Helping on Earth Day affects more than just how much you sleep in

I don’t get much sleep. I average about six hours a night, which might be a lot to some, but for me it means coaxing myself out of bed every morning with the promise of a coffee-guzzling rush of caffeine.

Needless to say, weekends are what I look forward to. It’s safe to say everyone in this fantastic country of ours looks forward to the weekend. And so, as a group, we all slap our snooze buttons and dream of those two special nights when we can go to sleep without having to set our alarm clock.

While driving home from work last Friday, I called my wife and she told me she was due at the South Waterfront District at 8:40 a.m. for a volunteer cleanup project presented by SOLV.

At this point of the story, I’d like to point out that I’m part of a gang. The husbands gang is an unorganized band of misfi ts that roams the outskirts of department store dressing rooms holding lady’s handbags, watching sports and nodding politely that, “of course I will come with you to cleanup trash.”

And so, for that night, I joined the ranks of the unfortunate few who set their alarms on Friday night and slapped it shut fi ve hours later Saturday morning. Before I knew it, I was putting on a disposable vest, latex gloves and fi lling up a paper cup with surprisingly good coffee.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. As far as places to clean up, the South Waterfront is about as good as it gets. Once I got past the initial grogginess and awkward introductions to my wife’s co-workers — it was through her job that she volunteered — I started to enjoy myself.

I enjoyed myself so much that I saved my disposable vest. There was an incredible amount of trash on the ground when I began looking for it and since then I can’t stop seeing it. SOLV reported that Earth Day volunteers removed 139,147 pounds of mixed waste from neighborhoods and in natural areas.

And I can proudly say I contributed about 15 pounds to that number. I am concerned with the state of our planet. But until that morning, aside from recycling and refusing to litter, I had never really felt part of the solution.

That morning, joggers were thanking us and, from the safety of their cars, people were studying our movements like we were bears digging through garbage. It felt like being pulled over on the side of the road, but instead of feeling people’s relief that it wasn’t them, I could swear people were almost envious of what we were doing.

It felt good to be out there doing my part, or at least stepping in the right direction of whatever that may be. I look forward to putting that vest on again, hopefully more than just once again this year.

I will even set my alarm on a Friday night if that’s what it takes because it felt good being part of the group that contributed to cleaning up Oregon last weekend.