Farewell..

On Sunday afternoon I went on a bike ride with a couple friends who left this morning to start a new life on the road. They will be camping, squatting, and couch surfing their way across the country over the next year or so and will have many adventures to share! Ill post a link to their blog when I get it..
Anyway, We ended up going quite a bit farther than I thought I could ride, about 40 miles.. But it was great! On the way back we stopped at two of my regular grocery stores and a few pharmacies, where we found loads of food to bring back! It was pretty exciting for everyone, since it had been a while since I've found a good haul and it was their first good dive. Since we didn't bring any food on our ride, we stopped behind the store for a little while for a snack before continuing on to the next store. When we reached the pharmacy we were already carrying so much food that we had to take our new loot to a near by friend's house to drop off so that we could retrieve it later with a car. We ended up finding a bunch of good traveling stuff that I was happy to donate to their cause.
We ended up bringing home:

5lb block swiss cheese
2 packages croissants
several bags of sub rolls and loaves of bread
9 4-packs of sugar free Red Bull
bottle of cranberry juice
lots of cinnamon buns
bag of mini bagles
12in cookie "cake"
half a deli ham
bunchs of individual boxes of raisins and crasins
some office supplies-stapler, scissors, etc..
several VHS tapes
The Jacksons and Elvis records

On a side note, I had another "Find whatever you want" experience the other night. I was biking around Saturday night looking for money and jewelry after bars and clubs closed. For whatever reason I kept thinking about finding a bluetooth headset. Not twenty minutes in to my search, I found one in "the good parking lot" which I have come to call it.. the one I usually find something interesting in.. I helped a neighbor move in a bed from the side of the road, which she was absolutely convinced had been sent to her by god. I find what I need almost on a daily basis and I take all the credit for being open for going out and getting it, though some of the coincidences are baffling...

Im think Im ready to start a new journey myself... im just not sure when Ill go or which direction will call me. Im supposed to be keeping an eye out for a "rare fossil." Maybe Ill know where to go after I find it..

Summer Scavenging

I went to a few places last night and was fortunate enough to find a few things worth bringing home. I went to a grocery and two pharmacies. Im still trying to figure out why no one throws as much stuff out as they do in the winter... I still have not found a a good load in quite a while. I was excited last night to find three boxes of assorted bags of chips(crisps) and snacks, but extremely disappointed when i found that each and every bag had a hole cut in it. I took them home and put them in zip-lock bags to keep them fresh. Fortunately I have a friend who left for Ohio this morning, so she and her friends took most of them for snacks on the road. I guess opening packages is an attempt to keep people from going back after their shift and taking stuff, but it makes me fucking sick. Every day there are two homeless people that panhandle on the corner of the adjacent intersections. why shouldn't they be able to take something they need to survive from what a store throws away...????? Everything is so fucked up and backwards that I feel hopeless a lot of the time.. people starve to death every day while some soulless shell instructs its employees to destroy perfectly good food.....for what? to keep costs down? to discourage stealing? I dont fucking get it. I used to think that people could rise up and be good to each other; take care of each other and what not... Im not so hopeful any more. People are only interested in how much money they have and what they can get for themselves with it. It makes me wonder what a persons life is worth. It makes me wonder what the point of living at all is.

I found a block of provolone cheese
a cantiloupe
a banana
two boxes of hot wings (times are tough and I haveto eat whatever is available..)
3 packs of trail mix
bag of beef jerkey
about 30 bags of assorted chips

Ive also been taking anything I can find that will sell in hopes of having another yard sale soon. The high income neighborhoods around me throw out nice stuff on sunday night before trash day. Damn, this depression really sucks... God damn you to hell, George Bush.

Summertime! and the livin is tough..

I havent had a good score in weeks now. I jumped in the smelliest dumpster I have ever encountered and it turned out to be for naught; the watermelon i was after was rotten on the inside. Summer sucks for diving. Ill have to start going much earlier in the day to find anything still good..

Booored

This summer has been so lame thus far. I havent found a whole lot in the hot smelly dumpsters of summer lately and I have not been working much either, so sleep has been a big part of my days.. Im getting tired of it, though. I had a shift at one of my jobs near a shopping center the other night, so when I left I decided to check the pharmacy and bookstore dumps. I couldnt find much without a flashlight but I did find an entire case, 32 boxes, of cordial cherries. Im not a huge fan so ive been looking for people to give them away to.

I went tubing down the Dan river yesterday, which was awesome! It is so much fun to go with a big group of friends. It was the first official summer activity I have participated in this year. We took a few cases of beer and tons of granola and nutra-grain bars and dried fruit and stuff that Ive stockpiled and made a day out of it. It was relaxing but etremely exhausting at the same time.

In other news, I may be getting and AWESOME summer job! I have been speaking with a woman who owns a farm where she grows bluberries mostly, but also grows muscadines, peaches and other yummy treats. Since her husbands sudden death last year shes been looking for someone to manage the operations and get the food harvested and sold at farmers markets and stuff. Hopefully I will be the one overseeing all of those activities. I'm going out to the farm tomorrow to check things out and talk about what she wants to do. This would be the perfect job for me since I already do it with my blackberry patch. Speaking of my blackberries, its about that time of the year.. I should go out to check on how they have been growing this year.
Well hopefully some more interesting things will be going on this week for me to post about. Ill probably go diving tonight or this weekend since Im still pretty low on fresh food.

Back in Action

I went out last night for the first time in a while. I ended up going alone again, but i guess its okay since I didnt really find a whole lot that I needed help with.. but I did find some interesting stuff. It had been raining almost non stop for the two days before and many of the bins had several inches of yucky soup in the bottom, so I didnt bother diggin very deep, just picking through the top stuff. At the two grocery stores it was evident that I had been beaten there by other people. I guess its the homeless people cause they only ever take the cooked food and leave fresh produce and canned stuff behind. After not having been for a couple weeks, i feel like I have lost my edge.. a diving run was something that I yearned weeks ago, but it seemed a bit daunting last night. I understand a little better how difficult it would be for someone to just jump into the lifestyle without anyone around to back them up..

3 pears
3 apricots
2 boxes strawberries
bag of grapes
bag of broccoli
baby carrots
case of 24 20oz. bottles of gatorade
celery
an umbrella
leopard print scarf
several 5mg muscle relaxer tablets (flexeril)

As of late..

Let me apologize for not keeping up with posts lately; i was sick most of last week and didnt feel like digging in dumpsters or writing, though I was glad to give a could live vicariously by giving a couple friends my best locations and advice for their first dive. They didnt have a huge success, but did find lots of bags of doritos in a dump that I had never checked before. Now that Im feeling well, its time to go for a grocery run. Since word of my escapades has gotten around my ring of friends and beyond, I have met and heard about more and more people who do similar stuff around here, so Im gonna try to get a group of interested people together some time later this week to go with me.
I had a yard sale last weekend that was mostly stuff that Ive accumulated over the last few months. I made enough to pay rent :)
My friend Erin, who is visiting family in Philadelphia, went out last night with her freegan cousin to go diving. She and her friends go regularly and feed homeless in a park. Im very excited and eager to hear Erin's stories when she gets back..
Well, more to share later.