Holland: Day 8, and Today

I'm skipping over Day 7 in Holland for now, although I will try to write about it later. I'm going to move ahead to Day 8, Saturday Sept. 12, the day I celebrated my 30th birthday in Holland.

My real birthday is actually a few days later, but since I was leaving Holland on Sept. 13, I celebrated it early. It was very important to me to spend my birthday with my grandmother, who was there when I was born and after whom I am named (my middle name), because I knew it would probably be the last time I'd see her. In August 2006, she was diagnosed with cancer and was given three to six months to live. More than three years later, in September 2009, she was still with us, and I was acutely aware of what a treasure that was.

She passed away this morning, January 16, 2010.

On Friday Sept. 11, my aunt Ellen called the bakery to make sure they would have enough of the pastries ("gebakjes" in Dutch) we like, so we could pick them up fresh the next day. We ordered tompoesen (like a Napoleon) and moorkoppen (round, cream-filled, chocolate-covered éclairs). On Saturday, we picked up my birthday pastries and took them over to my grandmother's. Ellen and Oma ("Grandmother" in Dutch) presented me with a nice birthday gift: three tall, colorful, pillar candles and 20 euros. I am looking at the candles as I write this; they are sitting on a shelf in my living room, as yet unlit, reminding me of that Saturday.

My cousin Michael stopped by with his three cute kids, and scored one of the extra pastries I had bought. My aunt Nancy and her boyfriend Geert also came by, enjoyed some birthday "gebakjes" and gave me a lovely gift of some Hugo Boss women's perfume and lotion. My aunt Astrid and uncle Frits also stopped by, and we took a nice photo together on Oma's sunny balcony. Her balcony overlooks a canal with a bridge arching over it, and as kids my brother and sister and I would take the old bread crusts that my grandparents saved and feed them to the ducks at the canal. It was one of the delights of my childhood.

That evening, Ellen made salmon and Dutch-style potatoes and green beans ("snijbonen") for dinner, and the four of us — Ellen, Oma, my mother and me — enjoyed our last meal together.

Those days I had with my Oma in September were priceless, and I can only be grateful I was able to see her just a few months ago. Other than the house I grew up in, no place in the world is as vivid in my memory as my grandmother's apartment by the canal, with its heavy wood furniture, bright kitchen, cozy living room and tiny spare bedroom, where I spent many nights.

Tonight, after sunset, I may light my birthday candles for the first time. My grandmother once told my sister, "Every day is a holiday for me." It reminds me of a quote by Thomas Dreier that I read on New Year's Day this year: "If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time — not tomorrow, nor next year, nor in some future life after we have died. The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year. Today should always be our most wonderful day."

So, I'm going to light those candles, and I'm going to enjoy them.

Weekend Breakfast

There's nothing like waking up to glorious weather on a weekend morning and making a hot breakfast of eggs and coffee.

Keeps one feeling human.

Holland: Day 6

Until Thursday, Sept. 10, I never knew that the nation of Holland was born in a little city called Dordrecht, bordered by five rivers. Dordrecht is, I discovered, not only the oldest city in Holland, but also a charming place with sailboats in the canals, lovely shopping streets, and plenty of historical landmarks.

My uncle C and aunt L took me and my mom to Dordrecht as a day trip. First, we visited the local Tourist Bureau, known as the VVV in Holland. It was a very nice building with lots of information on the historical significance of the area. Then, we ate lunch at La Place, a department store eatery that usually has good lunches. After that, my uncle led us on a tour of the city, pointing out landmarks and incredibly old houses dating back to the 1600s.

We then took a wonderful "whisperboat" (fluisterboot) — so named because the boat is very quiet — tour down the canals of Dordrecht.

We saw picturesque scenes of boats decorated with Dutch flags.

A fireboat is docked along a Dordrecht canal.

Wouldn't it be nice to live along a pretty canal like this one?

The tour we took included replications of Dutch artworks along the canal walls.

A Dordrecht resident displays a Michelle Obama sign in his or her window. (It's always interesting to see items from where I live (the U.S.) in other countries—like the time I saw a man in Brisbane, Australia, wearing a Barack Obama shirt.)

Dordrecht's City Hall ("Stadhuis") is a beautiful building visible from below as one sails underneath it on a canal boat.

After the boat tour we walked around the city some more and stopped in a little chocolate shop called Oh La La, in which one of the two men working there placed fresh, handmade bonbons into boxes while a machine along the back wall mixed a truly yummy-looking batch of liquid chocolate. The shop was small and smelled wonderfully like cocoa. We bought some chocolate-covered nougat and a couple of bars of berry-and-nut-filled chocolate, which tasted as if it had been made by hand only hours before. It was probably the best chocolate I have ever eaten in my life.

We also stopped in to see a couple of art exhibits and an exhibit about Calvinism, a religion that greatly influenced Dutch culture centuries ago.

The weather cooperated with us that day, lending us sunshine and enough breeze to keep us cool. Dordrecht was a pleasant place to spend a Thursday, and I hope I'm able to go back one day and see the rest of the sights and museums that we didn't have time for on this trip. As the city where Holland first declared itself an independent nation in the 1500s, it has a lot of history to share. Imagine a city where people are still living in houses that are 400 or 500 years old. Amazing.

Holland: Day 5

After our nice trip to Rotterdam on Tuesday, my mom and I went back for some more the next day. We took the tram to the train station and then took the train to Rotterdam to meet my aunt Nancy for lunch. We were early, so we passed the time by shopping in a very nice store called de Bijenkorf across the street from City Hall, or Stadhuis. As we passed the Stadhuis, we saw a dark-haired couple, the woman in a white wedding dress and the man in a dark suit, standing next to a white horse-drawn carriage in front of the Stadhuis steps. In Holland, I think people get married on weekdays more often than in the U.S.

De Bijenkorf sells everything from fresh, non-boxed bonbons (strategically located by the front doors so you see and smell the decadence when you walk in) to clothes, home accessories, and lots more. In the store, my mom found a nice grey wallet to replace the black one she's had for at least 10 years, which was falling apart. She also bought a designer cheese grater — no, that's not a joke. It's made by Alessi and looks really cool:

I found two blue-and-white Dutch potholders and matching oven mitts, and I was very happy with my purchase.

We then had a nice lunch at a restaurant's outdoor patio with Nancy. Rotterdam is a bustling city during the week, and I'm sure in the evenings and weekends as well. The area by the Stadhuis has wide plazas of gray stone, with lots of shops and restaurants, and a tram line running through it. When I was there I imagined what it would be like to live and work there, taking the train to work and walking in my heels or boots to an office, then walking around the city to grab lunch and run errands during my break, perhaps meeting friends for a drink at an outdoor patio after work sometime.

Of course, it's easy to idealize a place when you're a visitor and don't have to deal with any of the inevitable daily annoyances that plague all places. But still, there's something just a tiny bit magical about a place where you see a beautiful couple getting married on a Wednesday, across from a store with chocolates and sweets piled high in enticing displays, as multitudes of pedestrians make their way from one place to another.

Holland: Day 4

My mom had planned an outing on my fourth day in Holland: she, my aunt Ellen and I were to take a ride on the Spido, a ship that tours the Maas River on Rotterdam Harbor, the third-largest harbor in the world.

So, on Tuesday Sept. 8, we took a taxi to the Spido, bought tickets, poked around a tourist shop, and then waited to board the Spido. As the previous tour group was disembarking, I noticed some of them were disabled in some way, apparently mentally; some of them were teenagers or young adults and a few were older adults. It must have been a special school or group or care facility taking a day trip.

Once we boarded the Spido, of course coffee and cake were the first priority!

Some of the most memorable sights we saw from the boat were:

The Holland America pier from which my grandparents and their five children set off for Australia in 1956. The journey took six weeks. While in Australia, my aunt Ellen was born, and once the family returned to Holland several years later, the seventh child was born.

The architecturally stunning Erasmus Bridge.

The river-side edge of my hometown in Holland, complete with a picturesque windmill.

After our boat ride, we ate lunch at a lovely little outdoor lounge at the river's edge, enjoying the sunshine and relaxing atmosphere. Here's a view of the boardwalk, with the restaurant on the left:

Our quiet Tuesday in Rotterdam on the Spido along the Maas River was a pleasant one.

Holland: Day 3

My third day in Holland, Monday Sept. 7, was warm and sunny. My mom, my aunt Ellen and I visited my other aunt Nancy and her family at their newly built, supermodern house in Rotterdam.

Nancy and her boyfriend recently spent a couple of years designing this house with an architect and then having it built along a canal in a lovely neighborhood. The house is all white, black and steel; with hard slate and wood floors; and the garden is a work in progress with native plants and a pond filled with little frogs.

Getting to Nancy's house was an interesting trip. First, the three of us walked to the tram stop near my grandmother's house and took the tram to the metro station, where we boarded the underground metro train, or subway. I scanned my ticket the wrong way at the door and accidentally invalidated it. Because I knew I had paid, I slipped through the door behind my mom, whose ticket was still valid, but the doors shut on my elbows and set off an alarm. I was too surprised to be embarrassed at that point. I walked over to the office and told a metro staff member what happened. He seemed amused that I even bothered to go over to them to explain what happened, and waved me on.

It was warm enough in the metro train to be slightly uncomfortable, made worse by how crowded it was. My aunt got a call on her cell phone and talked too loudly on it, the way older people often do, causing the young Dutch man sitting behind her to smile a small smile to himself. The walls inside of the metro train had been spray-painted with graffiti, and while the paint was still wet it had run down the walls in rivulets. Most of the paint was black, so against the beige walls of the train, it looked like running mascara, as if the train were depressed.

We arrived at our subway stop and exited, and because my ticket had been previously invalidated I again had to squeeze out the doors directly behind my mother, and again the alarm went off. But this time my aunt was standing right outside the doors, ready to whisk us away in her getaway car to her new house.

Funny how you can go from sitting in a hot subway train with crying walls to relaxing in a luxurious house with wine and snacks and sunshine on the patio in just a matter of minutes.

Going Dutch for Dinner

For my birthday, my good friends Amy and Charlie presented me with a heavy, red Dutch oven. The very next evening, I decided to put it to good use. Although I've been a pescetarian for three years (meaning I eat no other meat but fish) I had a hankering for chicken and decided to splurge on some organic, free-range chicken from Whole Foods.

I've never cooked a meal in a Dutch oven before so luckily Amy and Charlie gave me a cookbook as well. I picked a recipe and modified it a little.

I used skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cumin seeds, cherry tomatoes, red onion, whole wheat pasta, olive oil, vegetable broth, salt, and pepper, with the convenience of a bag of frozen vegetables on the side.

I also added whole cloves of garlic to the mix.

I pre-baked the cherry tomatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper for 15 minutes.

Then I combined the rest of the ingredients with the tomatoes.

I baked the dish for 50 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

My end result falls short in the presentation department, but it sure tasted good. The Dutch oven seems to allow the flavors to combine well, and the food turns out nice and hot.

Holland 2009: Days 1 and 2

Last week, I visited the country in which I was born: Holland. Although I would have ideally liked to write about each day there as it happened, I didn't have a computer with me, and my aunt's was too slow to rely on. So, instead I will spend the next few nights blogging about my visit in retrospect.

The day I arrived, Saturday Sept. 5, I was jetlagged and had to take an afternoon nap at my grandmother's house — a place of great comfort and fun since I was a small girl. I then used my brand-new video camera (an early birthday gift from my fiancé) to record images of my grandmother, one of my aunts, and my mother, who had travelled to Holland several weeks before for a visit as well. I also videotaped the view from my grandmother's balcony, overlooking the canal and bridge where ducks congregate. When I was little it was the highlight of my day to take my grandparents' old bread crusts, which they saved for the ducks, down to the canal's edge and throw the bits of food to the quacking animals.

The next day, Sunday Sept. 6, my mom and and took a lovely walk in the Delfland, a farmland area near my grandmother's apartment. Below is one photo I took during our Sunday walk:



Here is a photo of one of the little farms in the Delfland:



One of the many nice things about Holland is the everyday beauty it has — you can find it in the little things, like the window displays of chocolate shops, sailboats nestled near each other in canals and rivers, old-fashioned windmills made of brown brick, flower pots on window sills, cafés, architecture. This Delfland is another example. It's a beautiful area in between the cities of Schiedam and Delft, and while Schiedam is not known for its beauty, it still offers this pleasant, relaxing farmland in which to walk on a Sunday afternoon.

Tomorrow, I Turn Thirty

Tonight is my last evening in my twenties.

For the last few months, I've been dreading turning thirty. Mostly, because I feel like I missed a lot of opportunities in the last decade. Opportunities in education, friendships, in my personal development, in saving money, and other areas. Today, though, I realized that instead of dwelling on what I didn't get done in my twenties, it would be less depressing to catalog what I have accomplished.

I won't bore you by listing all those things here, because one's accomplishments are really most interesting to oneself, but I suspect that once I really start thinking about it, I will have a long list of achievements or activities that will make me proud of how I spent the last 10 years of my life. And, I hope that when you read this blog post, you too will give your own self-esteem a boost by taking stock of everything you can be proud of in your life so far, no matter your age.

Land of Orange

I am in Holland this week, visiting family and making plenty of mental notes for future blog topics. I arrived Saturday, Sept. 5, and the weather was mildly sunny, and it felt nice to be back in my grandmother's little apartment, but also strange because it's been three years since I last visited. I had a bad case of jetlag, for some reason, perhaps because of the cold I picked up just before I left, and I am still fighting feelings of fatigue several days later.

Holland has changed. At least, the part of Holland where I am now. Or, perhaps I have changed. In the last three years, it seems that I have become more attached to my home in the U.S. and have begun disconnecting from what always felt like home here in Holland. Maybe that's because I bought my first house in the U.S. Maybe it's because I am turning thirty in a week and, in turning over the page to a new decade in my life, I am also leaving behind some of my childhood attachments to this place.

However, I have enjoyed some very nice, familiar things on this trip so far. The beautiful September sun. The cute, bricked roads. The flowers everywhere -- on restaurant tables, in shops, on tour boats, even. My grandmother and aunts and cousins. The incredibly bucolic Delfland just around the corner from my grandmother's apartment, with pastures, farms, horses, sheeps, cows and neat rows of trees lining walking paths.

But, for the first time, I do not feel completely safe walking or riding a bike from my grandmother's to my aunt's apartment -- a journey that literally takes about a minute and a half on the bike. There are suddenly "hang jeugd" -- or "hanging out youth" -- loitering around my grandmother's building where before I do not remember ever feeling unsafe. On the news there are stories of armed robberies, teenagers caught in crossfire, and women being pushed off their bikes and attacked.

As a virtual foreigner in my own land, it's entirely possible that I am letting a tiny feeling of nervousness turn unnecessarily into paranoia . . . but for the first time since I moved away from Holland I find myself yearning for the boring small town I used to live in near the coast. Today I spoke to an old friend of mine who still lives in that town, and I asked him if things had changed there. He said, no, not one bit. I felt a great sense of relief where before I may have felt a tinge of disdain.

On Friday I will go and visit my friend in that town, and I will see for myself if it has changed. But as I am idealizing it, it would behoove me to remember that when we lived there, aggressive pubescents also took pleasure in terrorizing other kids. Perhaps then the fear was of bullies. Now it's of bullies with guns.

Regardless of how Holland has or has not changed, I stil love it, just as I love my home in the U.S. It is interesting to be from two places at once. It's a feeling I can't quite describe -- its not like a having a split personality but rather having double personalities. Two in one.

Mercy and Money

I read an article yesterday about how the egg hatchery industry kills 200 million baby chickens each year — some by throwing them alive into a grinder — simply because they are male and can't produce eggs.

For anyone who cares enough to do even a tiny bit of research, it's excruciatingly clear how much suffering and misery exists in any industry where large numbers of animals are raised for food, whether it's for meat, eggs or milk.

Here are a few excerpts from the article I mentioned:

These chicks, which a narrator says are males, are then shown being dropped alive into a grinding machine.

In other parts of the video, a chick is shown dying on the factory floor amid a heap of egg shells after falling through a sorting machine. Another chick, also still alive, is seen lying on the floor after getting scalded by a wash cycle, according to the video narrator.

For some people, the answer is to not consume any animal products. That is definitely a choice I find no fault with. However, my ideal solution would not be to force everyone to become vegetarian, but instead for it to be possible to people to enjoy meat, eggs and milk without contributing to the agony of millions and millions of living, breathing beings. That means the horrors of factory farming would need to end. Sadly, the only way those horrors will end is if it becomes more profitable for the factories to care well for the animals than to mistreat them.

As a friend of mine wrote to me today, "It is so much work trying to shop and buy from a company with good practices and standards." And that is what's so frustrating as a consumer. Grocery stores and shops are like minefields, filled with factory-farmed chicken that claims to be "natural", toxic baby formula, poisoned pet food, lead-tainted toys, and who knows what else.

Why have the world's markets — and the world's consumers — allowed profit and convenience to come before basic human decency? Who is protecting the baby chickens being manhandled along a conveyor belt that is heading toward a grinder, and who is protecting us from our complicity in their deaths?

Party Time

I wanted to give an update to my Aug. 23 post. So far, making myself earn my meals has been working well. I get up in the morning, try to drink water before I have my coffee, and have a healthy breakfast (whole grain cereal or fruit and eggs, for example). At work I wait until I am feeling pretty hungry and then get as healthy a lunch as I can in the cafeteria. Then, I either walk the dog or do another active task before dinner, and I make myself clean up the whole kitchen before I settle down to have dessert (yogurt or a light fudgesicle).

Now, it hasn't been working every day — one afternoon last week, the fresh blackberries I had brought for a snack turned out to have mold on one or two of them, so in a moment of insanity I got a bag of peanut M&Ms and a cereal bar from the vending machine and scarfed them down. But, for the most part, I am feeling more energetic and productive, because I am keeping myself busier with earning my next meal.

It's also helping me be more mindful of what I eat. I noticed a dramatic difference on Saturday when I had to attend two birthday parties in the same day, one in the afternoon and one that evening. Normally, parties are a recipe for nutritional disaster for me. But this time, I had a healthy breakfast that morning, then a salad for lunch and a soy-milk latte for a snack before the first party. Then, all I had was less than one bottle of Miller Lite and small piece of the birthday cake with no icing. At the second party, there was barbecue, so I had the grilled fish and veggies, a few small fried vegetarian items, a couple of beers and literally just a few sips of a vodka and Sprite.

By the end of the night I still felt energetic and not at all how I usually feel after a birthday party — bloated, stuffed and vaguely ill. When I woke up the next morning, I did have a tiny hangover, probably more from lack of sleep than anything else, but after some juice, boiled egg and fruit for breakfast, it was gone. I was so impressed with this accidental discovery that I kept talking about it to my fiancé the next day. I hope I remember this the next time a party rolls around.

Redeeming my day

This afternoon, I decided to visit a more expensive grocery store than we usually go to, because we had a $10 coupon that expires today. During the car ride to the store, I was feeling proud of myself for finally remembering to take with me the earth-friendly grocery bags that have been sitting in my pantry for months. Then, right as I exited my car, I realized I had forgotten the coupon.

I weighed my options (go back home and get the coupon, shop without the coupon, or forget the grocery shopping altogether) and decided to go ahead and get a few things without the coupon. I was feeling pretty irritated with myself, because I chronically forget things like this and I don't know why.

As I walked toward the store, I saw two kids throwing bark from the store's landscaping at a passing car, a woman with Down Syndrome stopping to tie her tennis shoe, and several bags of roasted green chile peppers sitting outside on a display table covered in that crushed grocery-store ice.

Then I entered the store and saw all the lovely stacks of fresh produce and fruit. I bought some red organic tomatoes on the vine that were on sale. I took a number at the seafood counter and, when the guy punched the machine twice instead of once, causing it to skip right over my number, I waved my little #17 paper in the air and said, "You skipped number 17." With a straight face, he joked that he was just checking to see if we (the customers) were paying attention. Then he gave me the more expensive salmon at the price of the one on sale.

I wandered over to the bulk section and filled a clear plastic bin with roasted almonds so fresh they practically pop when you chew them. I filled a brown paper bag with whole coffee beans that I am looking forward to grinding and steeping in hot water in my French press tomorrow morning. I stopped suddenly mid-aisle to turn my cart around, not noticing the man behind me, who pulled back his cart to make room for me and said, "I brake for pretty girls!" (It's always nice to receive a completely unexpected compliment.)

By this time I didn't care anymore that I had forgotten the coupon. It's a privilege to be able to shop at such a nice grocery store, to be able to buy good, fresh food and bring it home. I left the store in a great mood.

As it turns out, I was able to have my cake and eat it too, because my fiancé and I stopped by the same grocery store again later this evening, on our way home from the dog park, and this time I remembered to bring the coupon.

Bon appetit

I have been out of town (hence the missing blog posts from the last couple of days). However, I have been thinking about what I would write when I returned — so here it is.

Before my dog gets her breakfast, we usually take her for a walk around the block. Before she gets her dinner at night, she has to wait until my fiancé and I finish our meal. Before we actually set the bowl of food down in front of her, she has to sit or lie down or do whatever other cue we ask of her. Before she gets a treat, she has to perform a cue or a trick. You get the idea.

So, why don't I treat myself the same way? Why don't I make myself take a walk or clean the kitchen or wait until I am truly hungry to earn my grub? If I did, I would appreciate my food more, I would get more exercise, and I would reduce overeating.

The idea is not original, of course — my brother told me the very same thing recently but I dismissed it. And no doubt many other people have had this idea before he did. But now the idea has had time to percolate in my mind, and it just struck me the other day as being an especially good suggestion. So, I am going to try it.

We just returned home from our trip out of town, and when I came home I was tempted to do my usual habit — grab a snack even though I am not really hungry but rather am looking for a way to occupy myself. Instead, I decided to put a load of laundry in the washing machine and work on my blog for an hour until I am truly hungry.

Live Life to the Fullest - wikiHow

Live Life to the Fullest - wikiHow

Guyana

In 2007, I visited Kaieteur Falls, in Guyana, the only English-speaking country in South America. We took a tiny plane that reeked of petrol out to the rainforest, and when we stepped into view of the waterfall, it was breathtaking. There is no way this photo does it justice, but here it is:

Kaieteur is the tallest single-drop waterfall in the world, and despite the searing hot sun, the water was icy cold. As I stood there, overlooking a lush canyon and misty clouds, I breathed in deeply and thought to myself that this was probably the cleanest, most unpolluted air I had ever breathed. Here is the edge of the falls:

Beneath it (as I learned tonight while watching the Werner Herzog film White Diamond) is a massive, unexplored cave where perhaps a million white-tipped swifts live.

While I can't fly into the cave like those birds can, I did fly over the falls in the plane, and this was our view:

A Black Dog in the Winter Sun

Here's a lovely excerpt from an e-mail that my brother, who is living in Australia, sent me today:

"I was walking down the CBD [Central Business District] streets this morning at 10:00 and there was a black dog stretched out in the sun on the sidewalk just chilling, completely happy & sleepy-eyed, (probably waiting for his owner in a shop,) making the pedestrians walk around him because he was in his spot in the sun & no one was gonna make him move over into the shade along the wall of the storefront. And people did walk around him."

Imagining that contented dog sprawled in the sunshine halfway across the world filled me with happiness.

Neighborhood

Around 9:15 tonight, I took my dog out for a quick stroll down the street. She found a particularly interesting spot in the grass to sniff. As I stood on the sidewalk holding the red leash, I heard the sweet tinkling of a metal wind chime down the road somewhere, and from across the empty lot separating my street from the next, a woman called out — for her own dog, I imagine — "Come on, Baxter," and clapped her hands twice.

Aromatherapy for Dinner

I usually don't cook. Either my fiancé cooks, we go out for dinner, or we get takeout. But this evening I poured myself a glass of red wine and got started on a Greek potato-zucchini casserole from my Weight Watchers vegetarian cookbook.

I crushed and chopped the cloves of garlic first. Then I chopped the fresh dill, and took in that distinctive aroma with a deep breath. The parsley was next — a pleasing, grassy scent — and after that the onions. Then the small potatoes, which smelled earthy, like water and dirt. I sliced the zucchini into long green strips and did the same with the bell peppers.

When I poured the can of diced tomatoes into the herb mixture, the tart scent hit my nostrils, and I bent down to sniff the combination of dill, parsley, garlic and tomato. I added salt and pepper, and the mixture went into the casserole dish along with the sliced vegetables. By this point, my glass of wine was empty.

The dish baked in the oven for an hour and a half, and then I sprinkled feta cheese on top and baked it for another quarter hour. It's now cooling on the stovetop, and will spend the night in the refrigerator waiting to be divided into portions for lunch tomorrow and the day after.

Roadkill Goes Green

Nearby my house, the frontage road feeding traffic into the highway is actually more elevated than the highway itself, which means the frontage road slopes downward. This evening, my fiancé and I had just entered the frontage road in his car; he was driving. He suddenly said, "Did they just steal that tree?" I looked left through his driver's side window and saw a black pick-up truck. It had just driven off the grassy median between the frontage road and the highway and had entered the right lane of traffic — with a tree on top of it. The tree must have been close to 20 feet long. The truck of the tree wasn't very thick — maybe less than a foot — but the tree was long enough to span the length of the truck, from the hood to the back.

At first glance, we thought the tree was tied on top of the truck as cargo. We quickly realized, after seeing damage on the truck's front bumper, that the driver hadn't stolen the tree. He had hit it.

A second later, the truck veered toward the frontage road, its wheels hitting the side of the median, and the tree slid off the top of the truck and directly into our path. My fiancé braked, as the truck sped off down the highway. We manuvered around the tree and entered the right lane. We immediately saw the truck's black bumper, which had just fallen off and was rolling around in the middle of the highway. Up ahead, we could see smoke billowing from the truck as it sped out of our sight.