Stars

Grant & I went star gazing several weeks ago.  Specifically we went meteor gazing...during the Perseid Meteor Shower.  It was supposed to be very good this year due to its occurrence during the new moon.  So we stayed up until 11:30, drove out to the beach and lay down on the hood of our car.  Our view wasn't quite as good as the picture above, but we saw about 15 meteors in 30-40 minutes.  Not bad.

Last week Grant saw a different star...this time it was former baseball star, Barry Larkin.  He and several other former MLB'ers were in Holland hosting a training/scouting camp.  It's part of MLB's efforts to make baseball more global.  The Dutch word for baseball is "honkball".  Who could resist playing a game with a name like that?  The US Ambassador to Holland hosted a reception for the MLB'ers and invited the ASH baseball team.

It's time again for the annual "first day of school" picture.  You can see from Grant's attire that mid August does not mean sky-high temperatures.  This is Grant's last first day of school picture for high school.  Who knows if I'll be allowed to take a picture next year at college.  

And in case you're wondering what high school seniors eat for breakfast -- Captn' Crunch with Crunchberries.  The local expat grocery store gets shipments in on an irregular schedule so when they arrive I stock up.  In case you're wondering I eat the Mini Wheats.  

Netherlands Bucket List

In a few weeks Grant will begin his senior year of high school which means that I probably have less than a year left of living in The Netherlands.  So I've started a list of things I want to see before I leave, my Netherland Bucket List.

Last weekend I joined the Sechlers to visit Den Bosch, known for three things:  St. Johns Cathedral, canal tours through the city and Bossche bollen.   We did two out of three; the canal tour line was too long.

St. Johns was built in the 1500's and is described by Wikipedia as "the height of gothic architecture in The Netherlands".  I agree, it is impressive.  Especially for a Dutch cathedral.

The organ casing featured beautifully carved wood.  

The cover on the baptismal font was so big that it required an ornamental davit to lift and swing it out of the way.  

"Angel with Mobile Phone" by Centralasian Creator:Ton Mooy 

In a recent restoration 25 new angels were added, including one wearing jeans and using a mobile phone.  The sculptor said the phone was a direct line to God.

Bossche Bollen are spherical pastries filled with whipped cream and coated with chocolate.  No calories there.  If you don't want to travel to den Bosch you can just go to your local Albert Heijn grocery store and buy them there.

This weekend I traveled to de Hoge Veluwe National Park in the center of Holland.  This park contains a variety of landscapes including marsh, sand and pine forests.  The landscape is almost rolling, a rare thing in this country.  

I wanted to beat the crowds so I got there at 8:00 when the park opened.  I was the only one.  

 One of the best features of the park is its 40 km of paved bike trails.  They encourage biking by providing 1700 free bikes stationed throughout the park.  You just grab a bike, ride to an interesting spot and leave it there.  When you're ready to go again, your bike may be there or it may not.  If not, just grab another one.  That's the theory anyway.  I took my own bike so I never tested that theory.

Some of the 1700 free white bikes.  

The trails were great

In some areas I felt like I was riding through the African savannah.  But I didn't see any herds of zebra or kudu or wildebeest.  In fact, despite a brochure that claimed the park "was known for its various species of wildlife" the only animal I saw was a bunny.  

That is a sand dune in the background.  And the park is 150 km from the North Sea.  

One problem with free bikes is that they get left in the middle of nowhere.  I saw these two at 8:30 so I'm pretty sure people hadn't ridden them in the morning.  Who knows where how they got back to their car.  

Only the Dutch would station a bike pump along the trail.  

These guys were sitting in the yard of a home in nearby Hoenderloo.  

The cycling in de Hoge Veluwe nice but the cycling is nice everywhere in Holland.  So why do people go there?  Because right in the center of the park is the Kroller-Muller Museum, home to the second largest collection of van Gogh paintings in the world.  At the beginning of the century Mrs. Kroller-Muller was quite an art collector.  She had over 10,000 pieces of art.  

"The Potato Eaters" is considered to be one of van Gogh's first hits.  The museum contains over 90 of his paintings.  And since this year is the 125th anniversary of his death, they had even more.  And when you go first thing on Saturday morning you can enjoy them almost by yourself.  Get as close as you want and really look at his brush strokes.  Plus there are some Picasso's and Monet's.  Not bad for a museum in Hoenderloo, The Netherlands.

The entrance to the park....a van Gogh in a field of sunflowers.  

But wait, there's more.  There is a sculpture garden with over 100 pieces spread throughout a beautiful green lawn.  

This guy reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock.  

Some sculptures were more bizarre than others.  

This statue looks a little out of place in this sandy area......

And in real life it's even more out of place.  Or should I say out of the way, in the middle of a sand dune.  

 From the brochure, "One of the most impressive works of art is undoubtedly the statue of General De Wet in the Otterlose Zand area, designed by Joseph Mendes Da Costa. Christiaan de Wet was a general during the South African Boer Wars in the late nineteenth century. De Wet was a close personal friend of the Kröller-Müllers. The statue can be found in the Otterlose Zand area, with General De Wet looking out over the sandy plains and steppes. The statue was deliberately placed here as the landscape bears a striking resemblance to that of South Africa. Incidentally, the general is facing in the direction of his homeland."  I still think it's an odd placement.  

The Kroll-Mullers also had a hunting lodge built on the grounds.  They had the tower built to provide a viewing place for their estate.  

At the park museum they displayed the root system of a 135 year old beech tree.  Not very deep; now we know why so many trees blew down several weeks ago.  

Summer Storm

Two weeks ago Holland was hit by the worst July storm ever recorded.  High winds came in a blew down hundreds of trees.   Grant & I probably saw over 25 trees down in our village alone.  One reason for the significant damage was that the trees were full of leaves, creating a large sail area.  Most of our windy storms happen in April and October when the trees are bare.  

You can see how shallow the roots are in the picture above.   This tree pulled up the sidewalk, the curb and the lamp post on the left.  There were four trees in a row on this street that did the exact same thing.  

 Two hours later the tree was cut up and off the car.  The wind screen didn't shatter; it just depressed into the car.

This guy fell over two days after the storm.  It makes a nice bridge across the canal.  

College Visits

Grant & I returned to the US this summer to visit colleges ---- for him.  It was a great trip -- lots of plane flights but also lots of fun and family visits as well.  We saw three schools - New Mexico Tech, Colorado School of Mines and Iowa State.  That gave us three different climates, campus sizes and airports.  One thing was pretty constant throughout the trip -- we ended up staying at Holiday Inn Expresses almost every night.    I must say, they were all very good.

 Grant's had a pretty quiet summer.  He mows some lawns in the neighborhood.  And he hangs out with friends.  I'm not sure why he's only wearing one glove in the picture -- Michael Jackson?

No trip to the US is complete without eating at a number of old haunts...Whataburger, Pappasitos, Frontera Grill and Donut Delite to name a few.

The New Mexico Tech campus in Socorro NM.  

I had never been to New Mexico before so we did some sightseeing and saw these guys running in the scrub.  

We visited the Karl Jansky Very Large Array Radio Astronomy Observatory (if there's ever a place in need of an acronym, this is it).  There are 27 of these dishes that capture radio waves emitted from objects in space.  The dishes arranged in a Y pattern.  They vary the diameter of the pattern depending on where they are looking and what level of clarity is desired.  At it's largest, the diameter is 22 miles.  Now you know why this is in New Mexico.  All the data comes back to a control room where a supercomputer assimilates that data into a "picture" from space.

Even more interesting is that the site has been featured in movies like Contact, Terminator and Independence Day.

The radio dishes are 80 ft in diameter.  The silver ball is a sun dial.  

This tractor is used to move the dishes along a railroad track to adjust the diameter of the Y.  

The workshop.  

We also did some hiking through the wild.  

This is the rain storm that we could see from the top of the hill that we climbed. 

That is our car that we needed to get to before the rain storm got to us.  

We won.  No rain on us.  

A reminder of the NM climate.  

This canyon entrance reminded Grant & I of the entrance to Petra.  

We went to a Colorado Rockies game in Denver.  Another food we actively seek out in the US is hot dogs and there's nothing better than a hot dog at a baseball game.  We each had three!  Unfortunately, as they have done 60% of the time this year, the Rockies lost.

Lori likes ribs, but she has a limit on how many she wants to eat....like 1 or 2.  Normally rib houses sell them by the rack, not by the rib.  So Famous Daves would have been great for her.  She can get just two ribs

Colorado School of Mines is in Golden Colorado.  And so is the huge Coors Brewery.  All these people were waiting for a tour of the brewery.  

We had some time before our flight from Denver to Des Moines so we visited another US favorite -- Taco Bell.  Grant had eight tacos.  

We flew on the day when United had their computer glitch.  This is a shot of a very long customer service line.  It was so long United was giving out sandwiches and chips to people that were waiting.  

Final college stop was at Iowa State.  Here we broke tradition and stayed at the Union instead of a Holiday Inn Express.  Bad move.  Our room had a great view of the Campanile.  Unfortunately,  the bells chime every 15 minutes day and night.

Carpenter House -- my dorm floor during Freshman year.  

We visited Grant's cousin Amanda at her lab on ISU.  

Friley Hall has been around forever.  I think my dad lived there in the 50's.  I know my sister lived there in the 70's.  Supposedly it is one of the largest dorms in the US.  

Managers Special donut -- a donut filled with brownie batter.  And people (including my son) call this breakfast food.  Grant ate four.  

We timed our visit to Don & Joan's home well.  Dave & Trish were there too.  

Cousins Catherine and Margaret (and their Dad) really bailed us out.  Our flight from Moline to Chicago was cancelled and we were going to miss our connection to Amsterdam.  There aren't too many of those flights so we would basically lose a day.  We just caught Dave and his family as they left the farm.  They waited for us to drive out there and then they took us to Chicago O'Hare.  Great service.  

Stocking up for the next year; when I saw this I had to buy it.  

We brought Graber a toy.  

Do you think he liked it?