Sticky Situation

These are the tools of choice for getting out of "sticky situations". That's Simple Green in the Windex bottle. Never accuse me of being under-prepared.

Visit 1093, Sunday 13 August 17, 7:10-10:05AM, 3.3 miles.

Temps in the 70's, sunny and mildly humid.

As promised last week, I was going to tackle the newly found stickers on the walkbridge over I-691.

I made a beeline to the walkbridge, trimming the late season growth of thorns along the trail as I hiked. I soon reached Objectives Alpha and Bravo.

Well, I didn't have to do any experimenting on what would work best to remove these stickers; I started by saturating them with WD-40 (both posts of the walkbridge) and let the WD-40 do it's thing on one post while I immediately commenced to scraping on the other post.

Once I got the hang of how to use the black handled scraper I was in the drive-through lane, and moved quicker than beans through a cowboy.

Here, the post left to tenderize looks positively ripe for the picking.

I advanced my technique so quickly that I was able to remove the second post's stickers in one piece.

Nice guy that I am, I coated both posts with WD-40 when I was done so they wouldn't rust. ;-)

Moving back to the trails, I came upon what I thought would be my Find of the Week.

The shoes were in such good condition that I considered washing them and donating them to Goodwill that is, until I discovered all the bugs crawling on the underside. You couldn't pay me to remove the insoles to see what was inside.

And as I hiked the trail back to the park I came upon a Find of the Week that not only beat the sneakers, but is probably the most pleasant surprise I've had on the trails, besides finding money!

This rock was clearly "painted in place" and I have to say the scene as well as the quality of the painting, is graffiti I can live with. It brought a smile to my face.

As I returned to the parking lot, I ran into Meriden Parks Department worker Rob Zebora. Rob was kind enough to offer to take my bag of trash which was beginning to get heavy from the sneakers, and a wet towel I picked up. That's my trash for the week on the ground.

While we chatted, we both spied a suspicious vehicle arrive in the park with truck tires tied to the roof (behind the blue car).

Both Rob and I suspected the same thing; when the gate to Castle Craig opened in a few minutes, the driver was going to drive up the road and dump the tires. Rob pulled out his "Blue Book" and planned to drive by and write down the license plate of the car. If he spotted it later on sans tires, or found the tires sans car, he'd have enough info to notify the police. That's a sharp city employee.