Dryer Days

My dryer and I have been compromising all summer long.  As long as I hung out most of the clothes it would grudgingly dry an occasional load.  It would take a couple of cycles but it would dry them.

Once the cooler weather hit my dryer decided it was done playing and gave up heating entirely.  Thankfully I have a friend who had a dryer she wasn't using that she brought by.  It heats up and dries everything in one cycle!  It's amazing.  Meanwhile we had our dryer sitting out in our yard, which we can all agree is a fabulous look.  I mentioned to Michael that said friend said we should be able to get $30 or so for our old dryer at the recycling center.  She even offered to drive it there on her trailer next time she was in town.

Michael and I agreed that it would be silly to have her come back in to help us out.  We have a minivan and a trailer and the recycling center is less than a mile from our house.  We could figure this out.  So Michael did figure it out.  He loaded it on his bike trailer!

 

The neighbor lent him some straps and Michael started off.  Upon arriving at the recycling center a mile from our house he found it closed.  He had missed it by six minutes.  He asked if there was another recycling center close and was directed to one nearly four miles away and up a steep hill.  Michael was not to be deterred and jumped on his bike.  Just before he left the first recycling center a perfect stranger snapped a photo of his load.  Once he was in the general vicinity of the recycling center he stopped at Lowes to ask for more specific directions to the recycling center.  While there he ran into a coworker of his who also needed to snap a photo.

After traveling a total of 5.5 miles since leaving the house, he pulled into the recycling center.  He unloaded the dryer, threw it on the scale where it weighed in at 110 pounds.  The the recycling guy said "Two dollars and twenty cents."  Michael thought he misheard, but then he was handed two soggy Washingtons and two dimes.

Woohoo!  We're rich!  Michael took his rather disappointing reward and pedaled on back home.  When he was more than halfway there, he realized he left all the straps back at the recycling center.  Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but they weren't his straps!  He either needed to recover them or replace them, and the latter would cost money so this dryer which was supposed to earn us $30 was going to cost us about the same!  Why, you ask?  Because when he got home he also noticed his little blinky light had come off his bike somewhere along the way.  Sigh.

Anyway, we eventually recovered the straps, returned them to the neighbor and Michael spent his hard-earned cash on an ice cream bar at Costco.  What a ride!