Home again, home again, jiggity jig
Landed at JFK a bit before noon Sunday after three weeks in Spain. Caught a cab home. House still standing; different flowers blooming in front yard than before we left.
Unpacked suitcases. Repacked suitcases. Drove 4+ hours north to friends' house. Slept a lot. With five friends and two other cars, drove north another hour or so into the path of totality, found parking place near a restaurant/resort and gas station, and sat around for a few hours waiting for an eclipse.
We were worried that there would be too much cloud cover, but as it turned out there were only a few high, thin clouds. We viewed the increasing amount of eclipse variously through eclipse glasses, in a camera obscura, by projecting through binoculars onto a white piece of foamcore, and by projecting through a kitchen colander ditto. A breeze sprang up, the air got chilly, the light got weird, and then in a matter of seconds the last sliver of sun projected on the foamcore disappeared, the sky turned midnight-blue, and a cheer went up from the crowd. We could see the eclipsed sun perfectly, with a fair amount of corona and one persistent red flare. We could also see Venus nicely, maybe ten degrees away from the sun and moon; I gather some other planets were supposed to be visible too but I didn't spot them. Anyway, after two minutes or so, several more flares or Bailly's-beads or something appeared next to the first one, then merged into a blaze of white and totality was over.
Within seconds, cars started moving, jockeying to get out of the parking lot and onto the road. We waited for the majority of them to leave before getting in the car ourselves. One of our friends had picked out a restaurant a few miles to the south where we could get dinner, gave us its name, and we all hit the road in our various cars... except that we couldn't get any cell phone service (it's a remote area, and there were suddenly thousands of cell phones trying to use one tower). So after crawling along the interstate for half an hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere and I took the relevant exit and stopped at a gas station to ask where the restaurant was. The lady behind the counter gave clear directions, and we got back on the road. In another heavy traffic jam, presumably people trying to avoid the heavy traffic jam on the interstate. It took another half hour or so to crawl a few miles to the restaurant, where we found we couldn't get a table for seven and started looking for someplace else to eat.
Most restaurants in this part of upstate New York exist to serve weekenders and summer people, so since this was neither a weekend nor summer, they were closed. After a bunch of walking up and down the road, and continuing trouble getting cell signal, we found a place where we could at least sit near one another, and had dinner while waiting for (hopefully) the worst of the traffic to subside.
Left the restaurant just before 7 PM. Traffic was indeed less bad than before, but in the first two hours (mostly on interstate) we travelled 63 miles. Including stops for gas and driver-switching, we got home at the stroke of 1:00 AM, thoroughly fried. Fall down go boom, in own bed for the first time since March 13-14. Both have to work in the morning, but at least we don't have to physically go to our respective offices.
Unpacked suitcases. Repacked suitcases. Drove 4+ hours north to friends' house. Slept a lot. With five friends and two other cars, drove north another hour or so into the path of totality, found parking place near a restaurant/resort and gas station, and sat around for a few hours waiting for an eclipse.
We were worried that there would be too much cloud cover, but as it turned out there were only a few high, thin clouds. We viewed the increasing amount of eclipse variously through eclipse glasses, in a camera obscura, by projecting through binoculars onto a white piece of foamcore, and by projecting through a kitchen colander ditto. A breeze sprang up, the air got chilly, the light got weird, and then in a matter of seconds the last sliver of sun projected on the foamcore disappeared, the sky turned midnight-blue, and a cheer went up from the crowd. We could see the eclipsed sun perfectly, with a fair amount of corona and one persistent red flare. We could also see Venus nicely, maybe ten degrees away from the sun and moon; I gather some other planets were supposed to be visible too but I didn't spot them. Anyway, after two minutes or so, several more flares or Bailly's-beads or something appeared next to the first one, then merged into a blaze of white and totality was over.
Within seconds, cars started moving, jockeying to get out of the parking lot and onto the road. We waited for the majority of them to leave before getting in the car ourselves. One of our friends had picked out a restaurant a few miles to the south where we could get dinner, gave us its name, and we all hit the road in our various cars... except that we couldn't get any cell phone service (it's a remote area, and there were suddenly thousands of cell phones trying to use one tower). So after crawling along the interstate for half an hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic,
shalmestere and I took the relevant exit and stopped at a gas station to ask where the restaurant was. The lady behind the counter gave clear directions, and we got back on the road. In another heavy traffic jam, presumably people trying to avoid the heavy traffic jam on the interstate. It took another half hour or so to crawl a few miles to the restaurant, where we found we couldn't get a table for seven and started looking for someplace else to eat.Most restaurants in this part of upstate New York exist to serve weekenders and summer people, so since this was neither a weekend nor summer, they were closed. After a bunch of walking up and down the road, and continuing trouble getting cell signal, we found a place where we could at least sit near one another, and had dinner while waiting for (hopefully) the worst of the traffic to subside.
Left the restaurant just before 7 PM. Traffic was indeed less bad than before, but in the first two hours (mostly on interstate) we travelled 63 miles. Including stops for gas and driver-switching, we got home at the stroke of 1:00 AM, thoroughly fried. Fall down go boom, in own bed for the first time since March 13-14. Both have to work in the morning, but at least we don't have to physically go to our respective offices.