Pelican Parts Forums - Weird day today...

To make a long story somewhat short (if at all possible), I had borrowed my sister's utility trailer to pick up some furniture last week and she noticed that I had a few items piled up in the yard that needed to go to the dump. She told me to load it all up on the trailer and to bring the trailer back today so that we could take it to the dump. I stopped off at her house first and she had young guy working for her cutting limbs off trees etc... We loaded her brush and trash on the trailer, strapped it down and proceeded to the local dump. Now this county dump is often open on Sunday, but it is not a landfill. They do have an area set aside for brush and for building materials as well as a metals. We unloaded our brush in the brush pile and then we proceeded to the dump area. On the way to the dump area, you pass the area that they have set aside for metals. Right off the bat, I noticed a galvanized boat trailer for about a 16ft boat. The tires were aired up and the long tongue of the trailer had been removed and was sitting next to the trailer. Next to the trailer I noticed two large (Possibly about 3ft tall cast aluminum) walkway / streetlamp type fixtures. I told my sister what I noticed and she said that we could probably not take them from the dump.

Now, once passed the metal area, we have to back up a hill with the trailer to get to the dump station. Basically, the dump station is two large industrial dumpsters set side by side horizontally. The dumpsters are roughly 8-9ft wide, 24ft long and about 8-9ft deep. When you get to the top of the hill, you are basically looking down into the dumpsters. We backed up to the dumpster on the left and it was about 80% full already. We dropped the gate on the trailer and started unloading the trash.

I happened to look over at the dumpster on the right hand side to see how full it was and immediately noticed that it was roughly about 25% full. After further inspection, I noticed that someone had recently thrown away a next to new paddle boat into the dumpster. I also noticed what appeared to be a canoe bow sticking out from under the paddle boat. Okay, I was excited, I told my youngest daughter to go ask the attendant if I could jump down in there and pull the boats out. To my surprise, after along walk down to the attendants station, she returned to say that we were free to pull them out if we wanted to.

Luckily, we hadn't thrown the last mattress into the other dumpster yet, so I motioned for my sister's helper to bring the mattress over to the dumpster with the boats in it, so that we could toss it into the dumpster on the opposite side of the boats. There is about 3ft of trash bags piled up on this side so when we throw the mattress in, it lands perfectly in the middle so that we can jump down onto it and then maneuver to the side where the boats are.

When you're standing next to the dumpsters, you are at the top of an asphalt and concrete hill. There is possibly a one foot gap between the dumpster and the concrete edge located at the top of the hill. So this young kid (probably 17yrs old) jumps first and lands perfectly on the mattress and quickly moves out of the way so that I can make my epic jump! So I go to the edge of the concrete, keep my left foot on the concrete ledge and then put my right foot on the metal lip of the dumpster (which is about 5" wide). Now in my mind, I am thinking that I push off with my right foot and will land on the mattress. What happens next sort of happened in slow motion so I got a good idea of what happened. I went to push off with my right foot (which I was wearing steel toed boots) and didn't get any traction what soever, my right foot slipped and my left foot went straight up in the air. Next thing you know, I am falling face first into the dumpster towards the mattress. After a quick succession of black outs and fireworks going off in my head, I felt a large thunk go through my body and I awoke and immediately thought to myself "hey, there is another one of those cast aluminum lamp fixtures". I made a mental note of this and regained my composure and scuttled along to the boats.

After digging through some trash, we pulled out a 5 person paddle boat with the canopy still attached and in excellent condition (minus needing to be cleaned of coarse) next, we pulled out a canoe that was about 16ft long. I grabbed the light fixture and then climbed out of the dumpster. I had told the young kid that if he helped me get the canoe that he could have the paddle boat. We loaded them up on the trailer and pulled down the hill to the metal area. I told my sister to stop and I told the young kid that he should run to the attendants station and just ask him if he could take that boat trailer. I figured what the heck, the worst he could say was no. He came back with a big grin on his face saying that we could have it so I told him that he could take it if he wanted it. We managed to load that up on our trailer and I happened to grab the other two light fixtures.

We make it back to my sister's place and my niece falls in love with the light fixtures and offers to trade me for them. I let her know that I had already given them to my wife and that she would need to talk to her about it. So she walks over to my wife and they chat for awhile and then we follow my niece to her house. She traded my wife a three mirror antique vanity with burled walnut for the fixtures. My wife had been wanting a vanity for awhile now and the prices tend to run on the high side in my area for these types of furniture.

So when everything was said and done, I got me a canoe to take out on the lake, my wife got her vanity, my niece got her light fixtures, the kid got a boat and a trailer and now I have a very sore neck from actually "Dumpster Diving" today. I doubt that the person that coined the term "Dumpster Diving" ever meant for it to be taken literally.

Hope your day was as eventful! SmileWavy