Spring Rituals and Time Alone

It has been a somewhat unique spring this year. For the last two years I have had to opportunity to travel to Colorado to attend and work for USASA Nationals. Unfortunately my spring break this year is a week later, which prevented me from making the trek with Mike and Ri. I actually spent 8 nights completely alone in my house. I haven't spent more than one night at a time alone in my house for over 11 years! Although I was very apprehensive about how I would handle it, I must say that I did pretty damn well. I can honestly say that I enjoyed myself immensely, and that my only regret was that I was too busy with work and exercise to actually get much time at home.

Ri eventually returned from Colorado on Friday night, so I've had to start planning around someone else again. I'm not complaining though, because Ri makes me laugh (almost as much as he makes me want to pull my hair out). It was also a gorgeous weekend weather-wise, which leads me to the spring ritual which took place today.

Every year for the past few years Ri and I have done some spring roadside garbage collecting. It's awful when that snow melts and reveals all the garbage that lies below. Today was an ideal day and once again we grabbed our garbage bag and gloves to see what we could find.

I run almost the same route several times a week, so I know the first 1/2 mile stretch of road pretty well. It didn't take us long before we started loading up our bag. Ri and I chit chatted quite a bit about each item that we picked up. Most disturbing, but not surprising, were the empty cigarette packs that we found. We actually surveyed that those smokers who litter and drive that section of road prefer Marlboro to Sonoma or Gold USA, although the count was pretty close.

I realize that our final amount doesn't appear to be much, but it sure was heavy!

We did find some keepers along the side of the road that just didn't belong in the trash bag. The best one (for Ri anyway) was the road construction flag. Ri used that bad boy the entire way home.


It's always amazing how much better that stretch of road looks when we're done. I know of a few neighbors down the road who do the same thing, and I think it's fabulous. If only everyone would take a small stretch of roadside to clean up....

We're hitting Sheldrake next.