playing your average video game, you might get the impression that the world is pretty much full of treasure waiting for you to come along and look in that barrel or behind that bush to add to your inventory. you might think that’s a fanciful notion, completely unrelated to the human experience. of course you can see this coming now: yeah, you’d be wrong.

thanks to the awesomely massive wastefulness of american culture, there are literally tons of completely useful things that get sent to the landfill every day. last night, after a grade-a wrench party up at aaron’s bicycle repair, we decided to go out and do a little dumpstering. here’s my loot list:

• a loaf of day-old challa bread, 2 bags of bolo rolls
• 3 bottles of naked juice, expiration date of yesterday (but still happily at about 33 degrees F)
• extra large drybag, missing buckles and straps but otherwise apparently perfect.
• large square of orange pvc fabric, in kozmo.com orange.
• a pillow pump
• a slightly used collapsible trekking pole
• thermarest chair adapter thingy, size large

and remember that there were six of us, and everybody got at least that much loot or more, especially aaron on his xtracycle was pretty laden down on the way home. the saddest part was the sheer wastefulness of these companies, particularly companies that you would expect to have some environmental focus – the dumpsters were full of recyclables, compostables/yard waste, and the sheer amount of goods that had been thrown away instead of repaired was astonishing. it seems unfortunate that it’s more efficient business-wise for them to throw away a few hundred little stuff sacks full of tent parts than to find some useful purpose for them, especially given that it’s going to take a few hundred years for those to decompose.

so here’s to dumpstering and re-using things intended for the trash heap, the quasi-illegal environmentally friendly action of choice.

and, to top it off, i look saavy doing it in my new shaun deller hat, made out of recycled wool from old suits.

this guy has the right idea:

i’m sure some of you are wondering, in true rapper parlance where the “magic” happens. well, i just so happened to be bored and have japanese school girl camera on hand when henry’s discussion of workplaces came up last week.

so here’s the photo, and if you follow the link you can even get some informative annotations.

it may have broken my arm a few months ago, but the police bike – all old raleigh technium custom singlespeed with kenda k-rad’s – has redeemed itself completely with the snow. especially this morning on my way into work i was glad to have the stability of massive tires at low psi when hitting the ice patches underneath the snow. if the police bike is this good, plan pugsley should be really fun.