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| 1:29pm. Totality!!! |
Living in a mobile country. Sometimes it means that on Wednesday morning I have no definite plans, and just 5 mornings and 580 miles later, I'm sitting by a pool in a Tennessee state park, waiting for the sun to go out. All it takes is the will, a car that can get there, one old high school friend with an idea and another with an extra hotel room
and the willingness to let it be used. Oh, and a clear day, too!
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| 11:18am. Still time until the start, but the signs are out: Don't look up without those glasses! |
Less than 3 months ago, I didn't even know it was coming. But I always liked the sensation of being in an eclipse. I'd even used a pinhole projector once or twice. But never a full eclipse. I wanted in. I
read about the eclipse on various sites. I studied up on
how to take photographs of the eclipse, and quickly decided that
enjoying the show would be the top priority.
Nashville is about the closest "totality" city to our home, and I had two old high school friends who were going to be in the area. And David...
had an extra hotel room!
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| 12:21pm. The partial eclipse has started. The sun as pitted olive. |
We left early and got in by dinner hour. Along the way, freeway rest areas were overloaded. We saw cars with rear windows decorated like slogans like "
totality or bust!" But traffic flowed easily, and by early evening we had arrived. I'm sure Nashville is a wonderful city. It has the Grand Ole Opry and many other sights. We went to none of them. Maybe we'll be back someday!
After securing the hotel room, our hardest decision was, "where will we see it"? Some people at the hotel were headed for various events in Nashville. Others to The Hermitage Home. And the large bus group was going to...
Memphis??? ok, so not everyone was there for totality.
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| 1:00pm. Crescent Sun. |
We thought about Gallatin, where the eclipse would last 2 minutes and 40 seconds. We looked at an event in the hotel's town, where the eclipse would be 2 minutes and 24 seconds, and where I could get a souvenir flying disc (never underestimate the appeal of a souvenir disc to an old ultimate player!). And then there was "
The Solar Eclipse Party at the Pool" at the Cedars of Lebanon State Park. At 2 minutes and 19 seconds it would be a bit shorter than the others,
but it was in the pool and it would be in the 90s. We went to the pool.
By 10am Monday morning we were poolside, listening to live entertainment from the patio deck. Every song seemed like it could be related to the eclipse somehow, from
Ain't No Sunshine to
Folsom Prison Blues. Folsom Prison Blues? oh yes: "I ain't seen the sun shine since I don't know when." I got extra eclipse glasses, borrowed some medical tape from First Aid, and created solar filters for my cameras.
The partial eclipse was due to begin at 11:58am. at 11:57am, clouds rolled in.
Where did they come from? Boom, nothing to see here! But 10 minutes later, just as suddenly as they had rolled in, they dissipated. Several people around the pool cheered, realizing through their eclipse glasses that the event had begun. As it was a new moon, there was nothing to track through the sky in advance of hte eclipse; the moon was just
there when the eclipse started, and
gone when it was over.
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| 1:05pm. More than halfway to totality. Any resemblance to other people from New Jersey is incidental. |
Being at the pool meant far fewer people with serious camera gear, and far more families with young children. As the partial eclipse progressed, playing in the pool continued uninterrupted. Looking up without the eclipse glasses, it would be virtually impossible to see what was happening. But slowly, it became clear that it just wasn't as bright around the pool as it had been.
At 10 minutes until the full eclipse time of 1:28pm, a 10-minute warning was given and everyone had to get out of the pool. The lifeguards would see the eclipse, too.
Darkness came slowly, slowly, and then the light dimmed, and then...
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| 1:18pm: Everybody out of the pool for totality. |
We are space travelers. we are celestial beings.
And there is a star at 7 o'clock from the sun, in the corona. or is that Mercury?
People cheered. A little child asked, "
can we get in the water now?"
Two minutes and 19 seconds, and then the 2nd diamond ring came out, with it's blinding solar light. Within seconds it was list again, as the partial eclipse played out in reverse.
It's hard to explain, but when it comes to a full eclipse there's just no partial.
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| 1:28pm. Totality begins. |
We left after the partial eclipse ended, and drove straight in to
the two hundred mile traffic backup. Google Maps was totally overwhelmed. The state of Kentucky helped out by having road construction on the north-bound lanes of every major highway in the state, except for the ones with accidents. If rest stops were zany coming down, they were off the charts coming back. In
Elizabethtown, the residents of Pawnee Drive got in to the road with flashlights, advising motorists to ignore the hopeless computer programs and directing them back to the main roads. Even so, we'd do it again.
The next solar eclipse that will be reachable is in April 2024. It'll be twice as long as this one was, and it's going to go right through Cleveland...
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| 1:30pm. Totality! |
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