Traveling with Cans - Inventive Indiana

It's already a week ago that I left home guzzling cans of diet soda along the way to Chicago. I took a foray into the Georgia and Tennessee mountains before getting back onto the Interstate system again.

The recycling report from I-75 in Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky is glum. I found no recycling bins at rest stops. These two photos are from Indiana where the Hoosiers demonstrated ingenuity.

#1 Weathered but working, this rest area in Indiana had the first container for can recycling since I left Florida. The hole designer was pretty precise about accepting only 12 oz. cans.

#2 Not sure what they were thinking with the chimney chute here. Cans were stuck in it.

Traveling with Cans

Full disclosure, I drink Pepsi One or Diet Coke while on a road trip. For me, this treat is part of my road trip experience. Chastise me if you will, but I haven’t hit bottom and I’m not ready to give it up.

With this indulgence comes the opportunity to check out the many rest areas along our nation’s interstate highways. I’m keeping a watchful eye for recycling opportunities for my soda cans. Here are three opportunities from Friday.

#1 -75 Punta Gorda, FL

Clearly, sombody is trying to make it happen. Bless 'em.

#2
I-75 Lake City, FL

A plan for aluminum cans, at least.

#3
I-75 Georgia Visitors' Center

No recycling bins, HOWEVER, I carried two empty cans inside and asked if they had recycling. A very courteous public servant reacheed out for my cans. She crushed them with her bare hands and said she would recycle them for me.

No Respect

I figured I might as well get to the beach before daylight, since I awoke around 5:00 a.m. I love the morning solace, but I also was curious to see what the crowds had wrought during the holiday melee.

While I could barely distinguish an end to the boardwalk in the dim early light, the real first comer, a pair of narrow headlights, was bearing down my way. In a moment, more headlights from another a smaller vehicle.

They warmed my heart like Don Quixote and Sancho coming to save the day - - actually, a surf rake and a mule.

The rake, pulled behind a tractor rig, scoops sand, sifts it removing trash and sprinkles sand back onto the beach in a level surface, while carefully avoiding the staked sea turtle nests.

The mule, a tough half-breed kin to ATV/jeep, hustled along from trash can to trash can gathering the overflow and delivering it to a pick up truck and returning for more bags - - - many many more bags.

Within an hour, at least one mile of beach was properly groomed. It will never be as clean as early creation, but it was without visible traces of revelries. I was heading back home as the 6:30 a.m. slackers were arriving.

Overhearing one groggy gent, I was dismayed. Clutching his Styrofoam coffee cup he decried to another swaggering comrad, “Oh, (s-word) that (7-letter adjective) beach cleaner is down here again. (s-word!)”

No respect for Don Quixote.

For an Interesting automation of the Barber surf rake see: http://www.hbarber.com/Cleaners/SurfRake/HowItWorks.aspx

Scuffy the Tugboat's Nightmare

Monday morning is like no other morning at my beach. Only Monday has such a diverse mountain of paraphernalia left behind by yesterday’s crowd. Who are they that walk off leaving their $49 chaise lounge in the sand? Or their shoes? It would cross my mind to ask myself, “Wasn’t I wearing shoes when I last walked across this parking lot?”

With the start of this holiday weekend, I’m even more sensitive to what’s left on the beach or along any waterway - - ever since my husband, a systems analyst geek who reads science magazines at bedtime, interrupted me from almost sleep with a nudge. “This is interesting. You’ll want to know this.” (Not always the case, but do go on.)

He read aloud about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the Pacific where the ocean currents cause a gigantic swirling vortex that has become a gumbo of floating debris. Whatever has been tumbling in the currents is held in a slow swirl gathering into an enormous drifting island of rubbish. According the article in July’s issue of Discover Magazine, the area may exceed the size of the U.S. and extend to a depth of 100 feet. In certain spots, plastic pieces exceed surface zooplankton 6 to 1.

Plumping up my pillow, I delved this alarming story until Jay Leno had probably driven home and finished his bedtime snack. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation is the source of much of the information about the Garbage Patch. It has been gathering information over the past decade. From samples taken, it appears that the amount of plastic floating in the patch doubled between 1999 and 2005, from .002 gram per meter of ocean to .004.

As early as my Scuffy the Tugboat storybook in childhood, I learned that brooks flow to streams, streams flow to rivers and rivers flow into the oceans, but I never dreamed the nightmare ending of a monstrous floating island of plastic garbage. The patch was surely the dire demise of Tom Hank’s companion, Wilson the volley ball, in Castaway after he floated out of reach.

Anything that floats or blows away from shore - - a Styrofoam cup, flip flop sandal, beach ball, water pistol or a pith helmet no matter from which continent it starts - - will end up floating intact or indistinguishable pieces into a debris island, if not this one, there are others.

Here are a few items for us holiday picnic packers and unpackers to be aware of and lock up before they blow, items so small and miscellaneous we don’t even realize we’ve lost them. Please feel free to add to the list.

Plastic straw sleeves
Straws from juice boxes and pouches
Plastic rings from twist off bottle caps
Bottle caps
Torn away corners from granola bar or candy wrappers
Bubble gum and Starburst wrappers

Gone the Way of the Statue Makers Guild

Last night at dinner I chatted with a new acquaintance from the Midwest. Over chips and salsa on the waterfront, he told me how he’s been dealing with the stream of car owners coming to trade-in their SUVs at the dealership where he sells cars.

“Most people drive about 1000 miles per month,” he tells his customers “If you do the math, you’ll be saving about $3 per day switching to a fuel economy car.” Then he adds, “ Just give up your daily Starbucks and you don’t have to trade in your car. This SUV fits your lifestyle, with the little car, it will be hard to manage your life.”

Interesting. What he said is economically viable right now and probably accurate about the lifestyle, but I noted no concern for U.S. oil dependency, forget about carbon footprint. I made a comment, but I didn’t push it. I pick my battles and this one I wouldn’t win over chips and salsa. However, I do wonder how he makes a living not selling cars.

That conversation reminded me of a discovery during my fervent agnostic period several decades ago in the College of Arts and Letters. I took a course called Bible as Literature. I remember two things about that class. One, the professor was very tall and thin, and two, an epiphany of how our livelihood affects our priorities. Whether this Bible story is actually historic is irrelevant to one enlightening point I saw.

The book of Acts tells the experiences of the early followers of Jesus. They often caused an upheaval in the populace for expounding radical ideas. This is generally the focus from a religious perspective, but I latched onto a different scene. In the town of Ephesus, a silversmith who was leader of the statue makers’ guild called a meeting to point out the economic danger of a new ideology.

“Men, you know we receive a good income from this business (goddess statue making), and you see how this fellow . . . has led astray large numbers of people . . . there is danger that our trade will lose its good name . . .” Perhaps as an afterthought he adds, “. . . also that our goddess will be robbed of her divine majesty.”

A couple of thousand years later the impetus for or against change remains the same. Ideology is important, but losing income trumps ideology in the beginning. Still, change does come. You’ve probably noticed as I have that over the past two thousand years, the silversmith goddess-statue-makers guild has pretty much petered out. They found another way to make a living. Perhaps they’re molding SUVs.