23 August 2007

Moving day.

I dread moving. Not moving away. The actual moving process. Last Friday I got the process going by inviting my brother, Evan, over so that he could drive me to the Fort Totten dumpster. It was a really generous offer that he simply couldn't refuse.

I took a half day at work because the dumpster is only open during work hours. And why not? What are they going to do? Fire me? Fire me for taking half a vacation day? A vacation to the dumpster in Northeast?

Anyway, I had a hodgepodge of items in my apartment to dispose of. A tall Ikea bookshelf that cost about $19.99 and was in no way worth moving; some ugly glass nesting tables I got as a hand-me-down; a weird hamper/shelving unit that my former roommate left behind; and who knows what else? It's out of sight/out of mind now.

Our biggest challenge was that my brother drives a Mazda 3 and the point of going to the dumpster was that I needed to get rid of items too large to dispose of in the regular trash. Large items, small car. This required destruction of said items before transporting them.

Destruction that Evan deduced could only be inflicted via karate chopping.


E: This isn't working. I wish I could just karate chop it.

L: If you have to karate chop it, karate chop it.

E: But I've never karate chopped anything before.

[Leslie exits living room. Immediately hears loud crash. Returns to see a broken top shelf.]

L: HEY! Quiet down! People live downstairs!

E: I can't be quiet when I'm karate chopping.

L: You're going to splinter yourself.

E: Not if I go through it. Karate choppers do it all the time. [long contemplative pause.] I'm not a blackbelt though.

L: If I get evicted before August 31st, I blame you.

[Evan attempts to karate chop through the wood again. Unsuccessful].

E: Ow! That hurt. [long pause]. I'm really not that good at karate.

After 3 unsuccessful attempts at breaking the shelf via karate chop, and one painful forearm later, I finally realize the need to capture this on video.



About 20 minutes later, we were headed to the Fort Totten dumpster. And little did I know, going to the dumpster is possibly the most cathartic Friday afternoon activity of all times. Now, I'm told by Evan that our experience at this particular dumping area is much different from others, but I'll walk you through what happened.

Upon arriving in the vicinity of the dumping grounds, we approached a security booth. The guy at the booth just waved us in. A bit later down the road we approached another gentleman at the gate who asked us to roll down our windows, but then said nothing. So I started talking.

L: Um, do you need my DC License?

Guy: [mumbling in what I could only half identify as Creole].

L: I.D. Do you need to see it?

Guy: [still sort of mumbling, but I manage to understand] Did the other guy look at it?

L: No, he didn't ask for anything.

Guy: But you have one, right?

L: Yeah. Wanna see it?

Guy: No. Go ahead.

Who knew the Fort Totten dumping grounds operated under the honor system?

We then pulled into what appeared to be the set of a Mad Max movie, loosely disguised as a construction site, driving ABOUT 4 miles per hour on the dirt surface while a dumpster employee yelled 3 or 4 times "Slow down!" So Evan brought it down to about 2.

There was absolutely no order to anything going on around us, but apparently the process is to back your car up as close as you can get to a random pile of trash and just start chucking your unwanted crap into the heap. We were launching 2x4s into the air, tables were getting hurled into garbage oblivion, and in a strange twist of fate, I ended up getting a splinter. I'd say for the dumpster experience, though, it was well worth it.

4 comments:

Rachel said...

its days like this that i wish i had streaming video on my computer at work. the second you wrote that evan wanted to karate chop it i knew this had to be awesome.

did the dumpster smell? i've never been to one, but i imagine its gotta be nasty.

LG said...

Actually, it didn't smell at all. I was surprised. Probably because it's where people bring their large item trash. Not like food trash. It was scrap metal and coffee tables and random big stuff like that.

Rachel said...

well then, was there anything cool there for the taking?

Anonymous said...

i drive a mazda 3 okay. and that 7-11 after the dumpster was the best 7-11 ever. Oh and you forgot to mention the 40 random trucks along the road to the dumpster and the road you can turn on to get to the dump however you can't turn back onto the main road from.