Your Patch Editor Gives Back, One Beer Can at a Time

I hate trash. Graffiti, too. So when Patch informed its editors they were giving us all time to give back to our towns in a little exercise we call Give5 it was a no-brainer for me.

I said I'd clean up around town. And that's what I did, and I learned a few things in the process.

First, there's a lot of trash in Lamorinda.  Not as much graffiti, but there's some of that, too. Enough to keep me very busy.

Second, a lot of people still smoke and drink. I stopped counting after the 334th cigarette butt. The drink of choice appears to be beer, judging by the number of cans I found out there, and St. Mary's Road was a popular dumping ground.

Third, people are still really nice for the most part, despite their propensity for abandoning plastic sandwich containers, plastic bags, Taco Bell hot sauce squeezie-things and one very dodgy looking used, well, let's call it a French Letter and see who gets the reference.

"Thanks for picking up the trash, man," a swarthy Skater Dude guy said as I huffed and puffed through the brush around the Moraga Skate Park. I thought he was riffing me but he meant it, and we shared a nice moment - before I stretched a hamstring to its limit recovering my 48th plastic water bottle of the day.

Sum Total for Give5 Day: Six large plastic garbage bags disposed of neatly and with dispatch; about 30 indecipherable squiggles and scrawls buffed out with alacrity by some elbow grease and a magical elixir called Graffiti Fighter, and one near-miss with a kid in a gold SUV on Moraga Road.

All in all, I think I did some good. I had fun. If you were one of the folks who stopped to talk about Patch, thanks for giving me the chance to catch my breath.