Do work Son

So today I drove up the 15 to Pinon Hills. On the way I see mostly the usual stuff, you know some lady drinking a redbull and putting on her makeup in the fast lane, the guy with some long piece of wood sticking out both sides of his car almost in the other lanes, the guy pulling his trailer doing 80+ passing in the number one lane etc. etc. etc.

Then I get to my turnoff for the highway 138. A couple minutes past the interchange there is a rather eccentric (beat to hell) old Toyota pickup. No driver or anything just a little old truck parked along side the roadway. As I motor on by listening to some Pearl Jam and taking full advantage of the AC and cruise control I come around a bend and see a guy with a big back pack, a poker stick, a trash bag, and the most amazing (being sarcastic) big floppy sun hat. I see him picking up trash, cans, bottles etc. and placing them in his backpack and bag. Now I think to myself  that the guy must either be one of them save the earth types or one of those picking up recyclables to pay the bills types and kinda dismiss it. Well after the days activities I head back down the 138 to return home, and to my surprise I see the same eccentric truck and the same guy picking up stuff about 2 miles from his last spotting. Only other change was now the back of the eccentric truck had a mound of full bags in the back.

Now I am impressed. Continuing down my path I start looking around, and I start noticing that there is a lot of trash no longer on the side of the road. Then it dawns on me, that one guy just might have cleaned up both sides of about 2 miles of the road. HOLY CRAP I have seen Cal trans crews do far less in a whole day and they are usually about 10 people strong. Now I can not say that the place was spotless but a measurable difference was made. BY ONE MAN!

I have done some time doing volunteer stuff in the local forests cleaning and fixing trail, but I have never seen something quite like that one gentleman's accomplishment. It does not matter to me what his motivation to do so was but I really do hope that he made a tidy sum from those recyclables for his efforts.

Now after pondering this for a bit on the ride home and afterwards,  I start thinking about how much it cost him to do it. Maybe a days time, a few bucks in gas (assuming he lived close by), and some shoe leather? That fancy poker stick surly did not break the bank.

Comparing my past expenses during my volunteer work I shudder to realize that maybe, just maybe I was doing it all wrong. A big limiting factor on my donated time was the expenses associated. I had to fuel up the jeep with fuel (usually once in the morning and once in the evening), fill up the cooler with food and drinks, make sure my boots and gloves were in proper shape, other PPE as required accounted for, fill up the water cans, pack up whatever tools I planned on using, Radio gear working, and so on. I really did not have a problem doing it as much as we could, and I really did not notice the total expense at the time but obviously over the years it did add up. I did enjoy the outings and for the most part the groups partaking in the activities were fun and interesting to perform the work with. Some of those folks were out there doing those things every weekend, all over Southern California. Really some of my best jeeping memories are from those days so was it a waste of money? I think not.

Now for the whole purpose of this blog:
There has to be some sort of more affordable version of community service that I will enjoy. It has been far to long since I experienced that warm fuzzy feeling of contributing to society. So I am opening up my ears to hear what you suggest I do. (yeah scary huh) Maybe it will be something you already do and keep a secret, or something you wish you had someone to do it with etc.

 So feel free to make a comment and suggest something.

Peace out my homies..........