09/05/2009 By Kabutroid
WOW but mother nature hated us today 
. I woke up this morning to see it snowing... and not just tiny flakes once in a blue moon... we're talking big, fluffy flakes... and lots of them.
Shuddering at the sight of white misery, I put on some scrappier clothes, pulled out ye olde' winter coat, toque, and gloves (which I had hoped would remain in their 'winter spot' for another 5 or so months), and hopped into the car. Managing to have arrived about 20 minutes early, I made a quick stop for a geocache in St. Vital Park, and met up with Wagonmaker by blind chance. After that, he set off for the CITO event while I re-packed the few items back into my geocaching bag that I had removed for this cache.
Driving a few parking lots down, I pulled into a spot and wandered over to the meeting place. Hmm... rather peculiar that noone was here yet. Typically, there's at least a few early people. After about 5 minutes of waiting around and seeing noone (not even Wagonmaker who left shortly before me from that last geocache), I checked my palm pilot for the cache description.
Drat.
We meet at 9:00am at the CITO location... not at this location first. D'oh . Quickly starting the car and driving off, I arrived at the CITO parking lot just in time for a group picture. Hopping out of the car, I quickly jogged over for the group picture. That out of the way, we grabbed garbage bags and headed onwards. I started out by cleaning a stretch around that duck pond, and quickly found my way to the location that occupied the rest of my time at the event... the ditch. MAN, but was there a lot of garbage in that ditch alongside Bishop Grandin. For individual types of items, I think disposable cups (which seemed to be split up between Tim Hortons, Robins, and Wendys... or whatever tends to have a yellow cup) seemed to top the list. Otherwise, a lot of paper, strangely a lot of cardboard boxes (which were of course soaked with water, so it weighed a ton and a half), and miscellaneous other things. Unlike my last CITO event (which was significantly warmer, by the way), I didn't find anything particularly unusual or interesting on this one. Another geocacher came across a large concrete... thing... in a kinda bell shape that had a rubber gasket at the bottom... that's about it. Otherwise, just run-of-the-mill trash. Which I suppose is good, in a way... it indicates that most of that probably blew in with the wind (except maybe the few broken bottles I found... and that concrete thing), instead of being deliberately dumped there. Course, it's a lot busier down this stretch of road, so one wouldn't have time to dump anything anyway.
But anyway, about 11:00ish, Dani picked me up for a 5-minute rest while she made her rounds with water and more bags, and then I worked until the approximately 11:30 quitting time. Off we went to a cold, damp BBQ... but MAN did those hotdogs feel awesome going down when you're chilled to the bone 
. Although the potato salad turned too cold for my likings . Several hotdogs later, I went off for another quick geocache with Wagonmaker, and then called it a day.
All in all, I think we were very productive. Dani gave us a semi-quote of 37-someodd bags of garbage filled, and almost a 1-km stretch that was clean as a whistle . Not too shabby for a group of people and a few hours of work 
. Glad I was able to make this CITO event, and hopefully I can make the next.
Took: A whole ton of garbage from the ditch
Left: A lot of sinky footprints in said ditch, a Scuba dive flag TB, and a chainmail ball
08/05/2009 By Kabutroid
Planning to be there unless something drastic comes up... but I somehow doubt it. Yes, sorry... I realize I'm posting the 'will attend' at about 1:30 in the morning on the day-of. Didn't realize it was this weekend until just about now .
Greening the Greenway CITO Day
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