The tale of the eclipse

[fbhjr]

When my wife and I saw the eclipse in Oregon back in 2017 I almost immediately said “We’ve got to see the one in 2024.”

How has been much debated about where and how we’d see it.
April in New England has clouds about 70% of the time.
But, Texas isn’t the easiest to get around, even if you’re willing to go all the way to there.

The two locations we were most fond of were Dallas Texas where my wife used to live and Fairfax Vermont where my father’s family is from.

Texas was far more likely to have clear skies, Vermont we could drive to and back in just one day.

After Africa in January, my wife said “I don’t want to fly to Texas in April.”
So, we said we’d go to Vermont if the weather was good, and just skip it if it wasn’t.

As of last week, the weather looked like it would be good in Vermont, so plans were made.

There was a place called “The Sparkle Barn” my wife had been saying she’d like to go to for some time now. But, it is not near anything we would normally go to or on our routes for anything.

But, they open at 10AM on Mondays, the eclipse wasn’t until 2 or so and it is only about 2 hours away from my ancestral homeland of Fairfax Vermont.

Yesterday I got up at my normal work time of 4:30, and woke up my wife as soon as I finished my shower. We were on the road about 5:30.

The Sparkle Barn was not in the path of totality, so the roads going there were not overly crowded. We made excellent time and got there more than an hour before they opened.
We went to a bakery in town and had some breakfast, then amused ourselves with the outdoor sculptures outside the Sparkle Barn before they opened.
(And were very impressed by the forklift driver of the construction material truck who unloaded a bunch of stuff around cars in the parking lot.)

My wife was very happy with the Sparkle Barn and bought a fair bit of stuff before I told her we needed to get going at 10:30.

I avoided highways on the two hours north to Fairfax. Between mountains and crowded cellphone towers, it was good we had back up directions, but before 1 we were driving into Fairfax.

My thought had been to watch the eclipse by the only remaining piece of land my family owns in town, which is our family plot at the cemetery.
We drove there and found the graves of my father and his parents after a bit of searching. (It’s been 20 years since the last visit there.)

However, the cemetery had what my wife described as an “agricultural” odor.
“Yeah, cow manure,” I replied. “Big field next to the cemetery. They must have been spreading fertilizer.”
So, we decided we’re look for less green pastures to watch.

I did drive down the street named for my family and have my wife take photos of the home my great grandfather built 130 years ago that no one in the family has been inside in 89 years. (It sold for $3,500 in 1935. It’s valued about one million dollars now…)

The pizza place in town was closed, but the diner was open.
So, we had lunch. The wait staff told us we were welcome to keep our car in their lot for the eclipse and watch if from the baseball field behind the diner.
They also suggested that when it was over, we could have desert.
This was a fine plan.

So, we watched from the baseball field. That seemed totally appropriate as my grandfather spent some time as a professional baseball player before he went to med school.

There was a family there from Ecuador that we got talking with. Their son had picked Fairfax to watch the eclipse off of a map as he expected it not to be crowded.
He was right. That family, us and another group of 4 people were all the folks on that ball field. The folks from the diner did come look for the big finish too.

It turns out the family from Ecuador used to run the Mexican restaurant just down the road from where we have our sword practices in Connecticut. We talked about that and what a small world it is with them a fair bit.
Also while watching the eclipse they were on the phone to their daughter in Barcelona. Not about the eclipse, but the father was trying to guide her in repairing her water heater over the phone. It was fairly surreal as it was getting darker to hear a lot of “No, caliente, no frio” as he was telling where which vales to adjust.

There was one point when the son was telling the rest of his family, in Spanish, that the total part of the eclipse was going to last 8 minutes.
“No, no, tres minutos, no ocho” I said.

“You speak Spanish,” the mother said to me.
“Poco.”
“But, you understood us.”
“I wasn’t trying to listen in. But, I don’t want you to go blind if you think it is safe to look up without the glasses for 8 minutes, when it’s only safe for 3.”
“Thank you.”

Sadly all day high clouds had been moving in from the south. By eclipse time, they were over the sun. They were high thin clouds, so you could still see the sun through them. But, it really through of the focus of my camera and most of my photos didn’t come out well.

But, as I said to my wife “I’d rather have bad photos of a good thing than good photos of a bad thing”.
And, it was great to watch.
Even without my camera being able to take photos, the eclipse was fantastic. We could see the corona, several planets, a bunch of stars and the dim light of the edge of the shadow about 50 miles away.

Unlike 7 years ago, we didn’t see that shadow moving across the sky, probably because of the clouds. But, we it got close, you could see it projected onto the clouds which we had not see when it was clear.

Once the sun started coming back, I went over to the diner, got some pie and we headed south.

I had the idea that maybe I could get ahead of the millions of other people who were watching because they’d wait for the sun to come back before heading south.

That idea was wrong.

It’s 100 miles on the highway from where we got on to the New Hampshire border were I used to live 35 years ago.
Those 100 miles (160km) took us 5 hours.
There were times we were stopped long enough I turned off the car until folks moved again.

It got better once we finally reached New Hampshire as there is another highway there and most of the folks headed to Connecticut, New York and New Jersey took that other road.
But, there were still plenty of folks on the road we took.

From my father’s old home to where I live now usually takes a bit less than 4 hours for me to transverse.
Yesterday it took almost 9.
And, the last 90 or so miles (140km) were all at full speed.
A very long and frustrating drive.

It was very cool to see the eclipse. Maybe not as cool as 7 years ago, but that because that was the first. It was still very cool.
It was nice to see Fairfax again. It’s a beautiful town. But, there aren’t any jobs for me there or anywhere near there, so as nice as I think it is, I will remain the Frank Hunt that has never lived there.
That drive was awful. Even if I knew what it would be like, I probably still would have done it. But, I wish it had not been so bad.

At some point I’ll combine the photos my wife and I took and post them…

Comments

[palusbuteo]

I'm getting the sense the drive was by far much worse than any of the horrible drives to renfaires in NJ and down south

and probably much worse than the drives I've been stuck in trying to head to Mass from Alexandria VA the week of Thanksgiving
like the one year there was a massive crash on a 95 bridge in Southern CT that involved a semi truck, several cars, a few of them on fire, and a fatality

[fbhjr]

I'm not sure it was worse than those drives, but it was on that order.
It was not as bad as the blizzard and going to Kentucky by mistake...

[brickhousewench]

Oof, my Monday at work was rough, but I'm glad it wasn't being stuck in traffic for nine hours.