are slowed by the construction on 100^th Ave NE, they are normally reasonably fast. But, like yesterday, we were slowed by a limb that fell across 112^th Ave NE overnight.

We spent some time clearing most of the branches off to the side of the road.

Under some bushes on Juanita-Woodinville Way, we found a cover for an Apple or Android tablet.

It was waterlogged and we discussed whether it was worth drying out and sending to Goodwill. We ended up leaving it at a covered bus stop to see if anyone wanted it. If it’s still there on our next pass, we’ll deal with it. We’ll probably find it tossed under another bush.

At the bus stop near Safeway, we found someone had left a pair of socks and a small bag with trash in it even though there is a trash receptacle about eight feet away. The bag is from Madison House, a local memory care facility. That explains it.

On our way back over Norway Hill, we started to find small bits of thin plastic.

It was the legend for a map of California. Based on the scale, the full map would be three feet tall. If they wanted to keep all the states at the same scale, the map of Rhode Island would be two inches tall. Anyway, we continued up the hill picking up pieces of California.

Saturday, August 24^th, 2024 – Riverside Drive

Today was cold, a little breezy and very wet. For the first time this “Summer,” we pulled out our rain jackets. We did find some money, though.

It was on the side of the road on Woodinville Drive. This, with the quarter on Monday and twenty-three cents in-between, it made for a sparse money week, the fourth week in a row with mediocre money. At this rate, we’ll nver be able to retire.

We picked up a tool today, the first of the week.

A pair of run over nail clippers. When we presented it to the TrashWalking judges, we only received an eyeroll. So, no tools this week.

Near the bottom of the hill toward Riverside Drive, we saw something in the mud. We pulled it out to find it was a set of keys with a ball-point pen.

When we examined it closer, it was not a pen, but Kubotan Self Defense Keychain. It looks painful. The keys had been there a while and there is no identification, so they will go into our key jar.

We found breakfast.

Half a water bottle full of blackberries, handpicked, and a Chuck’s Nitro, cold-brew coffee. And on the coldest morning of Summer.

This is the second time we’ve seen this has happen here.

A house on Riverside Drive has a very narrow space between the ditch and the road to place their trash bins and someone thinks it’s funny to knock them into the ditch. They weren’t just tipped into the ditch, it’s more like a car had hit them. We pulled the cans out then gathered all the trash from the ditch and into the cans. We could have left them, but we were already wet and, besides, we don’t know if the owners wouldn’t just leave the trash in the ditch.

Someone had a bad fishing trip and dumped his “expensive” equipment at the park-and-ride.

Trout bait, four floats and a fishing line bell. With this equipment, the fish were under the water laughing at him. We can’t blame them, he didn’t have any hooks and the fish were taking the bait. They would have liked to hear the bell ring, though.

We came across a nice pair of shoes.

They’re not Janet’s style and not Chuck’s size, so off to Goodwill with them.

That wraps up the short TrashWalking week. Our take,

• 73 Cents.  We’ve been at this level for four weeks now.
• 2 Articles of clothing including  some unstylish, unfitting shoes.
• 1 Cancelled trip to Greece and/or Germany, maybe.
• 1 Pet banana on a leash.
• 1 Lying, lying glass.
• 1 Pelting squirrel.
• 1 Jar of expensive cannabis.
• 1 Fallen branch.
• 1 California map legend.
• 1 Set of lethal keys.
• 1 Cold breakfast.
• 0 Balls.
• 0 Roadkill.
• 0 Tools.

This was a weird week. In our memory, it was the first time we have had no roadkill, no balls and no tools in a single week. Compare it to last week where we had an extrordinary week of 15 Balls, 11 Roadkill, and 7 Tools.

Have a great week and don’t let anybody tell you that run over nail clippers are not tools, dammit.