Cleaning Up St. Croix

This weekend the island has undergone a major spring cleaning. Hundreds of volunteers came out to pick up roadside litter as part of an effort sponsored by the St. Croix Environmental Association, St. Croix Foundation and The VI Waste Management Authority.

This is all in preparation for next week's Ironman 70.3 Triathlon, when world-class athletes swim, bike and run around the island in order to qualify for the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii. St. Croix is considered one of the most beautiful courses in the sport, and the island takes great pride in this distinction. Click here http://www.stcroixtriathlon.com/half-course-map.html for a map of the entire St. Croix course.

So when the call for volunteers went out, Bob and I signed on to clean the 1.5 mile stretch (or 3 miles round trip) from Route 80 to the entrance to Salt River Marina.

Along the way we found many, many beer bottles, tires and other debris. Other people had already collected a lot of stuff along the section some weeks ago, which definitely made our job easier.

We picked up nothing terribly interesting. Just plain old garbage.  We completely filled up nine 39-gallon green bags, which we left dispersed along the entire section.

We picked up from 6am to 10am. We started at sunrise to avoid some of the heat and traffic. Some people were very supportive of our efforts, giving us high-fives (on the elbows, since our gloves were filthy!) and stopping to chat. Others honked and waved.

We finished hungry and tired, and so treated ourselves to a big breakfast at the new IHOP in Sunny Isle.

Our names went on the waiting list as Barack and Michelle, after we refused the card for Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise (my least favorite actor).

The breakfast sampler didn't disappoint.

Luckily, it rained during the meal and not during the litter pickup.

It was good to see clean roads awaiting the athletes next week.