Efficient

A quiet morning, perfect weather. Looking downhill from the fork to East/West Peak.

Visit #1037, Sunday 25 September 16, 7:40-9:55AM, 5.5 miles.
Temps in the 60's, sunny, dry, and breezy.

I hiked a clockwise route this morning, stopping on the walkbridge over I-691 to remove the remaining flag attached to the fencing. The flag was tearing and no longer serviceable.

Adjacent to the flag was some new graffiti.

This is the second time "Bomb" has tagged Hubbard Park. The first time was around the Fourth of July. I plan to remove this next week.

I then proceeded to the location of the other flag, which was removed by others a few weeks ago. I took the time to bring a pair of diagonal cutters to remove the remaining hardware from the fencing. I don't like seeing half a job done.

I then hiked the trails up to the fork in the road to East/West Peak. Just prior to reaching the intersection, I stopped to cover over some longstanding graffiti. I don't know why it never occurred to me before to cover it.

Best I can tell, "Fat Man's Squeeze" is a title commonly applied in the rock climbing fraternity.

I then addressed another "Colorado-ed" tree which I documented previously.

I had forgotten about this tree so I didn't bring my bow saw to cut it off at the base. Best I could do was trim the branches with my loppers. I will have to put on my to-do list to finish off this tree properly.

I planned today's work schedule to finish before the road was opened to vehicular traffic, thus my early start time. Between my planned route and the orderly way I accomplished my tasks, I felt I was very efficient, thus today's blog post title.

I dropped my first bag of trash at the fork in the road. I expected to easily fill another bag walking the road down so this was the best time to close one bag and open another.

However, there's no need for the parks department to make a special trip to pick it up. I went mountain biking in Hubbard Park Sunday afternoon, and I popped out at the West Peak parking lot just about the time the road to East/West Peak closes. No sooner did I hit pavement, here comes the parks employee in his pickup truck, tooting his horn to get the last straggler in the parking lot to leave.

As the employee turned his vehicle around to head down the road, I flagged him down and asked him to pick up the bag I'd left earlier in the day-I didn't ride by the spot so I assumed it was still there. The employee said he saw it and he'd be glad to toss it in the back of the truck on the way down. I call that a win-win situation; no wasted labor, and no worry that critters will get into the bag. My thanks to the Meriden Parks Department.

Heading south on the road along Merimere Reservoir, I found an abandoned tire. I rolled it quite some distance, and left it at the water treatment plant. After the photo was taken, I pushed it under the fence so sticky fingers wouldn't try to roll it where it doesn't belong.

I reached the parking lot five minutes before the road opened; perfect timing.  Dropped off my second bag of trash and called it a day.