Dash for Trash

I spent last weekend in my hometown of Muscatine, IA.  I go home often, maybe a dozen times a year, but usually our trips over are short.  Since it's only a 1 hour & 15 minute drive to get there we often go over for what we need then head back the same day.  Even if it is an overnight trip we're usually consumed with why we went over there & it leaves little time for much else.  With the increasing demand of our lives here in Galesburg (mostly due to our children & their activities) we don't get over as much as we have in years past.  I'm ok with this because it's for good reason, but going home has always had a special place in my heart.

I was fortunate to have spent 3 days in Muscatine.  Yes, I had a specific reason to go over, but that only required a portion of my time.  The rest of the time we did as we please. Only 4 of my kids could come with me.  We packed the bikes in the van (one advantage of a big 12 passenger vehicle) and spent time biking along the River Front Park that winds down the Mississippi River.  The bugs were horrible (HORRIBLE!!!!), but the weather was great & we had a wonderful time.

On Saturday I went to meet up with the Muscatine Running Friends (MRF).  They are great about keeping me as part of the group even though I only get to run & sometimes race with them a few times a year.  They had an event planned called Dash for Trash.  We were provided with trash bags & plastic gloves then split into groups and worked at picking up trash through out the streets of Muscatine.

Even though it's a running group and it met during it's normal run time the event didn't require running.  If you've ever tried to pick up trash (lots of it, not just a random thing or two) then you don't get far and you have to stop, stoop over & pick it up.  So we did a lot of walking.  It took our group over 1 hour to walk the first mile of our route.  Sadly our world has become massively trash filled over the last several years.  Yes, we may be blessed compared to some nations & other parts of this world.  If you stop and really look though there is trash EVERYWHERE!  It's disheartening.

We were happy to come together for this cause.  For the most part we sacrificed our run time.  When you are with a great group of people it's worth it.  We still had fun, we still got plenty of exercise (and even some running in) and we helped the community.  I was paired up with Bill, Angela & Margarete.  We quickly filled up all of our bags we were provided with.  We chatted along the way & talked about what we were finding.  More than once we thought we had hit the millions with a winning lottery ticket.  I picked up siding from a house.  Several car parts were found, we joked that all put together we might be able to construct our own car.  We couldn't even begin to pick up all the cigarette butts we found.  We'd have to crawl on our hands & knees and inch along to get that done.  Bill found a water gun & it still worked.  He had a lot of fun with that.  It definitely required a Charlie's Angels pose.

 who says you can't have fun with a toy gun?!?!

We took turns running full bags of trash back to the start point 

 (see, when a runner really wants a run, we find a way!) and eventually made our way back to the beginning.  

In the end with all the groups combined we picked up 240 pounds of trash.

Sounds like a lot, yet there is so much more out there to be picked up and only a portion of the town was covered.  I'm still happy to be a part of this effort, every little bit counts!!

Have you ever picked up trash in your town?