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Subject: "My Eclipse Story" Previous topic | Next topic
Bob GWed Aug-23-17 07:47 AM
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"My Eclipse Story"


  

          

Still have some residual energy from the ordeal/adventure so thought I'd post.

Here's my story. Never seen a total eclipse. I live driving distance from ideal location. Finally figured out that not going was dumb.

The plan - avoid people and confusion, zen out and just be there. No camera or whatever, just experience it. But what to do on the day. Must plan. So, food, juice, coffee, water and toilet paper. I always have a bath towel with me, because you should never leave home without your towel (seriously, I always have one.) Okay, now what?

Scour web, learn stuff. Get app with center line and easy navigation. Find most deserted and smallest country lane I can that the line crosses. 4 hour drive. When to leave ... end up 10PM.

Get there and look around (1AM local time but 2AM to me.) Can't find landmarks I was looking for, but see some so know I'm in the right place. Find strategically placed tree and building on little side street in town up the road, so try to get some rest (tree and building will hopefully block the morning sun if I actually get to sleep.)

Whatever anyone tells you, you cannot sleep in a new CRV. High humidity, high temp and clear skies predicted. I can't sleep, so get up and guzzle coffee and try another scouting trip with the dawn light. Still can't correlate some things. See guy in elementary school parking lot that looks like he was setting up some stuff. Go say hi. He's a computer junkie and says the line goes right through this parking lot, and the school was out of session for the day, and the maintenance guy was staying for the day to keep the bathroom available. Okay.

Park, wander, say hi to new guy who just rolled in (from Michigan - other guy is from West Virginia ... we're in Kentucky.) Wonder how many people will show up here. It's as close to the middle of nowhere as I could find. Michigan says that's why they came here too. Eventually, many hours later (I got to the place maybe 6:30AM local time) I counted more than 70 cars, but there's lots of room, a 3 sided lot, and the building sits in the middle of wherever you are in the lot, you can't really see the other two sides. Nice sense of privacy.

This place was seemingly designed and built just in case a total eclipse came along. Shade, grass, bathroom, field. Amazing. As people rolled in, I realized that they were all there for the same reason as me, but they mostly geared up. Also learned that maybe half of them knew about the school. One guy zoomed google earth enough to count the parking spaces to the exact point of the line.

It was a hugely enjoyable day for me, but exhausting, what with the heat and humidity, no sleep, and having to wait for 7 hours in that condition. But the people were so interesting, at least 8 states represented. One couple drove from Texas to Missouri, got scared of the weather interfering so then drove to the school. I think I need to brush up on my google earth skills. I should probably develop some first I guess.

Almost everyone there was 50 plus, and probably a third 60 plus (I'm 62.) I was going to try to wax poetic about the sense of community and commonalty I experienced there, but don't feel adequate. All these people came together in a little school parking lot, outside of a very small town, all in the middle of nowhere, travelled from several states to do it, and we just all thought we were all old friends at some kind of reunion. Just wonderful.

Actual location was ~20 miles east of Hopkinsville. Totality was supposed to be around 2:40 - about as long as it got this time. My anticipation wasn't so much for what you needed protection for (I had a 10-pack of the cards) but the totality itself and mostly, for what the earth would look and feel like around me. When totality drew near I went out to the middle of the field and just stood there, trying to open my senses. Saw a flock of birds heading to roost, the temperature was slowly falling for several minutes, and the light was supernatural. Sunlight, just less of it, probably my favorite part of the experience.

Some pics:
My little neighborhood, that's my CRV.


Turned around the other way


Mr. Michigan gets his gear on.


Michigan gets visit from fellow gearhead and eclipse enthusiast. This guy had two telescopes set up for projection. Michigan had telescope as telescope, so lots of ways to view available.


Cool guy from Japan. Came over to visit his brother in Wisconsin and they with their family members came down. How do you get a Japanese guy to go to some country lane in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the planet? Block out the sun.


I mean, come on. Can there be a better place to view a total eclipse, with max totality, than this?


Tears on my pillow, crescents on my towel. I had no chair (really need to get a good travel chair, but I'm comfortable in the outdoors and never really felt the need for one), so rested on my towel (really wet grass.) Editing this in - the spaces between the leaves of trees act as multiple pinhole viewers, so all those crescents are the eclipse in action.


This is to contrast to the pic below. Below, I visually matched the light on phone screen with reality, to show the light several minutes before totality.




I didn't want to get involved with photographing it, but snapped one (literally) pic with phone. First is cropped original, second is reduced gamma, third is #2 not reduced as much for posting. Taken at least 30 seconds before official end of totality, but I don't think the sun agrees. It could just be phone and operator failure, but to me it looks very intriguing. The moon actually looks like a rock, and it's clearly moving away from totality. Or phone failure.






And there you go.





  

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Replies to this topic

jasonlevineThu Aug-24-17 08:00 PM
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#1. "RE: My Eclipse Story"
In response to Bob G (Reply # 0)


  

          

Very cool. The eclipse photo looks like a giant eye looking down on the world. We didn't get totality here and clouds prevented me from viewing it too much, but the clouds did part and give me a very good view. We're going to get near-totality (~90%) in 2024. Plenty of time to plan a viewing.

- Jason Levine
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CentristFri Aug-25-17 05:21 AM
Member since Mar 11th 2017
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#2. "RE: My Eclipse Story"
In response to jasonlevine (Reply # 1)


          

Sauron comes to mind.

  

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