Friday, March 27, 2009

Brick Recycling Day


We were running out of bricks to patch the old ducts & chimneys in the house and happened to come across the Eden condo construction site, where 3 old rowhouses have been demolished on Champlain St., on the way to dinner one night. Eric tasked me with going over there today and charming some bricks out of the construction workers. I was fortunate enough to find "Mauricio" who was just learning English (that's what he told me in Spanish) who told me we could have all we needed. He said someone else had already taken 7,000 of them but there were PLENTY left! Mauricio let us into the brick graveyard from the alley behind the bars on 18th St. Fortunately they passed Eric's weight, size & sight test so we started loading up 3 DC recyling bins full (we ultimately made 2 trips)! While we were collecting bricks, there were odors of oil and gas for some reason (probably an old chimney), and Rod commented, "this is kind of awesomely third world." It felt good to be recycling something 100 years old. We got about 150 bricks for free and Mauricio now has fewer of them to haul & dump. It was also fun to imagine what people on the street were thinking when they observed us strenuously hauling these very heavy recyling bins down Champlain St! The baby steps of progress continue...

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