Down in the dumps

On Tuesday, I rented a cargo-van and filled it up with trash from the garage.



Rather than abusing Janna's dumpster rights, I took my refuse to the Allied Waste dump in San Carlos. The last time I went to a dump, it was a land-fill site where you pretty much throw your crap in a big hole. This dump was more like a cavernous warehouse serviced by huge bulldozers pushing together giant piles of rubbish. Here is a picture, but to be honest, this is only one of the little sub-piles. I couldn't get far enough away to get a mega-pile in view.



I really liked the dump. For one thing, everyone there was pretty happy. I think people enjoy working for Allied Waste. For another, I was in a place where I was allowed to throw stuff around and break things. I have been walking on eggshells staging the house for the last three weeks. Doing touchups on touchups is not my idea of fun. With the mountains of trash, machines of twisted metal, and crashing noise, I felt very manly with my garbage.

The guys in the slot to the right of me were unloading ceramics and tile out of a commercial truck from what looked like a commercial bathroom demo. They were obviously on the job and at the pinnacle of dudeness.

On my left, a GMC truck rolled in about the same time I did. Surveying the trash, I could tell it was residential house cleaning stuff. The guy who stepped out looked like an expired frat dude in his 30's. I commented "nice shoes", when I saw he was wearing basketball high-tops. That was a dead giveaway that he was really a button-down khakis guy like myself. He gave me the "what's up" nod, but I wasn't fooled.

I laughed, said "race you" and the game was on. We furiously started throwing out our shit as fast as we could. Midway through unloading, the dude started berating me based on my empty boxes. "Oh chocolate fountain, how sweet... you pussy." I couldn't stop laughing. We had about equal loads, but the old frat dude beat me by a mile and drove off. His advantage was that he could just stand in the truck bed throwing stuff out while I had to hobble in and out of my cargo van. So overall the competition wasn't very fair.

It cost me $62.50 to unload my crap and I had a lot of fun. I'm getting more intimate with my rubbish on an ongoing basis. Maybe the next time I see that dude at the dumps, I'll be the winner.