Another cleanup group day. Got up a little early, and spent the morning picking up trash, bike parts, dirty underwear, old socks, and muddy bras. It’s glamorous, I know, but it makes a difference to pick up around local trails. This little trail is a 1.1 mile loop around the 21st Street Pond (did it 3 times, my phone was in my car charging the 1st two trips around). The pond is used for water skiers on occasion, and normally there’s a lot of bicycles riding around on the trail. The group I am with is called Plikeing Club of Ogden. I’ve done one other pick up with them down town, it’s a pretty easy going group, and we always gather up a lot of trash (Pic up after yourselves people).
Last time I did a clean up, Mary and I were a team. I was climbing around, picking up the most difficult pieces of berried and hidden trash, and she was holding the bag, pointing out odds and ends, and we had some great conversations about things we had never talked about. This time, it was a solo process. I couldn’t get to a lot of trash I saw, but I filled three bags to the hilt (and walked the long way back to the parking lot thinking I’d find the wagon cart to haul them back for me), drug a big torn up tarp out of the woods, a burned up bicycle wheel, I don’t know how many articles of clothing (we only haul out the clothing that’s obviously not being used), and a bunch of “Gold Metal Flake” spray paint (with accompanying spray paint filled plastic bags – they sniff paint). Sometimes it becomes a little bit sad that there are so many people like this. I try to keep my mind set pointed towards cleaning up as much as I can to keep the place pleasant for everyone that uses the trail.
I don’t know if you can call this a volunteer process, but I guess it is. I give them 2 or 3 hours of my time, and they give me a snack. They take our pictures, post them on their site, and away we go.
Here are some of the images, I didn’t include any of the trash pile, but the views were really nice with all the fall colors. They did take some pictures of us, but I haven’t seen them on any of their sites, maybe in a few days (I’ll try to remember to update this post if I see them publish some of the pictures).
Getting TRASHY!
