Don't Say I Never Gave You Anything

 Visit #1460, Saturday 6 January 24, 7:10-10:30AM, 4.8 miles, 49.0 lbs. of litter.

Temps in the 20s to start, rising to the comfortable 30s, cloudy, with Connecticut's first snowstorm of the season predicted for tonight and into Sunday, with 6" predicted.

During last week's hike, I noticed a padlock on the I-691 walkbridge fencing which I apparently had missed during my recent purge. Was it there during my initial cleansing or a new addition? Could this be a new game? Well, before I proceeded to this weekend's main objective, I hiked over to the walkbridge to remove the supposed straggler.

That was a thirty minute round trip for five seconds work. I inspected the fencing much more closely this time to eliminate the possibility of padlock hallucinations in the future.

Now on to the main event.

Once a year I police the hillside behind the playscape, the hillside that abuts I-691. It can be an eyesore to park goers partially because of large debris tossed from the highway, but also because people park adjacent to the fence line in Hubbard Park and toss their mostly bottles, cans, and litter over the fence. With the impending snowstorm I wanted to complete the task before winter arrived.

Included in the items recovered from the hillside were these two cast off traffic cones which ahem, now no longer belong to the state of Connecticut but to Meriden, courtesy of me!

During my session, at precisely 7:58AM by my watch which is 19 seconds off from NIST time 😉 a truck traveling east on I-691 either hit the guardrail or hit a car, judging by the nasty metal scraping I heard. I fully expected the truck to tumble down the hillside and crush me (which would make for a more interesting blog if I lived!) but I could see the truck stopped on the eastern overpass. State Police, Meriden Fire, and an ambulance arrived in quick order. I also could see the trooper looking down the slope and no doubt seeing me. I didn't want to complicate things by climbing the slope to pick up litter and have the trooper ask what I was doing, so I stalled for the roughly 90 minutes until the scene was clear. I tried to find a a report of the incident from state police blotters but came up empty handed.

Done for this year.

Find of the Week was this watch cap, which I'll wash and take to Goodwill. Watch caps certainly aren't needed in Puerto Rico, since the average low temp is a mere 70 degrees.

I wasn't going to leave all that litter there, so I made multiple trips to the dumpster at the parks facility.

Along the way I noticed this bird feeder just begging for renovation and a refill. If I were a bird I'd be disappointed for sure!

And, where to put those traffic cones...

I don't know if that's an active office building. We'll find out soon enough!

On the last trip to the pile to pick up trash bags, I looked up to see this-

Look closely and you'll see, of all the Christmas light displays in Hubbard Park, which were promptly removed after the holidays, one straggler remains. Any bets on how long until it's discovered and removed?