Just outside of Glenn’s Ferry, Idaho, I saw a huge raccoon in the road. I swerved to go behind it, but the critter turned around and ran right in front of my car. THUNK! THUNKETY THUNK THUNK! I felt bad for the poor little guy, but I didn’t stop. A few miles later, my car started making weird rattling noises, so I took a nearby exit to check out the damage. As soon as I got to the stop sign, my car died and wouldn’t start again.

I got out and saw fluid pouring out from under the front of my car. When I looked under the front of my car, I saw a little bit of fur stuck to my bumper, some bumper damage, and some bent metal. I also saw that my exhaust system was hanging down. Who would have thought a raccoon could do so much damage?

I called Meg to ask what she thought I should do, and she suggested that I call AAA and get an emergency tow. They signed me up for coverage and took me to Glenn’s Ferry. There were two motels there, one of which was open, so I stayed the night and got up early to survey the damage. The AAA guy had dropped my car off at Main Street Garage, so I had the owner, Jimmy, take a look at my car. One look was enough for him to decide he wasn’t equipped to handle the damage. I called my insurance company, Pemco, and they said I needed to have my car towed to a body shop in Boise.

Boise! I had wanted to get about an hour past Boise the night before. Apparently it was not to be. The tow truck got me to Boise at about 1 in the afternoon and took my car to Parks Royal Body Works. The owner, Matt, took the front of my car apart and told me the compressor for the air conditioning unit, the radiator, the bumper, and the metal parts holding the radiator in place all needed to be replaced. He was super nice, doing all the negotiating with Pemco, getting parts overnighted from Portland, putting his guys to work on my car right away. I was hopeful that I’d be on my way by Friday evening.

Well, Friday evening came and Matt had some bad news: They fixed everything they thought needed repair and then tried to start my car. Nothing. They pulled out a spark plug and looked underneath and saw fluid where there shouldn’t be fluid. Matt said that indicated that the head gasket had gotten overheated and warped, letting radiator fluid into the engine. He had the car towed to the Honda dealership to have work done that his shop couldn’t handle.

So I’m sitting here at Cabana Inn (very cheap downtown Boise motel) on Saturday morning waiting for word from Honda on some kind of timeline for repairs. I had expected to be home by now, getting ready for Christmas cheer with my family. Meanwhile, it has snowed a couple of inches here in Boise, and a quick look at Idaho’s DOT website shows that roads are icy all the way to Utah. NOAA has a winter weather alert on all the roads I would be driving on to get home. I’m really hoping that being home for Christmas won’t only be in my dreams.

p.s. Some facts on raccoons: National Geographic claims that North American raccoons only get to about 23 pounds at most, but I swear the one I hit was way bigger than that. People in Chicago claim they’ve seen huge raccoons that have bent steel window bars to get into houses, and a woman in Pennsylvania had a pet raccoon that weighed 75 pounds. So obviously coons can get bigger than NatGeo says. The one I hit wasn’t 75 pounds, but I’d be willing to bet that it was more than 30. National Geographic also says the critters hibernate during the winter. I wish. I don’t know if coonskin caps are fashionable in Idaho, but there should be a good-sized pelt by the road near Glenn’s Ferry if anyone wants it.

Poppy bought a bike in Hoenderloo (near Hoge Veluwe) and rode it back to Rotterdam last weekend, so she had the wheels to join Molly, Jonathan and me on an easy ride to Den Haag by way of Delft. We got to Den Haag pretty quickly, so we decided to go to the Mauritshuis Museum, known for housing Vermeer’s Girl with a pearl earring. We saw a long line of people and assumed they were waiting to get into the museum, so we took our place in line to go through a metal detector and have our bags x-rayed. Ummm, we were wrong (not for the first or last time of the day). Apparently, we happened to be in Den Haag on the day that many of the national monuments and museums are open to the public for free. We waited in line for 30 minutes to tour some legislative chamber, or something of the sort. After our 5-minute tour of some unknown place, we decided to ask someone where Mauritshuis was so we could see what we came for.

After an hour or so of contemplating art, we went to the beach near Scheveningen. Jonathan thought the North Sea looked inviting, so he stripped down to his boxers and jumped in. Poppy, Molly and I passed on doing that. We wandered along the beach for awhile, ate ice cream, and ran into Greta purely by chance. Greta had come to the beach by train, so we made plans to meet up in Rotterdam and go out to dinner. We thought it would take us a little more than an hour to get back. Not so.

The network of bicycle paths in the Netherlands is fantastic. You can bike all over the country, mostly on paths reserved for bicycles and scooters. Here’s the big but: The signs are really confusing. We followed the signs pointing to Rotterdam and thought we were getting close when we saw a sign that said it was only 19 kilometers away. We rode for quite awhile in the direction of Rotterdam and then saw another sign — that said it was 19 km away. I suspect the signs may just direct unsuspecting cyclists in huge circles. We took a few more wrong turns that took us through some beautiful countryside and eventually got back to Rotterdam, but I think we probably rode quite a few more kilometers than 19.

One of my favorite things to do when I travel is to climb towers, so I was delighted to discover that the tallest tower in the Netherlands is the Domtoren in Utrecht. The tower used to be part of a church, but during a huge windstorm in the 17th century, the middle section of the church collapsed, separating the tower and the part of the church that remained standing. After climbing hundreds of stairs, we got to see the carillon bells playing. The Domtoren’s bells play every hour via an automated mechanism. Basically, it’s a gigantic music box: A huge metal drum with posts sticking out of it rotates, moving levers that make the clappers strike the bells. Our tour guide said the tune is changed about four times a year. Twice a week, a man plays the bells for about an hour by pounding on levers with his fists. Here’s a video of the bells. It’s kind of hard to see the drum moving and the clappers hitting the bells, but hopefully you get the idea.

When we got back to Rotterdam, we were feeling super hungry (we did a lot of walking and climbed a lot of stairs), so we went to an eethuis near our hotel. According to Trent, eethuises serve Dutch comfort food. It was indeed comforting; the wiener schnitzel was just what I needed. To top off the meal, while the owner of the place was making our dessert, he came out and asked us, “Who has the biggest mouth?” Everyone pointed at Poppy, and while she was laughing, the owner popped a spoonful of amaretto sauce into her mouth and left it there. Good food, good times, great day.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about that €15 fee for a library card. Yes, libraries — especially archival libraries such as the National Library — are expensive to operate and maintain. And €15 a year is really cheap. However, the idea of limiting access with even so modest a fee kind of sticks. I’d really like for the National Library to be free. At least it’s free to look at the super-cool old books in the exhibition hall of the library.

Hoge Veluwe covers more than 5,000 hectares of land, which includes woodland, bogs and sand drifts. It was amazing. There are free bikes to ride around the park, and it’s definitely the best way to see as much as possible if you don’t have a lot of time.

The museum was named after Helene Kröller-Müller, a private art collector who decided to open a museum to show her collection. The museum has the largest private Van Gogh collection in the world (besides the Van Gogh family’s), as well as works by many other notable artists. In addition to the collection inside the museum, there is a sculpture park on the grounds of the museum.

After hours of wandering happily around the park and the museum, we had a delicious supper at Poppy’s hotel (she decided to stick around for another day), and then the rest of the group had to leave to get back to Rotterdam. On the bus ride to Utrecht, Molly and I had a fascinating conversation with a guy named Harry, who told us about the work he had done to help digitize the Dutch National Library’s archives. We’ll have a chance to see some of his handiwork next week.

I rode around some very industrial areas of Rotterdam for awhile and then around some very rural areas. It was delightful I finally found my way back to Erasmus University, and I was pretty sure I could make my way back to Hotel Baan from there (not completely sure). One of the things I like about getting lost is that I’m forced to examine my surroundings more closely than I usually do, and I often see something wonderful that I would have missed otherwise. Today, I saw a bike that was a little stranger than most, so I rode closer to get a better look. What I saw made me smile for the rest of the day: A newly-wed groom was taking his bride out for a spin on his bike equipped with a big cargo cart. Things like that should happen more often.