Bringing Out My Inner Artist

My canvas.

Visit #860, Thursday 10 April 14, 7:15-7:45PM, 0.5 miles.
Temps in the 50's, clouding up.

Visit #860, Friday 11 April 14, 4:50-6:10PM, 3.0 miles.
Temps in the high 50's, intermittent showers.

Visit #861, Saturday 12 April 14, 8:05-9:45AM, 1.0 miles.
Temps in the low 50's, sunny.

Visit #862, Sunday 13 April 14, 6:55-8:05AM, 1.0 miles.
Temps in the low 50's, mostly cloudy.

Last week I reported painting over some graffiti in Hubbard Park. This week I utilized the full palette of my painting skills.

On Thursday I stopped in Hubbard Park to conduct some covert operations. While waiting for the cloak of darkness, I walked a brief loop around the Soap Box Derby track and the road from Castle Craig and put myself to good use. The result was a bag of trash.

Picking up trash was going to eat into my time at the "easel" this weekend, so when the opportunity arose to return to the park on the way home from work on Friday, I seized it and walked the road from the park to the north end of Merimere Reservoir and back, picking up trash.

That trash bag is blue because, while driving from work to the park, I realized I had no trash bags in my truck, so I stopped at the supermarket to pick some up.

With the trash duties out of the way, I turned my attention to the spillway at the north end of Merimere Reservoir.

Last fall and winter, I reported of some persistent graffiti being painted on the jersey barriers above the spillway. By being persistent in covering it up, I reasoned I could deter the vandals. Well, it worked-sort of.

It appears they gave up on the highly visible real estate of the jersey barriers and relocated to the less accessible reaches of the spillway.

The graffiti on the right is only a couple weeks old; that on the left has been there for years.

So, on Saturday I grabbed my supplies and parked at the north end of Hubbard Park for the short walk to the site, hence the paltry 1 mile listed above.

I was also low on paint, and REALLY scraped the fumes from the can trying to cover all of the above. Needless to say, I wasn't satisfied.

Before I left, I took advantage of the dry spillway area and picked up trash, which I carried away to my truck.

Included in my haul were the graffiti artist's tool of the trade.

Off to the paint store I went, to restock and prepare for Sunday.

Early Sunday morning I picked up where I left off, and covered most all of the graffiti on the spillway. Anything left will wait until my next commissioned piece of art.

While all this was going on, I can hear and see a city owned vehicle driving by, which I thought odd.

When I finished, I poked my head up to road level to discover a table and chairs set up on the road just past the spillway. It took me a couple minutes to figure out the Meriden Rotary Club was hosting a road race in Hubbard Park and the turnaround for the 5k race was near the table and chairs.

So my cleaning of the road on Friday coincidentally benefited the city, the Rotary Club, and the runners. How cool is that?