Earn your right to complain..

This Saturday, after an enjoyable bike ride in Assiniboine Park, I went home and picked up my son so we could clean up some trash in our neighborhood.  There is a cache (Takin a Dip) near my house that is in an area that is covered in garbage.  The source of the trash is the City of Winnipeg property adjacent to it.  It seems that they have a couple of dumpsters on site, and have on occasion missed the dumpster when throwing out garbage.  I have written an e-mail to the city about that.  But that is not what I am stewing about today.

What irks me is the people who have either logged finds or DNF's on the cache have made a point of complaining about all of the garbage in the area, but have not done anything about cleaning it up.  One person went so far as to demand that the cache be moved, or arrange to have someone go and clean up the space.  OK.  If you wish to point out that there is garbage in the area, fine.  It is good advice for the next cachers.  But PICK SOMETHING UP.  Especially if you have kids with you.  These are the lessons that kids need to learn.  My kids will now pick up "safe" garbage even when we are not out caching.  Safe, meaning that it isn't broken glass, or anything like that.

We were only able to clean up about 2 big bags before we ran out of time.  And even though we didn't have the GPSr with us, Mitch managed to find the cache!  He is awesome.