I girded my loins for a venture into the suburbs (believe it) and drove to Fridley this morning to help out Mr. Michael Recycles Bicycles with a recycling day effort.
It didn't help that we had the first snow of the season last night and it was probably in the high-20's when I left at 7:30 this morning, but it warmed up pretty fast and turned into a pretty nice day.
Something like 100 bikes were dropped off today, and of those, about 50 were salvageable. These were loaded onto trailers to be hauled back to the MMRB shop on Prior Ave. in St. Paul. The remaining bikes became on-the-spot-tear-down projects. Tear-down amounts to removing anything that is not metal from the bikes, hauling the carcass over to the scrap metal dumpsters and putting the plastic/rubber into the garbage.
It was hard work; I was outside about 7 hours today doing this. My hands ache and my face feels wind-burned, but it was fun and we did good deeds, which counts for something.
I was most impressed with the number of people that were hauling in electronics and scrap metal to get rid of - when I arrived at about 8:00 this morning, the line of cars waiting to get in stretched what would be equivalent to about 4 city blocks, and this was an hour before the gates opened. The amount of waste is simply staggering.
More photos here.
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