March 18, 2006 - Sometimes I will pick up a piece of trash I find on the ground in parking lots. Today I got a real taste of picking up trash, as the Jaycees met at 9 AM at the corner of McMullen Booth Road and Keystone Road. We sponsor one mile of road, and clean it every 3 months. This was my first time coming out to clean up, since the first opportunity was while I was on the cruise ship. I was blown away at how many cigarettes, cigarette boxes, and other smoking products I saw. We left the cigarette buts since there were more than 100,000 along our mile and it would have taken weeks to pick them all up. Even more amazing and disturbing were all the beer cans and bottles of liquor. I personally picked up more than a case of beer along the mile stretch. Drinking and driving is clearly a bigger problem than I could have ever imagined. I can say with great certainty that these cans weren't from people walking by, since this stretch of road is not very pedestrian friendly. After our cleanup, which took about 1.5 hours, we went and got pizza nearby. I got elected the new president of the Gulfcoast Jaycee chapter ("running" uncontested). Now I'm going to have to figure out how to manage a Jaycee chapter and balance it with my new job. Later in the day I did some pressure washing on my sisters driveway, ran 4.5 miles, and sorted out my taxes with my dad. It appears that I am going to be paying 0% federal tax this year because my income was so low and I had a lot of deductions. Rock on!