Recently someone on this end of town posted "4 bags of men's clothing, various sizes". I thought "Heck! I can surely get some clothes I can use out of FOUR bags!" So, I asked for them, was given them, and set a time for pick up. It was about 3 miles away, and I figured I could just jaunt over there after we got the kids in bed and pick them up.
I arrived at the woman's house, and saw four HUGE bags full of clothes. Assuming these to be my cargo, I started looking in the bags. It seriously looked like someone's dirty laundry. I was in a nicer subdivision, so I thought it a possibility. I went and knocked on the door, and asked the woman to show me what I was expected to take.
She waddled out her front door. She stopped a moment and balked, "Oh. You brought your bike." After assuring her my bike could handle the load, she confirmed the four bags of dirty laundry were for me. I thanked her, and proceeded to load the 1 full + 3 half-full bags onto my bicycle.
About 10 minutes and a good deal of grunting later, I got it all loaded up, secretly hoping I would be mugged by a gang of relatively harmless homeless men running around in their skivvies looking for something to wear to the evening's barrel burn. Alas, I had no such luck. So, pedaling down Parkcenter Ave at 9:15 at night looking like a large, homely, overzealous bag lady I made the 2.4 mile journey home. I called Katie ahead of time to make sure she had the camera ready to snap some pics.
Here they are!
See the white bag hanging off the very back? I had another one of those strapped on the right side of my bike, which you obviously cannot see.I unloaded them all, spread a blanket on the lawn I found in one of the bags, dumped out one bag at a time, and went through them using only my Leatherman to touch them. There were dirty socks, boxers, shirts, pants, backpacks, aprons, hoodies...it had most everything, and most of it was gross.
I sorted out a small pile of things I could probably put to use and give a good washin' to and stuffed the rest into one bag. I got a wash going for the stuff I was going to keep and took a thorough shower to scrub all the invisible ickies off me.
I was going to be nice and take all the rest of the stuff to a laundromat, clean and dry it, then donate it to the mission. I didn't have the time, and Katie didn't have the patience for a huge bag o' crap sitting on the front porch. So she started to wash it. Before she could finish the first load, she was sufficiently grossed out, and, going against our deep-seeded reduce, reuse, recycle mentality, I hauled the lot of it to the dumpster.
I did end up with some nice work shirts, a canvas apron, a down coat and several flannel jackets.
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