Monday, October 04, 2010

Oh - you will assimilate.



A couple of odd things about San Leandro.

1. They had green team volunteers making sure you tossed your trash in the right bin.

Since they weren't costing the city money, only giving a cuba like vibe - I can't complain too much. The girl was sweet. Still, they provided pictures to help you in your utter confusion and ensuing paralysed state. I think we can all learn from pictures. Right?

2. The festival banned selling bottled water.

No one there knew why. Upon reflection later - I assumed the trash monitors and the water thing were ya know... connected. It is probably one of those cities that bans plastic bottles. Yet, it turns out - San Leandro is the city which has plastic lining their freeway walls. Here.

I don't know about you, but I've never met a plastic that hasn't broken down in the sun. I've tried and tried. People with landscaping do that. And as you might expect, the plastic lining the freeways is starting to break down it's been up so long.

That is going to break off and cause an accident. At least they will have kept the taggers from defacing the walls.

4 comments:

  1. First, I've been over to Seattle visiting my parents for almost a week. No internet for my computer. So I'm sorry your visits dropped dramatically.(grin.) Someone told me that Virgin offers a pay as you go "internet jobbie"for my usb port. I'll REALLY have to look into that.

    Anyway, when I was over in Seattle, I see that the city council has mandated that fast food restaurants have two, yes two, garbage cans everywhere one used to do. One is for recyclables and one is for landfill. I'm hoping someone doesn't have to go through the garbage garbage can because that's where I think it all should go.

    My poor parents have a big can for yard waste, a medium can for recycle (and it seems like everything is recycleable) and a miniature, wee little can for garbage.I mean I have a larger waste basket next to my desk than their garbage can.

    Seattle's known as the Berkeley (Berkley?) of the North. Back in the old (60-70 yrs ago) days, there were "47 states and the soviet of Washington." It was the home of the IWW Union during the teens last century and has always as much leftist as liberal. But what really made Seattle start to suck was when all those Californians sold their homes and moved up here 20-25 years ago. Nasty Californians!

    I'll probably be hit and miss here for a while (but then it looks like you have sorta been that way too, lately). I've been hitting the highways between here and Seattle every 2-3 wks to see my 89-year-old bedridden dad. Then last weekend,my 85-year-old mom fell and broke her femur. So while she's recuperating and until we can get good (affordable) nursing in for him, their kids are rotating days off and providing "nursing" care. We all live 200 to 300miles away so it's been fun.

    Darn... another long post.

    John

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  2. Good thing you check in - I'd have needed to send out a search party.;)

    "what really made Seattle start to suck was when all those Californians sold their homes and moved up here 20-25 years ago. Nasty Californians!"

    Oh believe me - Washingtonians have been hating Californians for as long as I've been alive. Which is longer than 25 years. I was born up there. I see a lot of you guys down here lately though.

    You should start a travel blog. You must see lots of interesting stuff on those long commutes. Sorry to hear about your parents.

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  3. A friend of mine is a contractor in Spokane, and he was at the dump one day dropping off a trailer full of junk from a remodel he was doing.

    He watched as the recycle truck rolled up and dumped an entire load of glass and plastic bottles....right into the landfill.

    Most residential recycling programs are useless "feel good" programs. Most smaller communities don't have the resources to actually do the recycling, and have to pay to have it trucked to somewhere that does.

    Not to mention the fact that in the name of the environment, you've doubled the amount of big, smelly diesel trucks on the road to pick up trash separately from recycling.

    Gaia hates that.

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  4. That's actually a good point with the extra trucks to pick up three bins.

    My city claims they want to reduce landfill by 75%. Good luck with all that.

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