E minus 37 years, 6 months, 5 days .. 16 Feb 1980 ...
It was only a few months prior that I had completed my engineering degree and started a new job. My best friend, Narayan Shenvi, had just completed his medical degree and was doing his residency. "Science Today" was the avidly read science magazine published by the Times Of India group. And, it mentioned the E-word that was to cross the Indian peninsula, about 400 miles south of Bombay, where we were both located!
The umbra and penumbra that had fascinated me as a geometrical construction were coming to life. The state government announced a special E-tour by bus from Bombay, and you can guess who the first registrants were - eagerly hoping that the 10-million-strong-metropolis would arouse another 40 enthusiasts so the trip is not cancelled!
The preparation for the trip started .. the precious camera I had was a no-fringes, point-and-shoot, no-settings-of-any-sort, Agfa Click III, which per the currency rates of those days would be worth $8 - a huge amount in the socialist India of those days.
Loading it manually with a black-and-white 120 film, cranked carefully to the first picture position, and then you just hope that the ratchet doesn't slip and cause an irreparable fiasco inside the camera, destroying all the exposures taken on the 12-exposures-roll.E minus several/few months ...
The Great American Eclipse was the silver lining on the dark cloud of a "this can't be true" post-Presidential-Election lunch meeting with Dave Silverman, CEO of American Atheists (AA). The Annual Convention of AA was divinely timed and situated with the Great American Eclipse - August 21, 2017 .. in Charleston, SC. This celestial event was not to be missed, the convention being the icing on the cake. Mental preparations began, and even as I contemplated a change in employment (which did not happen), I started setting expectations with prospective employers about my August time-off to ward off the evil of business travel. Weather plays a major role (as fellow eclipse-chasers and tornado-chasers will agree).
With the social media awareness, it was a foregone conclusion that big crowds will inundate middle America small towns. As we decided to make this a family outing, and with drive time as a factor, we finalized on Knoxville, making reservations for a night on the way and back. Monitoring the weather at E-14days, showed scattered thunderstorms all the way from Charleston, SC to Kansas City, MO. Then, a decision to go to Idaho Falls, ID, well beyond driving feasibility, scurrying to get airline seats to the nearest airport (Salt Lake City, 230 miles away), and a rental car (at a location 15 miles from the airport.
E minus 65 hours
Our bags are loaded, boarding passes printed, Lyft arranged for a ride to the airport. It is 10:30pm Friday, Aug 18. We are 8 hours from the flight take off time. I hear the ping of a text message on my phone - it is United Airlines telling me that our first flight leg - to Chicago - is delayed - this has the cascaded effect of missing the connection to Salt Lake City. I spend about an hour on the phone with the United agent, leveraging my elite privilege to find any other routing from any other airport (La Guardia, JFK, Philly) - not a seat available - there are millions of eclipse-looneys like us! We make a split-second decision to cancel our Idaho City plans, and revert to the original plan of driving to Knoxville, come what may on the weather front - which has, incidentally, cleared up to "mostly sunny" on E-Day!
And, the return trip will allow us to visit Charlottesville, VA, where the recent events demonstrated the dark moral eclipse that this country has been experiencing :-(
E minus 1 Day
Rohini's favorite quote is, "make lemonade when you are served a lemon" and this principle went into full gear!
The first stop was for crabcakes at Nick's Fish House on Baltimore harbor! GoogleMaps offered us interesting detours through rural Virginia to avoid the heavy traffic on I-81.
We got a chance to experience Southern delicacies at Mama's Farmhouse in Pigeon Forge, TN - a complete breakfast with grits, sausages, bacon, fried chicken, waffles with chocolate syrup, biscuits with gravy!
A ride up into the mountains allowed us a visit to the abodes of the early settlers.
And, not to forget the facilities offered by the newly constructed hotel - a swimming pool and a barbecue pit!E-Day
The hourly weather forecast is just what the doc ordered! The next uncertainty is the traffic to the center-line of the band, a drive of about 70 miles from our overnight perch.
We have chosen the viewing site to enable a quick getaway back home by the highways soon after the period of totality. At this hour, E-9hrs, the traffic is moving smoothly. The top of the Smoky Mountains, Clingman's Dome, is another story - the Park started issuing permits to go there, which have been sold out. We have heard that the park has arranged buses to ferry eclipsers up and down to the Dome, and these are sold out, as well. Cades Cove, an 11-miles one-way loop in the mountains opens at sunrise. The Ranger told us that a few dozen cars line up for first entry on a "normal" day, but they are expecting a few hundred to have lined up overnight today.
We have decided to not partake in that frenzy, and our intended location is Sweetwater, TN, which offers the following E-duration, all times in UTC.
The area will come into the penumbra at 1:04pm, into the umbra at 2:32pm, emerge out the umbra at 2:35pm and emerge out of the penumbra at 3:58pm.
Though the traffic seemed normal, we decided to take the back roads through rural Tennessee to get to the site at the center of the band. Stopped by a gas station and a grocery store along the way, life seemed as normal as would be on another week day. Once we got into the ~2 minutes band range, we could have stopped anywhere along the road, or in some parking lot and enjoyed the event. It was nowhere close to the frenzy that was being reported about some towns in Oregon and other places.
Local businesses capitalized on the event, in a nice way. Businesses very close to downtown (which was made a pedestrian plaza, and had music, food and other facilities) offered to sell parking spots - $20 within a block, $10 a block or two away. The $10 signs were actually crossed out $20 signs - showing the interplay of demand and supply. A restaurant that had patio seating put a premium of $25 on the eclipse-viewing-over-a-pitcher-of-beer experience!
Thousands of enthusiasts have posted numerous pictures of the eclipse, so am posting only one of a few that I took.
What does not come through in the photographs is the experience. The ambient light gets eerily dim to what would be post-dusk. The temperature drops several degrees, and you start feeling the cool breeze. The cicadas in the trees suddenly come alive and start chirping - with this totally unexpected "nightfall". We didn't have any animals around us, but I understand that they also demonstrate strange behaviors. And, in three minutes, it is "sunrise" again! The scorching sun returns in a few more minutes.
That makes a total eclipse so very different from a partial eclipse, and all sights now set on 8 April 2024, which will travel closer to the east coast, the band covering San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Dayton, Columbus, Akron, Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo, Rochester ... what will the weather be on that Spring Day?
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