Pizza

Before the 22nd, I'd never gone to any sort of clean-up ever. I'd done other volunteer work (at a daycare with two- to five-year-old children), but I'd never done something like this. Like everyone else, I expected the trash to be simply lying along the edge of the river. I definitely didn't expect the trash to be embedded within the dirt and mud at the edge of the river and in the bushes, as much of a part of the landscape as the river itself. This made picking up trash much more difficult than I thought it would be. Picking up a piece of trash meant having to dig into the dirt or untangle it from a branch. At one point, we found a huge blanket that we had to pull from under the dirt. It was probably the hardest workout of my life. It didn't help that it was a hot day.

Though picking up trash certainly wasn't easy, it wasn't miserable. In fact, it was pretty fun. I enjoyed doing something good and spending time with friends. The free shirts were certainly a plus. The highlight of my day, however, was seeing a slice of cheese pizza floating in the river, following the current. I don't know how that pizza got there, but seeing it float like a boat sure made my day.