Tuesday Rant

I often joked last summer that you could furnish a small home with the odds and sods that lay at the side of some of the roads of my running routes. You might be wondering what part of town do I run in?

Well, I don’t live “in town” (when I first moved to Maple Ridge it used to make me snicker a bit when I would hear people say that they had to “go into town”. Coming from Port Moody, “town” to me meant Vancouver, not the Valley Fair Mall or Haney Place…now it kinda does). While I do live in Maple Ridge, I reside on the outskirts, also known as the sticks. It is rural and quiet. In the summer months, it is not uncommon to have a family of bears in your back yard, it is also not uncommon in the summer months for some people to leave what they are done with at the side of the road, and also not uncommon for others to drive by and collect it.

Who can forget the toilet that spent several weeks at the side of the road? If it wasn’t for a very clever and well thought out marketing strategy, that toilet may still be there (within hours of the signage it was snapped up…it’s all how you market your product people).

It doesn’t take long for a line to be crossed and it is no longer a laughing matter (not that it was before, although the thinking chair was funny), in fact it becomes infuriating. On my way to Hayward Lake this morning, this is what I saw laying at the end of Matheson Avenue…

Really, who does this? They must be from the community as this is a fairly remote area. That said, if they live in the community they must drink the water, and out in the sticks we do not have city water, our homes are either fed from wells or from Hayward Lake.

The creek that runs along the embankment where all of the shit has been dumped, you guessed it runs right into Hayward Lake Reservoir. Not one bit funny.

So to Mr. (or Mrs. for that matter) covert midnight garbage dumping operation, I am sure that your family is really proud of you, and I hope that you put the couple of bucks that you saved by not paying to dispose of your garbage towards a good water filtration system, because sooner or later you will drink it.