Shop 'til I drop.

The moving truck arrived this week, but I won’t be into my new place for another few days.  Now I’m trying to remember what I packed. Life seems so much simpler and weightless, while living out of two suitcases.

When I was packing I tried to strike a good balance between too much stuff and not enough.  I’ve heard it’s easy to move TO Yellowknife.  It’s a whole other story when you’re trying to leave.  By the sounds of it moving companies charge triple to move people out of here.  This is the reason for the culture of what I’m calling, dumping and running.

Locals here don’t use online classifieds like Craigslist or Kijiji to sell and buy stuff, oh no, the town has it’s own version of that -- of course.  Yk Trader.com  as well as placing ads in the classifieds in the local paper.  These are the two main forums for everything!  

But I’ve also heard about another location in town that is most popular for dumping and running --- the DUMP.  I had to see it for myself.  Driving up on to the local dumps weigh scales I started laughing, “Nothing to dump, just here for a look”.  I said to the attendant.

The guy in the booth chuckled.  I was clearly making a bigger deal out of this excursion than I needed to. His reaction to my reaction told me this was a completely common thing to do on a Saturday morning. 

Driving up to the area  labeled for junk drop off it was clear I wasn’t the only one with this idea for an outing.  Some people looked like haggered regulars others looked like newbies that were just as sheepish as I was about climbing around on the mountain of other people’s rejected household belongings. 

But I went for it.  There were cribs, chairs, sofas, boom boxes and wheels of steel cable.       Some items were in great shape, most others not so much.  I picked up a deflated basketball that was coated in frost, but quickly decided against it.

The bunch of us, all strangers to each other looked like ravens. Hopping around scavenging and then dropping what we found when we lost interest in taking it home. 

The trip ended with no real finds, maybe next time after I move into my new apartment.  And when I do hop around on that mountain of junk again, I’ll take a picture to document this truly Northern Canadian style of shopping.