3 days later

Garbage week is still on. I spent the weekend in Black River Falls visiting mom and dad. Lots of action, but not much crazy internet stuff happening there. Blogging was officially beyond the capacity of my parents' computer. I spent some quality time with the fam instead. Good research because Dad is one of the most enthusiastic trash hunters out there. He's not out to find treasure. He's out to clean up the earth in the most literal sense. The only time there is not a trash bag in his hand is when there is a chainsaw in it...or a scalpel. Yes, he's every bit as interesting as that makes him sound.

On Saturday, Dad took me on a tour of a recent garbage clean-up site. This was not at my request. Dad has projects like this lined up all over the county. Once a year he organizes a hard-core garbage collection day. It began as a personal endeavor. Friends and family picking up all nature of garbage from places Dad had noted throughout the year. Local construction companies donated a few dumpsters. A friend had a bobcat good for the heavy lifting. Word caught on and now the turn-out yields multiple dumpsters full of anything you could imagine. Word to the wise, if you're going to dump electronics along the river bank, don't dump it along with your junk mail. Dad will find you. His clean-up is an ongoing thing- by no means limited to one day a year. When I jog with Dad, I know that he will be collecting all the roadside garbage he can carry- and then some. Eventually stashing little piles of garbage in notable places so that he can drive the route later and pick them up. The whole family is used to it. There are always trashbags in waiting behind the seats of every vehicle and the truck bed is usually half-full of garbage from a recent trailing adventure.

Picking up garbage is good exercise. If nothing else- in humility.