Dante Goes on a Dumpster Adventure

I feel bad that this post will have no pictures. Just saying.

So, around this time (the beginning of summer) all of the college kids of U of O are moving out. You know what that means? It means they’re throwing away all their stuff.

Now, most people see that previous sentence and think “yeah, they are, so what?” and, I’ll admit, I was one of that group.

Until today.

My friend K-lub called me up this morning (well, I say morning, but really it was about 2, because I got up at about 1:30 WHAT CAN I SAY) and he casually informed me that he was going to raid some dumpsters.

I’ve always shied away from dumpster diving, not because of any “moral” or “ethical” reason, but rather because I have an aversion to gross things. BUT my thought processes were still kind of delirious on the possible findings of a FREE LAPTOP OMFG OMFG OMFG (spoiler: I didn’t find a free laptop)

So we hop on our man-powered all-terrain automatons (you may know them as ‘bikes’) and hauled ass towards the UO dorms, because, as you obviously know, we were somewhat late to the party. Most people hit up the dumpsters during finals week or even before, as K-lub told me. K-lub knows this sort of thing.

First we stopped by the Lorax, which is this big hippie dorm, where we saw our good buddy and camp counselor Max Smoot (he’s a bro fer sher) and then promptly started to ransack every dumpster we could find.

One of the first things I learned is that dumpsters aren’t actually that gross. I mean, yeah, there’s the occasional dumpster that’s full of like, old food or something, but most of them are just boxes of junk. And bags of food. But hey, at least they’re in BAGS.

So we went from dumpster to dumpster on our MPATAs, throwing the occasional goodie in my backpack or bike saddlebag, and honestly, it was pretty cool. You wouldn’t believe what some kids throw away. A lot of it was big furniture stuff, which was in perfect shape but too big/impractical for me to carry.

MAN I WISH I TOOK PICTURES. I mean, there was a fucking futon just out on the road. For free. A fucking legit futon, with like, varnish and shit. Seriously. I didn’t take it, but then again, I didn’t have a truck.

So we went badenturing for a good couple hours, and it was fun. And kind of addicting. You don’t look at dumpsters in the same way anymore.

Final haul-

* Three binders

* A notebook (empty)

* 5 ft of ethernet cable

* A clean hat

Okay, so it wasn’t THAT much. But still, for free? Pretty good deal. I did pass up some other stuff. Like the bottom half of a g4 PowerBook 17inch. It was missing quite a few peripherals, so it wasn’t really worth it.

According to some random bum-type guys we talked to, the best time to come and grab shit was earlier, because “You can grab TVs and Laptops and shit” just from the dumpsters.

In conclusion A+++ WOULD BUY AGAIN