Many people who have lived out of a shopping cart for a while, call it "home" -- seriously. And they can take housekeeping quite seriously,also.
I watched this home owner "renovate" while I was sorting a load of bottles at the Go Green Return-It Depot. When I arrived, everything was piled around the cart, and it all looked like the sort of scattered mess of person and possessions I'd seen many times before. But no -- this was a man with a plan, which he carried out slowly and methodically. He house-cleaned, he renovated, he even did some landscaping. I became quite interested in how it would turn out, and, after I had cashed out my bottles, waited on the finished product. I wasn't disappointed. After he was all finished, he happily let me take a photo -- he knew he'd done a good job.
I think what ultimately puts it in a field by itself, is the shade tree. It's more than a finishing touch, it's a crowning glory. Greenspace is the sort of detail most shopping cart owners overlook. I bet it's been paying off big time, through the run of cloudless, sun-filled, days we've been having. Click the image to enlarge it.
Larry tests his "Petit chariot" (that's how Google translates "tiny shopping trolley"). Click image to make it larger, relatively speaking.[/caption]Shopping carts are getting harder to find, and binners have to make do sometimes. Here's Larry at the bottle depot, trying out a shopping cart he's found, but it doesn't look promising at all. Looking at the tiny load of bottles he has on board, I'm reminded of something Steve once said, trying to make the most of one of his least successful runs: "The good thing about a small load is it doesn't take long to sort." Larry opted to stick with the larger cart in the background. I won't be surprised to see the little cart being pushed through the lanes later by a binning raccoon.