Eclipse 2017 After Action Report: Part 04

T -30 hours: We depart Curmudgeon Compound in Mrs. Curmudgeon’s hatchback. Due to her influence we’re on time (my “give a shit” about schedules has stopped working). The car is great but I miss my big diesel security blanket. If I can’t have my truck I probably need a teddy bear (or a bottle of bourbon). I don’t have a tent, my kayak, or fishing poles! I’m carrying less than seven guns, had to travel without my chainsaw, and don’t have a full set of tools. What if I need to shoot my way though a wall of zombies, catch a fish, and build a log cabin?

Mrs. Curmudgeon is happy we’ve left my toys and lumbering walrus of a truck behind. Regardless, I insisted on bringing coffee, beer, a stove, and Mountain House. While I ponder a brief moment of inadequate preparations (which is what most people call “every day”) Mrs. Curmudgeon is fretting over her car’s tires. They’re making a weird sound. Honda engineers are amazing but they installed low profile tires (the work of the devil!). From my point of view this is taking engineering advice from ghettoized low-rider Chevies. The car is perfect but the tires are problematic. Then again Honda’s bad tire choices merely make funny sounds while Dodge’s engineers created a machine that will lock up its steering geometry at highway speed. Japan wins!

We inspect the tires and I declare the weird sound to be caused by Russian hackers. We continue. In the back seat, the teenagers are playing video games and grunting. They have forgotten why we’re traveling.

T -29 hours: The pavement changes and the tires sound much better now. Good news but I still hate low profile tires.

T -20 hours: We stop early. In keeping with my philosophical bent of “avoid any crowd doing any thing for any reason” we’ve stopped well short of the Zone of Totality. Because I’m awesome (and it’s a family trip instead of solo), I’ve booked an en route hotel that’s much nicer than my usual preference.

We’ve seen no sign of anyone anywhere caring about the eclipse. Since I’ve mostly avoided the news I’m mildly concerned there’s some reason nobody else is traveling to this awesome event. Did I misread the calendar? Rather than think about it, I lounge in a chair and engage in a guilty pleasure; six consecutive episodes of South Park. This teaches the teenagers valuable life lessons and new vocabulary. It nearly causes Mrs. Curmudgeon brain damage.

T – 19 hours: The weather report looks sketchy. Tomorrow is the big day and some folks (like us?) are going to get hosed. One news report suggests the eclipse will cause traffic jams everywhere. I doubt that. I turn back to South Park before they can blame lunar cycles on Russian hackers who created impeachably racist orbital practices. Cartman seems to have a tighter grip on reality than CNN anyway. We have beer and twice as many eclipse goggles as we’ll need so I put a dent in the extra beer but can’t watch South Park through the goggles.

T -9 hours: It’s time!

T -8.75 hours: Fuck this. Snooze button.

T -8.74 hours: Mrs. Curmudgeon, who is a morning person, reminds me that it’s a celestial event. Nothing anywhere is more punctual than the orbit of the moon. This is all Newton’s fault! Him and his uppity Calculus are ruining my vacation day! I’m not a morning person. If I see a sunrise it’s because I was drinking the night before or about to shoot a buck. I only had a few beers and I’m not in a tree stand. As I crawl out of bed my back sounds like trolls stomping on bubble wrap.

T -8.50 hours: In the parking lot I take a sip of hotel coffee and hurl it on the pavement. What’s with shitty hotel coffee!?! Curmudgeon wants to kill! I take the wheel and point toward a coffee shop I visited for five minutes several years ago. I can’t remember my zip code but I have a mind like a steel trap when it comes to fishing holes and proper coffee. I navigate like a cruise missile and find it quickly. I’m pleasantly surprised when our little Honda squeezes into the parking lot. Last time I was here it was a hassle to maneuver the truck into their postage stamp sized lot. The joint is hipster territory but they do coffee well. I order from someone who looks like he could use a few weeks working in a hay mow. The coffee is excellent. I give him a huge tip. Urge to kill fading.

T -8.25 hours: On the road and (because Mrs. Curmudgeon anticipated my slow motion wake up procedure) on time. The teenagers are wide awake and chirpy. I’m tolerably conscious. Unfortunately, it’s very cloudy out.

T -4 hours: We’re in the middle of Bumfuck nowhere… my kinda’ place! If I had my stuff we could stop here and start a homestead. The land smells like cowshit and freedom. The harvesters are out. I fuckin’ love harvesters! Not for the first time in my life I wonder what kind of scratch it would take to start a career as a custom harvester. Would I make money or just slave away to make a John Deere payment? It’s still cloudy.

T -3 hours: We’ve passed from Bumfuck nowhere to further out. The clouds are thinning but not going away. I guess them to be cirrocumulus stratiformis but I could be wrong. They’re thin and the sun shines bright and hot. This might be OK. (Which is good because I can’t see any better alternatives to be had by shifting east or west.) There’s slightly more than virtually no traffic. My spidey sense thinks it’s eclipse people. Mrs. Curmudgeon doubts my observation. “How can three cars and a motorcycle mean ‘heavy eclipse traffic’?” I’m pretty sure the proper amount of traffic at this time and place is a haybine on Wednesdays.

T -2.5 hours: The skies are looking clearer, the sun is frying us in the car and we’ve got the AC cranked. Traffic has slowed from 75 to 60. I order a nagivational change and soon were on a smaller road. Still paved though. We’re making good time.

T -1.9 hours: I had a plan to hit the center of the Zone of Totality just before the beginning of the event but traffic is building again. We’re already in the zone but not at my designated target on the centerline. As I understand it… which is dimly because I’ve carefully avoided the press… there’s an hour plus of the sun getting eaten by the sky-dragon, then a few minutes of total eclipse, followed by an hour plus of the sky dragon barfing it back up. I want the whole show. We’re already within the zone of totality, which I take to mean we’ll see parts of the sun disappear and reappear but we’re not on the center line, which is where the real eclipse happens. (Clearly I didn’t do my homework on this.)

T -1.8 hours: Meatloaf! We pass a dusty, unremarkable, greasy spoon with a sign. “Meatloaf Monday”.

T -1.75 hours: A mile or so later the traffic comes to a halt. No shit! This is a tiny town that probably hasn’t had halted traffic since the first Model T scared the horses. Fuck this! Curmudgeons don’t do traffic jams! Everyone in the car agrees that the right, true, and proper way to handle this is go back to the meatloaf.

T – 1.70 hours: Back at meatloaf central I park in the shade. Traffic on the road has backed up this far already! It’s crawling. I suspect we could sit in an idling car and make the last few miles to the centerline in time but not with a time cushion like I’d prefer.

The huge parking lot is basically empty. One guy is there with a Jeep. He’s fretting over a smart phone. We strike up a conversation and he explains that everyone in the Zone of Totality will see the full monty. If we fight the traffic the last 6-8 miles the only reward is a longer duration of totality. That makes sense to me. He’s disappointed about lousy cell service for his data plan (I look around and think “we’re not at war, there’s electricity and meatloaf… that’s sufficiently civilized for reasonable men”). He shows me on his phone where we are and there’s a nifty calculation of durations. The last bit of traffic adds up to 30 seconds or less of “totality”. I glance at the lemmings on the road. This (still empty) dusty parking lot is good enough for me. Mrs. Curmudgeon and the teenagers are already in the cool of the restaurant. Meatloaf is a powerful draw among my people.

[Stay tuned…]