Like a dog

Every now and then I remember why dogs love sticking their heads out of car windows. Although the whole looking into the wind thing does confound me a bit.

One of my friends used to drive trucks for a recycling company, and this was way before wheelie bins were around. Both the recycling and garbage were collected by different trucks that used runners who would grab the stuff from the curb, throw it into the truck and move on. Essentially the truck would just be slowly driven down the street while one or two runners would race between curb and truck constantly.

I joined my friend for laughs for a few months. Every friday morning we'd have to be at the depo by 4am to collect the trucks, squeeze into the cabin as we drove down to the start or our route, then the next 5 hours would cover a couple of suburbs. During the route, as a runner, we didn't go back in the cab, we'd either be hurling bundles of recycling into the truck, or seated on the rear step with a firm grip on a rail while the truck hurtled around to the next section of the route.

Halfway through the route, peak hour for the masses would start, and there was weird thrill in sitting on the back of a 5 tonne truck, the cold morning air whipping by and the ground just barely out of reach, while everyone else was bleary eyed and preparing to face traffic.

Oddly, I had an office job in those days as well, and the recycling gig was just for fun. So when the shift was done, I had to shuffle into the office to finish my friday and make up the lost hours.

Still miss those mornings though.