Litter alley

UnderMyUmbrella
When dead hot, make your own shade.

It was already hot as I walked the dog at 9:30 this morning along one of our customary routes on a wooded path that follows a creek. Not Bermuda-in-July hot, but hot enough that the little beast began to pant by the time we reached the end of the front walkway. Hot enough that the birds had already taken shelter deep in the musty interior of cedar hedges.  Hot enough that I grew a sweat moustache. But not Bermuda-in-July hot.

Our destination was a loop around a small duck pond, perhaps a distance of ½ a kilometre (about 1/3 of a mile for the non-metric ). In that short distance I could have filled a kitchen sized garbage bag with pop cans and bottles, Styrofoam fast food containers, take-out coffee cups, cigarette butts and empty packages, plastic grocery bags, and water bottles, a pink cardigan, a toddler’s sandal, a bathing suit, a baseball hat, and a bicycle tire inner tube. Continue reading

Buzzed at the Great Wall

A portapotty sized box shuddered side to side and bounced over cable towers bringing us to the jumping off point on the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall in northern China. We were a 10 minute cable car ride and a five minute walk away from my forgotten epi-pen which was on the tour bus in the village below. A full eleven minutes more than it would take for me to die from anaphylactic shock if one of the Great Wall wasps the size of a cigarette lighter got bugged and stung me. Continue reading