Hours of Operation

I love doing neat, original things with the boys (okay, mostly for Shaun since Ian simply doesn't care yet) that are preferably free to try and support whatever it is that Shaun's currently interested in.

Last summer he was really into diggers and the like: I spent most of July sitting on a blanket at the side of the road that was being reconstructed by our old house watching the excavators and front-end loaders. He was really into knights and castles: I hauled out the Little People Castle set and we took him to Medieval Times for an evening of dinner theatre. This week it's recycling and garbage trucks. So what did I do? Brilliant ol' me thought it a terrific idea to head to the city dump after dinner to try and catch a glimpse of the trucks as they were unloading. We followed 3 recycling trucks into the compound, parked at the recycling depot and sat on the curb for half an hour watching the trucks unload the glass bottles from their trucks. Then there was a front-end loader that would push all the broken glass back into the pile once each truck left. The driver was waving at Shaun and beeping his horn. Shaun was quite impressed.

Shortly after 6PM I loaded the boys back into the van and headed for the front gate. It was locked and the only way to open it was with a combination, like the kind for the kitchen at McDonalds. There was no one in sight except for the one guy driving the loader back at the depot but I wasn't about to search around for him. I drove back to the parking lot and noticed a pick-up truck pull in to the lot at the next building. When they drove up the road toward the gate I quickly followed, hoping they'd let me out.

I still don't really understand a couple of things: why the city feels the need to place heavy duty chains and combination locks on the gates for the recycling centre; and why they don't have their hours of operation clearly posted. There was no security when I entered, no one knew I was there, yet someone left and locked the gate behind them without knowing that there was anyone left inside.

It turned out that the people in the pick-up didn't have the code either and were from the University collecting rain barrels from the buildings in the compound. We drove around the dump for a while (Shaun got a pretty neat behind-the-scenes look at garbage, recycling and composting) and when we finally made our way back to the front gate, the guy who had been driving the front-end loader was on his way out too and was able to open the gate for us. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if we hadn't been there when he was leaving. Shaun was joking that we'd have to sleep on the glass bottles. I didn't have my cell phone on me and there wasn't a single other car in the whole compound. Lesson: learned!