Here’s the thing:
My days are always a bunch better when I take the trouble to get some damned caffeine in my system first thig in the ayem.
This morning I got in on one of the club’s work parties, cleaning this section of Rt 6
Our club volunteers to clean this strip several times a year, it’s a common route for all manner of traffic.
We fill plastic bags with junk and put them alongside the road and INDOT comes and picks them up. There are bottles and cans, 70% liquor or beer, with some gatorade and tea thrown in the mix. Paper and biodegradeables we leave alone, but anything glass plastic, or…. other, we put in buckets, and then empty the buckets into the the bags we leave for INDOT.
One year we found a battery powered… thingy. We’ve found inflatable… things. Today I personally picked up a dozen or more cateyes, because the damned snowplow drivers can’t be bothered to raise their blades or properly adjust their skids. And these things are DESIGNED to be sowplow proof. I know I didn’t want one in my tire, as most of them were not in one piece.
Anyway, over the very nearly two mies we did sixteen bags, I think. And i went to Andersons Winery afterwards, to see what they have (What they have is some excellent locally grown wines and preserves) and I picked up some local honey and a bottle of Rhubarb wine, which I think the Ogwife will love.
Having gotten almost no sleep the night before I cranked a bedroom window wide, and crawled into bed to try to regain my balance. Having not eaten for the better part of a day, I woke refreshed, and with a headache the size and shape of Gainesville Florida. Several hours and a meal and coffee later, I’m doing better, but the wreck I made of my knees clawing my way down ravines to pick up broken whiskey bottles is gonna require some ice tonight.
I’ve had my share of bike trail and roadway cleanups. I never get used to the massive amounts of trash to be found in small, block long, increments. The usual food containers, tires, mattresses, I’ll never understand clothing, and always one shoe never a pair. I remember bicycling all over the county (landkreis) where my base was when I was stationed in Germany. It was a clean as Disneyland. And yes on Saturday morning there were still women who washed the cobblestone steps to their ma and pa shops before they opened for the day. The first thing I noticed on my drive to Ft. Sheridan for my Inactive Reserve ID Card was the third world level of filth every. freaking. where. Like a fish in a bowl, the water it’s in is the last thing it notices since it’s never out of the bowl. Well, I returned to the bowl, the darn toilet bowl.
This spring when the snow melted all at once, I took notice and paid hard attention at all the refuse in FARMERS’ FIELDS while running my route in supposedly upscale Valpo, not Detroit or Gary. It’s bad enough to throw the Lite bottle into the mystical parallel universe of “away” where it supposedly dissolves into the trees and tall grass, never to be seen again. But to flick it into the field of some poor s.o.b. who has to police the area before he plows it, dang how much of a douche must someone be?