Eclipse Trip

[rowyn]

 In August 2017, my area was in the path of the totality for the solar eclipse. I was at work during the eclipse and didn't care much about it. 'Okay, so you can't see the sun, that happens every night, what's the big deal?' But some other employees had bought eclipse glasses and took their lunch breaks while the eclipse was building. Like several others, I came outside now and again to see what the fuss is about. We passed around eclipse glasses and watched crescent-shaped spots of light form among the trees and gasped in awe when the sky turned black and the corona formed.

And I thought, "Wow, that was pretty great. The next eclipse is in 7 years and I'm not that far from the path of the totality for it. Maybe I'll drive down to watch it."

I talked to Telnar about it, and he was also interested in this idea. Fast-forward six-ish years as we're chatting on the phone, and I asked, "Hey, isn't that eclipse coming up? Maybe we should make plans." It was still too early for plans. I think it was six-ish months ago that Telnar got plane tickets to my area, reserved a car, and made reservations for a house in the middle of nowhere for us to stay at the night before the eclipse.

We fiddled with plans a few times after that, but with inertia on our side, Telnar flew down on Friday, April 5. We went out for food (mm bagels) and to buy some board games to play during his visit. Then we picked up the rental car. Well, tried to pick up the rental car; it was through a sort of AirBNB-but-for-cars service, and the owner inexplicably took it to the airport to meet us instead of staying at home, as stipulated in the reservation. The owner apologized a bunch for the mistake and agreed to meet Telnar at his rental house. I dropped Telnar at the rental house, and we agreed to attempt naps and then text when we got up again.

I woke from my nap around 6:20PM, about five minutes after Telnar had texted that he was going out for groceries.

I live perhaps half a mile from a baseball stadium. Telnar is a baseball fan of sorts, by which I mean 'casual but not the same way most people would be a casual fan.' He knew that there was a game at the stadium that night, between our unremarkable home team and another unremarkable team. He was curious to see the stadium and watch a bit of the game. I am not a sports person; I have lived within walking distance of both a football and baseball stadium for over twenty years and had never set foot in either. But I wasn't totally lacking in curiosity about the stadium and Telnar is probably the only person I know who would (a) be interested in attending a game and also (b) be fine with leaving at any time.

When we arrived at the stadium, we learned that my cupholder purse was too large to be allowed inside the stadium, despite consisting of one 'empty square pocket where a cup could go' and 'one pocket with a closure containing a wallet and nothing else'. A security guy said it was fine and I could bring it in, since it hadn't occurred to either of us that this could be an issue. The person who was searching bags was extremely wroth with the security guy for daring to, uh, let the stadium sell some tickets and get some revenue out of us instead of turning us away? Well, maybe she didn't realize that our backup plan was 'leave without buying tickets' and not 'go back to the car to stash purse'.  Anyway, we bought tickets and went inside as the fourth inning started. We spent some time wandering around the concessions and looking at the little museum for the team that was on-premises, then split a soft pretzel and went to our seats. This involved climbing very tall flights of stairs. We took random seats in the almost-deserted nosebleed section, because it clearly didn't matter where we sat. By then, it was the fifth inning. We watched an inning or two, got up for two more soft pretzels (we were only trying to get one, but the concession gave us a second because the others would just be thrown away anyhow), and went back to our seats to watch the eighth inning.

I'd brought a sweater, but by now it was late enough to be unpleasantly chilly to sit even with a sweater. I suggested leaving at the end of the eighth inning, to which Telnar readily agreed. We escaped from the stadium with relative ease, and then I thought it didn't make a difference which way we went around the stadium. It did; oops. (I should have known this because I used to walk around the stadiums while playing Pokemon Go, but nope, I'd forgotten.) So we turned about and went the other way. By the time we got all the way around the stadium, the game had actually ended and the rest of the crowd was streaming out.

We went back to my house and played one new game, Dice Forge, in the living room, very quietly because Lut was asleep. To avoid dice clatter, Telnar rolled onto loveseat cushions and I padded a box with a blanket. Around 11:30, we finished the game, and Telnar left to sleep at his rental house while I went to bed.

The next morning, we both got up too early. There's construction going on across the street and it makes it hard for me to sleep much past 7 or 8, while Telnar just chronically gets up too early. We met up for breakfast at my house, and played a game of Dice Forge with Lut. Then we went to the Warhammer store to get this month's free miniature. It was much nicer than the usual free mini, so we were concerned they'd run out if we didn't go early on the day of release. And the store was in fact crowded when we got there, with a line by the cashier. Telnar graciously offered to wait in line with us so that he'd get a free miniature too, and donated it to us.

After this errand, we dropped Lut off at the house and went to Telnar's rental house to soak in the hot tub for awhile.

After an hour or two lazing in the hot tub, we returned to my house to play more games with Lut. I think we did another game of Dice Forge, then a few of Space Base. By then, it was time for Telnar to get to bed.

Sunday morning, we set out for the middle of nowhere. We stopped for lunch at a cozy diner, where the food was tasty but did not agree with me, which made the last hour or two of the drive take longer than expected and be less pleasant. The delay wasn't too bad, though, and I felt back to normal within two or so hours.

We went for a walk in the area in the late afternoon, a little while after arriving, and ended up missing the sunset over the lake the house was near because we were too far away when it went down. Despite the area having an abundance of unused land and trees, there was strangely little wildlife. We saw a few squirrels on our walk and heard some crickets after sunset, but nothing else.

We chatted in the evening and then Telnar went to bed.

On Sunday morning, we ate breakfast at the house, played some backgammon, and then made lunch.

A little before 1PM, we took the backgammon game outside and sat on the rear deck to watch the show start. We'd thought the eclipse didn't start in this area until 1:40 or 1:50, with the totality a little after 2PM. These times were not accurate. At 12:50, the moon had already started to move over the sun, though you could only tell through eclipse glasses. We sat down in full sunlight and put sunscreen on. It was uncomfortably hot in the sun at first, but of course you can't watch the sun from the shade. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, the temperature had dropped enough to be comfortable again, though. And the sun was less bright in a way that was hard to either distinguish or describe. We were still in direct sunlight and the shadows were still crisp -- not like an overcast day where the lighting is diffuse. The amount of light was just less than it had been when we came out. Likely it had been even brighter thirty minutes before we came out and when the eclipse hadn't started at all, but we didn't realize because the effect was so subtle. I think if we'd come out at 1:30, I still wouldn't have realized that the sunlight was dimmer than usual.

Around 1:30, we stopped playing backgammon and moved from the back deck to down by the lake, closer to the tree trunks but further from the tree canopy and roof that might obstruct the sun as it moved. Also, the "360 degree sunset" effect would be prettier by the lake.

In between watching the sun, we wandered around beneath the trees to look for the effect on the shadows. It was much more subtle than I remembered from 2017. After a bit, I spotted the expected crescent shapes of light among the leaf shadows. I'd tried googling it and discovered it doesn't make for good pictures even when the effect is stark. Telnar took some pictures anyway.

The totality, as expected, was the spectacular part. When it started, we heard people from across the lake gasp and shout in awe. My phone camera couldn't take good pictures of any of the show, but its pictures of the totality were bad in an unexpected way: it not only failed to focus on the sun, but it didn't even capture that the sky had turned dark. The sky doesn't turn midnight-black; more late twilight, with all the shadows gone and no sense of being in the sunlight. You can look at the totality safely without eclipse glasses; eclipse glasses are so dark that you can't see the totality while wearing them. Since we'd picked an area right in the middle of the eclipse zone, the totality lasted for several minutes. Websites tell me it was only four minutes, but it felt like more. During 2017, when I didn't travel at all to see it, I was at the edge of the path of totality, so it was very brief. It was neat to luxuriate in it this time.

We hung out in the backyard for a bit after the totality ended, watching the closing show. But I wanted to get home that night and Telnar preferred to get to bed by 9PM, so we didn't stay for too long. Google Maps predicted a total drive time of 6 hours and 16 minutes, up from 5:40 or so the evening before. We started the car around 3:15.

We saw no unusual levels of traffic for the first hour of the drive, but the total drive time predictions grew increasingly worse from both Google Maps and the rental car's GPS system. (We ran both systems because the rental's GPS screen was much easier to see while driving, but its routing was not as good.) The anticipated slowdown was on a highway we hadn't reached yet, but the slowdown was expanding faster than we were traveling -- the time-to-destination got longer and longer the further we drove.

Before we reached the affected highway, Telnar suggested we stop for a restroom break so we wouldn't have to worry about it while stuck in traffic. After agreeing on this plan but before we reached the next gas station, Google Maps suggested an alternate route: a winding, mostly two-lane highway that showed no slowdowns. We discussed whether to stop at the next gas station anyway, and decided against it since we were no longer expecting a traffic jam.

We drove for 30-some miles along this highway, while I kept an eye out for a gas station but, to the surprise of both of us, never saw one. And then traffic slowed, soon coming to a near-total stop. Google Maps rapidly increased the length of time for the slowdown, from 10 minutes at first to over an hour, as we crept forward by maybe a quarter of a mile. While I drove, Telnar searched Google Maps for the nearest gas station. Other than the ones that were past the slowdown, there was nothing for thirty miles. Telnar suggested we could turn around and go back, which I very much did not want to do (it had been a winding 30 miles through hills and annoying to drive the first time). Traffic was at a standstill going the way we wanted, and deserted in the other direction.

In a driveway on the left side of the road, two men sat on the tailgate of a pickup, drinking beer. I rolled down my window and called out a hello, which they answered amiably. So I asked, "Can I use your bathroom?"

"Sure!"

I hopped out of the car and dashed for them, figuring that Telnar could move to the driver's seat and I could either run to catch up, or Telnar could pull over if the traffic started to move at more than 0.5 mph.

When I re-emerged, Telnar had pulled over because traffic was moving, albeit still slowly. So Telnar went up to use the bathroom too, and then we pulled back into the traffic jam. It was significantly less jammed now: it'd move along at 10-20mph for a few minutes before coming to a stop for a few minutes.

Around two miles later, we saw the reason for both the original slowdown and the sudden improvement: the highway came to an end at a stop sign. The busy street it intersected with did not have a stop sign. So when a few hundred unexpected cars came down this highway and reached the stop sign, everyone just stopped. And could only go one car at a time, as the cross-street traffic allowed, which it mostly didn't. We were saved by two men from the state highway department, which had heard about the problem and dispatched these men to direct traffic.

We hit a few more slow patches, but nothing close to as bad as this one. I think it was about 10:45 when we got home, so around 7.5 hours for the whole trip. The actual traffic delay wasn't that long, since we stopped for three more rest breaks and to change drivers (I drove the first leg, because Telnar much preferred driving on the big highways that would come later, and the last leg, because it was late and Telnar goes to bed much earlier than me.) We didn't stop for dinner and just snacked on the road instead.

Telnar wasn't flying out until late Tuesday, but my sister was flying in on Tuesday to attend a work conference and planned to see me before and after the conference. So Telnar and I said farewell at my house, while he went to a nearby hotel.

Comments

[tuftears]

Sounds like a pretty good occasion overall!