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Old May 21st 17, 09:47 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
John B.[_3_]
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Posts: 5,697
Default AG: Rules that apply everywhere, part two

On Sat, 20 May 2017 23:26:23 -0300, Joy Beeson
wrote:


One rule that applies everywhere is "if no-one else wants it, you may
have it".

The hard part is determining that no-one else wants it.

Usually something set out by the road for the trash pick-up is fair
game, but I read about a trash hauler who got quite sniffy about
people picking good parts out of the trash. I think the company's
argument was that the owners hadn't abandoned the property, but had
transferred ownership.

Around here, the trash hauler sees stolen trash as one bit less that
has to be buried -- "sanitary landfill" was as silly a promotion as
all the other campaigns that had to be expensively sold and
evangelized (for example, the one that persuaded mothers that if they
followed the age-old practice of allowing a baby to lie on its back,
it would choke on its vomit), but that's another rant.

I have picked many a useful item out of the trash, though the only one
that comes to mind at the moment is a pair of perfectly-good crutches
I saw sticking out of a trash can. (I do hope they were cast aside
joyfully!) This struck me as something it would be wise to stash in
the hall closet in case of need, so I picked them out and took them
home -- whereupon I discovered that at their shortest setting, they
were for someone about twelve inches taller than me, so I took them to
Goodwill. No doubt some tall person was glad to get them. And I
never did need a pair of crutches -- my rolling walker works much
better. (It doesn't fit into the closet, though.)

I had something profound to say about determining whether nobody else
wants to use the road, but during the wordy digression, I forgot what.


I was even worse. I used to drive out to the land fill on a weekday
and prospect the place. I once found a perfectly good steel frame road
bike built for a very small adult or a child. I salvaged that (a
couple of six-packs to the land fill guys) and we stripped the thing
down and I had some friends in the Paint shop give it a really nifty
two color paint job (two more six-packs).

It looked so good that a couple of cops stopped the boy and asked him
where he got it. The Kid says, "My father made it". The cops put the
kin and the bike in a cruiser and brought him home. "Err, Missus,
where did your boy get this bicycle". "My husband made it." "What does
your husband do?" "Oh, he's in the Air Force, out to the base."

I always figured that the bike was pretty much theft proof after that
:-)

--
Cheers,

John B.

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