I traveled in a bus convoy from home turf in Southern NH to the little town of Waterbury VT yesterday to be in the Total Eclipse zone.
It was a really great experience. It definitely a bucket-list level thing since no solar eclipses will be on the Continental US till 2044 and by then I will not be around to witness it. The bus trip kept the cost low. When asked, the organizer quietly said he was so into the idea of bringing people to the Eclipse that he knowingly was taking a loss. I had folded up a few large bills expecting this response and gladly passed them to him via the 'Irish handshake'. Of course long bus journeys are often problematic, as I recount below.
I think being in the Zone was important because you could see the moon creeping into place while it gradually go darker then when it covered the sun we got total darkness, then we saw the uncovering and the restoration of the light. It got noticeably colder as the sun got more and more covered and noticeably warmer after. The wind also seemed to pick up, probably due to the temperature gradient making the older hotter air rise and get replaced by the newer colder air.
The trip organizer had been to a previous eclipse and he said that even though we had some high altitude, thin and milky clouds yesterday that he preferred this version because those clouds diffused the sunlight and made for some really memorable visuals whereas the previous eclipse was much more blue then black then blue without the visible tapering we saw before and after.
Someone played Dark Side of the Moon a bit before the Eclipse and it went over well. I hadn't heard that album in a while because I am kind of burned out to Floyd so I don't play it much these days, but it was very nice to hear it again in that time and place. Given I'm a prog rock fan as
@Tunescribe knows, I broke out Camel's
Moonmadness for the event itself to listen on headphones because the event's self-appointed DJ had moved on to something that I was less fond of.
I am feeling pretty drained this morning after a very long ride back. The way up was around three hours,
the way back was around six hours.
The bus convoy had many friends but it also had many strangers who were either friends of friends or total strangers. Unfortunately there was this woman seated directly behind me who reminded me of Mama Cass both in terms of voice and girth. I literally had to cover my ears when she raised her voice at all, because it hurt my ears. Unfortunately she and her clique were engaged in some pretty banal conversation to begin with, but fortunately they soon settled down. The guy I sat next to was former co-worker and a world traveler so we talked most of the way North.
On the way South, it was
the worst traffic I had ever been in, yet I was prepared for that, and since I wasn't driving it wasn't that annoying to me. I had downloaded tons of content to my tablet so watched a bunch of long videos while the guy next to me slept most of the time. The other badness was about two hours into the return trip the stench from the toilet became hard to ignore. I was about four rows away and it got exponentially worse as you got closer. A bit of a poo smell is somewhat bearable, but this got more acrid as it ripened. Some in Mama Cass's party were very annoyed. I'm not sure I blame them but everyone knew not much could be done about it. I had learned early in life after taking some long ski trips on busses to try to get as far forward as possible to avoid the odors wafting from the honey pot. I was only moderately successful on this trip, but was thankful I wasn't further back since it got exponentially worse the closer you were.
So, overall, I'd do it all over again despite the long journey and the pee/poo smell issue, but right now I feel I'll need a day or two to recover from it all.
