You know when you sign up for condo living there are quite a few things that come into play.
Sure, there is a pool in your back yard
But there are other things also:
You don't pick your close neighbors
There are many more cars in your garage
There are pets around, even when none belong to you
When we purchased and moved in, we had our choice of units. Only one other had been sold, so there were 41 to choose from. There were 3 floor plans, and we decided not to buy the expensive one, and not the smallest one, taking the middle range in both price and space.
That decided, we needed to choose which one. We took one on the bottom floor, near the elevator and the trash chute. The first floor of condo units is actually the second floor, because the garage is on the ground level.
Seven years later, I found another reason to be where we are:
Our garbage is picked up each Tuesday and Friday. The truck pulls in and stops at the side of the building. The driver gets out, moves the trash container out of the room on ground level, pushes it out on its rollers to the front of the truck, activates the "grabber thing" that picks up the container, hoists it over the cab and dumps it in the garbage collection area. After shaking it a couple of times, the driver lowers it and gets it back in the room before driving off to get the other building.
This is a noisy process with a lot of metal-on-metal banging around. It also happens around 7AM on those pickup days. Luckily the master bedroom is on the other side of the condo, and we really can't hear it well from there.
This is also a pretty rapid operation. Once you hear the truck, the garbage is out of the room and into the collection area and the container back into place in a very short time.
It is good if you are trying to sleep in one of the front bedrooms, and it does goes quickly, but it is bad if you have something in your forgotten trash bin, and it really needs to go out, now.
This morning, as I sat in my study area, I heard the truck pulling in. Oops, I realized I had not taken our garbage out last night and put it down the chute. I had a lot of stuff in my trash that did not really need to percolate in the container for another 3 or 4 days, so I rushed (slowly) into the kitchen and pulled the trash can into my room, got the bag out, tying it up without waking my wife.
Then out the door, but then what? I knew if I put it down the chute and the container was already out in front of the truck, the bag would just fall on the trash room floor, and the container would cover it when the driver pushed that bin back into the room. Not good..
I saw the top side of the truck on the other side of the landing. The driver was just hoisting the container up to dump when I had an idea. Going to the railing I noticed the open top of the truck body where the garbage had been spilled from our container. Without waiting to see if anyone would see me, I tossed the bag over the rail and down into the truck.
Alas, I had found another advantage to living next to the trash pickup area, an added advantage to condo living that was not mentioned in the brochure.
No way you could accomplish that task from your own house. The truck would be long gone.
And I can still be in tune with that old Kazakh saying: (see 2nd blog post back)
"If you ever have to rush in life, rush slowly"
And I'll know the next time I hear that truck just how much time I have.
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