Author: Chuckb

Monday, October 14^th, 2024 – Safeway

Today certainly started out more interesting than last week. The weather was dry, and the temperature was comfortable, and we found money.

As we turned onto Juanita-Woodinville Way, we acquired a dime, then at the drive-thru, two more pennies for a total of twelve cents. You may recall last week we didn’t find any money until Friday, so this is like a real head start.

That was the upside. On the downside, we were about halfway to the 7Eleven when we heard an owl hoot really close to us, within twenty or thirty feet. We stopped and it hooted again then went silent. Then, about a hundred feet farther along, we found a roadkill.

A large owl. This is only the third owl we have found in our almost ten years of walking. We assumed that the first owl we heard was this one’s mate and was in mourning. According to the Internet, owls do mate for life but if one dies, they tend to find a new mate. So, there is hope for the owl. The mourning one, not this one.

Someone lost a life vest.

It was in good shape and sized for a four-year-old child. It was bulky, but easy to carry, so we hauled it home and put it in our Goodwill pile.

We also found a rabbit scut.

Rabbits do not shed their tails, but if a predator is chasing a rabbit, what will be the closest thing to grab? We’ve haven’t found any rabbit noses.

So, this is a first for us.

A urine cup. There is “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” Now it’s “Cups to bladders and bladders to cups.” Makes sense.

We picked up a product tag behind the Party Store.

“I’ll have one bag of horror please. With Jalapeños.” Hot Horrors. Look that up on YouTube. Nothing you would find at the Party Store.

At the bus stop by Safeway someone left a grocery cart, and we walked it back to the parking lot. As we were exiting the Safeway driveway, a driver pulled up and stopped.

He told us he can set his watch by us and that he told his wife that we are “Bad Asses” and awesome. We thanked him and went on our way. First, we were the “TrashWalkers”, then a few weeks ago we became the “Collectors,” and now the “Bad Asses.” We’re getting a Multiple-Personality Disorder. Okay, it seems now to be called the Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), but we like MPD better. Really, who, when hearing the term would have the vaguest idea what Dissociative Identity Disorder means.

At the top of the Tolt Pipeline, a U-Haul van was idling.

We had no idea why it was there but went about our normal activities of walking down to the gate looking for any trash or poop bags. As we passed the van, we picked up a candy wrapper then saw a milk carton and tried to pick it up with our pickers, but it was full. We started to stoop down to pick it up when the van door opened and a guy said, “That’s mine, I put it out to cool down.” We apologized and started to walk away, but he asked if we could hand it to him. Uh, sure. He wished us a nice day.

Tuesday, October 15^th, 2024 – Park-and-Ride

Today was cooler with no rain. We didn’t find any money, but we did find this coin.

“100 Days of School.” Is this a reward to students when they attend school for 100 days? The normal school year is about 180 days but maybe 100 days is the number required to matriculate to the next grade. “Good work, kid, here’s a worthless coin. Take the rest of the year off including holidays and weekends.”

We picked up a couple of items of clothing today.

A very small Puma vest, either for a kid or petite woman, and an extra-large Nike hoodie. Here we are again, baby bear- and pappa bear-size, but not a mamma bear size. Off to Goodwill with them.

We picked up a Hoonigan All-Access card. We looked up Hoonigan and found it was an auto parts company that is highly aligned to racing. An All-Access card might be worth something.

Then we read that the company filed for bankruptcy with a 1.25-billion-dollar debt. We found that the card was only a five-dollar air freshener. And we didn’t even get the chain for it.

Meanwhile, at the park-and-ride some guy tried to impress his girlfriend with his selection of color-coordinated microfiber cloths.

Then he ruined the moment with a yellow condom. Okay, it kind of matches the leaves with their fall colors but we have no idea if this impressed her. Or if he did.

Wednesday, October 16^th, 2024 – Safeway & 100th

Today Janet crossed the Safeway parking lot to check out her favorite drive-thru. The drive-thru was a bust, but she picked up a penny in the Safeway parking lot.

We’ll take it and did.

We picked up another wheel cover.

It was in bad condition. Normally wheel covers are easy to pick up but hard to carry. This one was hard to pick up but easy to carry.

We found a Washington Department of Transportation plans for landscaping a section of road. It was a booklet of about fifteen, 11×17-inch pages of landscaping details including the specific plants and how to plant them.

Now, if they only paid this much attention to the road construction projects and the maintenance of the traffic signals…

We have written about these containers before. They are a good idea, but people take it an excuse to just dump anything nearby. Case in point: someone dumped some used fluorescent light fixtures.

Okay, wait. From this angle, it says “Trash Dumping.” That explains it.

Thursday, October 17^th, 2024 – 160th to 124th Street

Today, we didn’t come across any roadkill but found some cabbage.

Yeah, the vegetable kind, not the money kind.

Today’s route takes us down 116^th Ave NE to the Tolt Pipeline Trail then we cross over to walk back, Chuck going down into the ditch and Janet walking along the street. Today, there was a car parked where Chuck descends into the ditch and he walked by it, picked up a candy wrapper and continued on. A short while later, someone yelled, “Don’t shine flashlights into people’s cars. Don’t do it again.” Surprised, Chuck answered that he wouldn’t. Our flashlights are bright, and we probably woke the guy up. Janet asked what the guy said, and Chuck repeated it. A minute or so later, the guy showed up again and accused us of being car prowlers and said he was going to report us.

We continued back to our car to sort out the recycling and the trash. The guy showed up again across the street in his car, then drove across to light us up. We decided that the best course of action was to ignore him and continued on our walk. He trailed us in his car to the corner then turned and disappeared. We got his license number, and we assumed he got ours. Here is a video of the incident.

For the rest of our walk, we kept waiting for the SWAT team to swoop in on us. When we got home, we got our passports out just in case. Great, we are also the “Car Prowlers.”

Friday, October 18^th, 2024 – 100th Ave NE

Today, we found some real money, not just vegetable money.

Okay, it was only a penny. A vegetable would have been worth more.

As we left the house this morning, we picked up another BirdieBall in our yard.

These are supposed to be a training aid that does not go far but indicates whether the golfer has a tendency to slice or hook. If we found it in our yard, the guy has a mean hook. Or slice. We don’t know where it came from.

We found a Toyota hub cap hiding behind a streetlight trying not to be seen.

If it were in bad condition, we would recycle it. But this one was in good condition. We recycled it but felt bad about it.

Now, here’s something we can use.

A partially used package of cleaning wipes. Ordinarily, we would shy away from anything that was previously opened, but we figure that antiseptic wipes are a safe bet.

A nameless cap.

Not really nameless, it had a logo, but Google Lens was not able to determine what it was.

Perhaps it is a stylized CA? It’s a mystery.

Saturday, October 19^th, 2024 – Riverside Drive

We didn’t check, but today’s walk may be a speed record for Saturdays, our longest route of the week at about seven-and-a-half miles. It was windy last night and most of our walk looked like this.

There were leaves and other vegetation strewn all over the roads. As a result, we probably missed a lot of trash that would normally slow us down. As it was, we traversed the route three hours and twenty-two minutes (3:22). Looking back over the last twenty-six weeks of Saturday walks, the median time is 4:15, and the maximum time is 4:50 and the shortest is today, almost an hour less than the median.

On the way down the hill, an owl flew by in front of us. If we were faster and taller, we would have hit it. As it was, we didn’t find any roadkill to deal with, and no money either.

However, we picked up a tool off in the weeds on the freeway on-ramp.

It was in great condition as far as found tools go. It had only been run over once or twice.

On 112^th Ave NE, we picked up another lost wheel cover.

It was damaged and nondescript, we recycled it.

That’s it for this week. Our take:

• 14 Cents, a terrible money week, but at least none were Canadian.
• 4 Items of clothing including two vests.
• 3 Wheel covers.
• 2 Golf balls, one a BirdieBall.
• 1 Roadkill owl.
• 1 Tool.
• 1 Rabbit scut. No noses.
• 1 Urine cup.
• 1 School attaboy coin.
• 1 All-Access Pass with no access.
• 1 Irate sleeper.
• 1 Set of detailed planting plans.
• 1 Clashing condom.

Have a great week and remember it’s important to be color coordinated.