Weekend Plans Post: Prep (Maybe) For The Eclipse
Back in 2017, I drove up to Wyoming for the eclipse.
I enjoyed about two minutes twenty of totality. It was my first total eclipse and it was wonderful and terrifying. In a matter of seconds, I went from being “Jaybird, Modern 2017 Man” to being “Jay, tribesman, witness to Hati Hróðvitnisson eating the sun”. About two and a half minutes later, that had passed.
But, seriously, those two minutes twenty? That duration was a thing that made me understood why the ancients told stories about such things decades later.
I mean, I think it was in 1984 that I saw a partial solar eclipse in Michigan. We made pinhole viewers and stood in the parking lot and saw that, yep, the sun looked kinda like one of those old “Monsterchomp” Cookies.
Remember those?
Well, that’s what the sun looked like and I’m not ashamed to say that I wasn’t that impressed. It just looked like the moon was blocking a little part of the sun.
Well, in 2017? I was terrified. The wolf that hates had devoured the sun and we would all be dead soon. It was wonderful.
So, this weekend, prep begins for me (and a handful of folks) to drive down somewhere around San Antonio. We managed to get a decent hotel with a couple of rooms… The idea is that we drive down on April 7th starting at O’dark-thirty and we’ll get there between 8 and 9 PM. Put the younguns to bed and wander down to the bar to get a rusty nail and discuss the day… go to bed, get up, get some breakfast, and enjoy the eclipse… and then drive home. Drive home aaaaall day. And half the night. Then recover the next day.
And then back to work.
I mean, there’s not a *LOT* of prep we have to do. It’s still a month out. It’s not like we should pack a bag or something. Put snacks in the cooler. But we should have a conversation about logistics and talk about what we will need in the car and what we will want in the car and what would be nice to have, if we could pull it off, in the car. Maybe we could start the list.
Oh, and do laundry.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Back”. Photo taken by Maribou.)
We flew from NorCal to Idaho for the 2017 eclipse with friends – was an incredible experience! Have been waiting for this one for years. We’re also going to Texas, meeting online folks we’ve never seen in person just north of Waco. Almost double the time this go-round. Hoping for clear weather, fingers crossed.Report
I’m sure it will be clear.
And the food! I can’t wait.Report
I know that I’ve talked in the past about The Darkness and how they make post-rock. Or post-post-rock. Or post-post-post-rock.
But, tonight, I’ve encountered something of theirs that it’s taken a while to get to me.
I know that I’ve shared “Love is Only a Feeling” before:
But that’s merely “pretty good”.
Here’s those guys covering that song with Ed Sheeran backstage:
Before them doing it *LIVE*:
Report
I know them mainly for “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” the official video of which I have a really weird affection for, because it takes a big pair to make an almost-picture-perfect hair-rock 80s video in the early 2000s.
I was in high school in the 80s. I hated hair-rock. (If I liked anything, it was the New Wave stuff, though I was that weird nerd who listened to classical and Big Band). But now I look back at it and it was just, you know, kind of ridiculous and I don’t hate it now.
also the Postmodern Jukebox remake of it – in New Orleans style with a big-voiced woman singer – is FANTASTIC though very different to the original.Report
Yeah, my favorite part of the video happens around 2:07.
You go from “This is so silly! This is so goofy!” to “Okay. This kicks butt.” over the course of 15 seconds.
Report
I worked at a boarding school for Sioux kids in the waning days of the ’80s, and boy did those kids like hair metal. The rock critic Chuck Klosterman grew up in North Dakota listening to that stuff, and his writings about it are absolutely hilarious. His first book Fargo Rock City is definitely worth a read.Report
Where I live, we will be in 99.4% totality. I have decided that, absent someone offering to drive with me the hour or so east to get FULL totality, that is good enough for me. (the university really should have done a caravan of vans and buses, and just let people sign up to go. They should have made it an event)
Practically every state park cabin and hotel room has been rented for over a year. Local police are warning people that the roads (which are not good at the best of times) will be super-congested (and with people who aren’t familiar with our crummy roads and driving conventions). They are acting like it’s an impending disaster, even telling people to stock up on food! It’s bizarre. So I assume there are gonna be freaked out people and I can happily view it from my parking lot at work just like I did in 2017
So yeah: 99.4% will be good enough. I’ll experience the darkness-at-noon and seeing the sun go away and then come back, I just won’t see the corona. That’s OK.
I’ve already told my students we are NOT having class that day, experiencing a total or near-total eclipse is more important and meaningful.
I remember the 2017 one. We only got partiality here but we all went and stood in the back parking lot and people passed around the special glasses (there was a shortage of them) and welders helmets’ that people had that were rated high enough for safe viewing and I had a little pinhole apparatus I had made by taping Mylar into a card. And I pointed out how when we got as far as it was going to get, you could see the leaves projecting crescent-suns on the ground and several people had never even heard of that, so I got to impress a few people with my knowledge. (I think I learned that in the 1992 or ’94 one)
I just really hope it’s not cloudy; April is often our rainy month.Report
I got to see about 60% totality of the 2017 eclipse (I was still living in Southern California at the time). Eerie to experience, but one that I felt I understood and didn’t experience, even as a light-hearted matter, the way an uneducated and superstitious pre-Copernican pagan would have. I could understand why such an event would be momentous to such a person, and I was moved by the grandness of the celestial event. But perhaps because of other things in my life, I didn’t find it transformative, just novel. What was most interesting was seeing the shadows of things like leaves on the trees occluded from their usual shapes (as @fillyjonk describes above), and noticing the street lights activating.
I have failed to plan to attend this eclipse and when I fight thought about it about a month ago quickly found that my failure to plan has basically prevented me from traveling to see totality at all. So while I would certainly enjoy seeing it, I suspect the richness of my life’s experiences will not really notice the absence of having been in the totality of a total eclipse of the sun.
Maybe I’ll return to Iceland in 2026 and hope for clear skies. But it’s too early to book that one.Report
I don’t know that I’ve ever lived at a place/time where the eclipses were quite as frequent. From 2017 to 2029 (inclusive), Colorado’s Front Range urban corridor had/will have four solar eclipses with >70% coverage. Three during 2023-2029 inclusive.Report
Yeah, when I was a kid, we had the one in Michigan and… dang. It felt like all of the other eclipses were in Africa or Asia or the middle of the ocean (I remember seeing an ad for an “eclipse cruise” that sounded fun until I saw the price tag).
I mean, there’s a nice cruise coming up in 2026 on a line between Greenland and Iceland. Catch totality for only… $20K PER PERSON AND THAT’S ASSUMING THERE ARE TWO OF YOU?!?!?
That’s absurd.Report
This weekend I’ll be looking for tools to put in the tool box I just purchased for my son’s b-day. Or I’ll be looking for the list of tools that Michael Cain I believe posted on this site several years ago that I used when my daughter first got her own.
We’ll have 96% eclipse, the same as 2017. It’s odd that the 2017 and 2024 paths cross around Carbondale, IL.Report
Oldest/Youngest sons, youngest daughter and I are all going to the Blackhawks, er, Capitals game tonight — sort of my birthday weekend present. We like to go to the meat palace called Hill Country BBQ before the game… but some group booked the entire restaurant. Rude.
Now we have to find something else within walking distance of everything. Wish DC wasn’t so wonky with good food options.
Last year we duct taped BEDARD over the little guy’s Hawks shirt… this year he has an actual BEDARD shirt. Glad his (Bedard’s) jaw healed in time.Report
Go to the Irish Channel. It’s right there and they have good bar food. I am semi-acquainted with the owner who is a good guy.
I took my oldest to his first Caps game last Sunday. It’s a very good year for visiting fans so I am sure you will have a blast.Report
Hey, that’s exactly where we’re staying (we make it an overnight experience to reduce the hassle/stress)… will take the gang there for a pint either before or after.
Will tell them InMD sent us for extra street cred.Report
Waitress – “Hey, these people claim they know someone on the internet. Say he talks about politics. Sounds pretty far-fetched to me.”
Owner – “I don’t know; I’ve been on the internet and people talk about all sorts of things.” (scrolls through phone) “Look at that! The story checks out! Politics, sports, you name it! Drinks on the house!”Report
Owner: InMD? The doctor from Indiana?Report
Heh he’d know me, if at all, as a long standing, peripheral functionary at his Knights of Columbus council that never shows up to anything. One of the things no one tells you about going to law school is that people suddenly presume you are competent in all manner of things you know nothing about, and volunteer you accordingly. The only defense is to ensure very few people actually know how to reach you.Report
I think it is an unwritten code of canon law that all lay boards and committees must be made up of Lawyers and Real Estate developers with one ethnic Restauranteur for authenticity’s sake.Report
AUGH THE GOVERNMENT TAKES AWAY OUR HOUR TONIGHTReport
we jumped ahead one hour, but it feels a full 2 hours later to me. This change is always the one that messes with me; the fall one, not so much.
Normally this is our spring break week coming up, but TPTB somehow decided to do it a week later, so I gotta drive in in the got-dang dark to work tomorrow.Report
I hated spring forward as a child, I hated it as a teen, I hated it as a young adult, I hated it in my middle age, and now that I am entering my autumn I hate it.
We need to stop.Report
This one has been intense. Started out on a tough note with a funeral yesterday for a friend’s father. They are having people come through this weekend in accordance with Jewish custom so I am going to try to pop my head in tomorrow.
Today had swim class first thing then got to (had to after being voluntold?) assistant coach my son’s basketball game. It was way more intense than it needed to be. Currently on break before a children’s bday party later this afternoon. If I’m alive after I’m going to force myself out to have a beer with an old friend who is in from overseas.
Sometimes work on Monday feels like the reprieve from my Chevy Chase in National Lampoons movies lifestyle.Report
Ugh, that sucks. Keep it up. You’re doing good things for your friends, even if it feels like it’s not much.Report
Sometimes work on Monday feels like the reprieve from my Chevy Chase in National Lampoons movies lifestyle.
I know that feeling. I also remember one Monday when I came in, told my office mate I was going to be in the lab hiding, and not to tell anyone where I was unless it was the CEO wanting something (this was at a Fortune 200 company). Later in the morning he showed up to tell me, “People are looking for you because the CEO wants to talk to you.”Report