THANKS A LOT, ELLEN!!!

 

Ellen is a dear friend, and I'm just kidding!  "You've been with me from Day 1, and I treasure our friendship.  Thank you for telling me the entrance ramp from Arlington to I-76 eastbound was really bad.  I went straight there at 5:00."

She wasn't kidding.  It was really bad.  I picked up 2,627 pieces of trash, mostly bottles and cans, but also car parts and a tire.  

I hope the homeless people don't rip into these bags tonight.  I'll ask Keep Akron Beautiful to pick all this up.  There was too much for me. 

I first mess I found at the beginning of the entrance ramp was the stinkiest, most awful mess I've found yet.  I can't even begin to describe how bad it smelled.  No way was I reusing my bag.

Garbage that's been sitting out in the sun for who knows how long is going to be pretty nasty, but nothing like this. 

I've cleaned up to this overpass before, but I've never gone through it and over to the other side.  I thought it was too dangerous.  Cars are pretty much at 65 mph by the time they hit this overpass, and I thought it was too dangerous.

But tonight, I took it real slow, and it was okay.  When a car was coming, I got over as far as I could.  I had on my reflective vest, and my trash cart was behind me. 

When I got to the end, I was so happy, but I still had the whole other side to clean, and there was a lot less room to get over.

This is what the other side looked like.  

I cleaned all this trash that had blown into a pile from the wind,

And now it's clean, but nobody will notice.  Nobody notices when something is clean unless you point it out.  But they sure see the trash.

And there was so much to see!  Just a steady stream of bottles and cans and fast food wrappers.

I wanted so much to get finished, but my third 42 gallon bag was stuffed.  

I kept pushing it down, and I got it all done! 

I looked back, as I always do, and I'm so proud of myself.  This was really hard, but I did it, and the next time will be so much easier.

Most likely, it won't look like this tomorrow, but I wonder how many of the hundreds of cars that drove by me who throw crap out their windows will think about it now.  I don't think people really think about how hard it is to pick up trash when they throw their half empty bottles of Gatorade out the window.

I'd say about 25% of the bottles of water and juice were half full.  I had to unscrew the tops and pour out the liquid, or my bag would have been so heavy I couldn't lift it out. 

I can't wait to hear my friend when she drives home tomorrow and this entrance ramp is clean.

"I did it for you, Ellen!  Keep cheering me on, and I'll keep doing amazing things!"