TODAY WAS AN INCREDIBLE DAY!

 

Yesterday, I was discouraged at the amount of trash at Lover's Lane & Brown.  But I went back and finished, and I won't let it get that bad again.  

I met this adorable little boy.  He was way smaller than the picture shows.  I'm guessing he was about 4 or 5 years old.  He was flying down his street on his belly on a skateboard, and going right onto Lover's Lane!  

He asked me why I was picking up trash and I told him, "Because I don't want you to cut your belly on broken glass when you fall off that thing!" 

But he didn't fall off, and he didn't get run over by a car, and his parents were sitting on the front porch watching him, so I continued on my way.  But what a sweet little boy! 

Before I worked on Lover's Lane, I started at the football field and headed over to see my friends at the car wash.  

Driving down Wilbeth Road, I didn't see a speck of trash!  But walking, I found plenty.  Nothing like last night, but still, if I don't clean Wilbeth road EVERY WEEK, it will look just like Lover's Lane did!

I found Pennzoil cans all over, at least a dozen of them.  And lots of broken glass. 

After I visited with my friends at the car wash, and cleaned around his building, I continued west on Wilbeth Road, and I found a bolt, a smashed water bottle and a tool of some kind in the wrapper!  These things were right on the road!

I took the tool out of the wrapper, and it was brand new.  It was some kind of tool I've never seen before, and it had a screwdriver on one end.  

I couldn't see myself ever using something like that, so I threw it away.

And when I got to the abandoned Dairy Queen, I found these beautiful flowers growing so proudly in the weeds.  No landscaping, no mowing, no mulching, but they didn't care.  They were determined to be beautiful no matter what the circumstances.

I really love that attitude. 

So before I knew it, I was at the entrance ramp from Wilbeth Road to Route 8.  I took that entrance ramp earlier in the day, and it was as bad as I've ever seen it.  I really wanted to clean it, but it's too dangerous.  When I can get behind the guard rail, it's not so bad, but there just isn't enough room to get over, and I'm guessing about 600 cars per hour are headed for the freeway, building up speed.

I stood there for a while, and then I had an idea.  I took my trash cart onto the ramp, and pulled a cone that had been run over in front of it.  And I started picking up trash as fast as I could.

Gotta be honest here, my arms and legs were shaking.  It was VERY SCARY.  But I thought I'd be okay as long as I moved carefully, and watched out for cars. 

It was like this all the way to the freeway!  

And this is as far as I got, which was almost the whole way.

The thing about trash, you never have to pick it all up.  Every piece that is picked up helps, and you can always go back and pick up more.  There's probably more right now, but that's okay.  I did what I wanted to do, and I'M SO PROUD OF MYSELF!

Whenever we do something we're scared to do, I think it makes us stronger. 

My trash bag was stuffed.  I couldn't get another piece in.  I tied it shut and headed back to my car.

I met a man who said he saw me on TV, and he thanked me for keeping his road clean.  He said he found a $50 in his driveway when he was picking up trash.  I told him I never found a $50 bill before.  That's very cool! 

I emptied my bag in a dumpster and headed over to Lover's Lane to finish that area.  

While I was pulling trash out of the bushes, a man walked by holding a kitty cat in a weird way.  I would think the cat would hate the way he was holding her, but she didn't seem to mind.  He said, "Darn cat!  She loves to follow me to the store, and she's going to get killed!"

So after I cleaned up all the trash and emptied another bag in the dumpster, I saw the kitty cat, and she started following me around!  I took off my gloves and petted her, and she just rolled around on the cement like she was living the life of a queen!

Then a woman walked over to us, and she said it was her cat, and she took her home.  I hope she stays there.  She's too pretty to be roaming around like that.

I picked up 2,540 pieces of trash tonight.  That's a low number for as long as I was out, but other than the exit ramp, Wilbeth Road didn't have much trash, and that's how I aim to keep it.