Flying Eggshells?

My daily commute is normally pretty uneventful. I travel Highway 9 from Mount Vernon to Sedro-Woolley. It is a nice stretch of road; smooth with nice sweeping turns. Traffic is usually pretty light and the biggest hazard is typically a gravel truck coming out of the quarry south of Clear Lake.

This morning as I was coming out of Clear Lake and getting back up to speed, something came flying out of the passenger window of the white Toyota pickup that I was following. I couldn’t tell what it was but it appeard to shatter and spread across the right side of the lane. My first instict was that it was ice, but then I thought it could be glass. I took evasive maneuvers and avoided whatever it was.

The pickup and I remained on parallel routes and wound up next to each other at a traffic light. I flipped up my helmet and made the universal “roll down your window” gesture to the young woman in the passenger seat. She rolled down her window and I said, “Please don’t throw things from your truck.”

The male driver leaned over and said, “It was an eggshell.” “I don’t care,” I replied, “please don’t throw things from your truck. I could not tell what it was and had to swerve to avoid it. If I had crashed as a result I could have been hurt or worse. So, please, don’t throw things from your truck.” He nodded and apoligized; the young woman, who actually threw whatever it was and looked a bit scared, never said a word.

While I am not sure what it was exactly, I am 100% certain it was not an eggshell. There were too many pieces of too large a size and covering too much area to have been an eggshell. Pieces of eggshell would have floated around a bit in the wind. Whatever it was went straight to the ground and spread out; each piece at least the size of a quarter. My best guess is that it was a cup full of ice.

I’m sure that this young woman just tossed it out the window without a second thought; completely unaware of who was behind her, just too damned lazy to hold on to her trash until she got to work. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll think next time… but I doubt it.