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Great American Eclipse


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So, in Connecticut, we ain't going to see ****?

I was thinking about this comment. Aren't you used to not seeing **** in Connecticut? I spent a month there once and I swear all I saw was trees and strippers.

 

I am obviously exaggerating, but as pretty as Connecticut was, and as cool as the trip was, I have never been more glad to get back to the mountains. I was suffering from what I can only describe as claustrophobia from always being surrounded by ****ing trees and not being able to see what was around me. It is disorienting for me not to be able to see mountains in the distance and get my bearings.

 

Besides, it's expensive for an Idaho boy to get a buzz on at sea level on Connecticut beer. And the strippers weren't that great*.

 

*Disclaimer, they are the only ones I have seen, so take the review for what it's worth.

 

Growing up in NY (and living the majority of my life on the East Coast), I always felt the opposite- every time I go to the West, I'm amazed by how much open space and prairie there is. It feels like another planet or something. I remember the first time I took a road trip to the mid-West and then through Kansas out to to CO, and although conceptually I guess I knew it'd look different, it was more different than I was prepared for. I was like damn, everything is so dry and brown and vast and flat, and where are all the freaking trees? And then bam! All of a sudden a wall of mountains sticking straight out of the prairie as you approach the front Range in Denver. It's still sorta amazing every time I fly into Denver (well, it also helps that its airport is way out in the middle of freaking nowhere), but in the approach and then landing, I'm always a little taken back how you can just see for miles and miles in every direction and it's super flat and featureless and there's no vegetation.. and then in the distance the Rockies suddenly rise up a few thousand feet, just west of the metro area.

 

It's kinda cool actually, there are lots of other areas where it's like this in CA, and in Wyoming and you have the sky islands in AZ and la cruces in NM and so on and so forth, but the CO front range always sticks the most in my memory just because it was my first trip to the Western US.

 

I've heard other people from out West say the same thing Marc, once coming East. Once you go east of the Mississippi, it's just so different, almost everything is covered in dense forest. You can be driving through the woods through New Jersey and then very suddenly just pop out of the tree cover and see the Manhattan skyline. I remember I was picking up a friend from Dulles Airport near DC one time and we were driving through the Virginia suburbs and he asked how much further until the city center, and I was like.. ehh maybe 20 min, we've gotta go through all the suburbs, and he was all confused and said he expected it to look more built up. And I was like, well it is, you just can't see it.. there's dense trees on both sides of the freeway, maybe occasionally you'll see an office building or two poke up from beyond the trees. This guy was from Houston though, so I can understand... there's basically no tall vegetation at all out there and you can just see urban sprawl going out to the horizon in every direction.

 

This tree effect is most pronounced IMO in Atlanta.. if you ever go there Marc, you'll see what I mean.

 

I've actually been to Atlanta. Didn't spend any real time there in the the city but flew in to visit family in Valdosta and spent a month in the region. I remember being very disappointed at my view of the city, I expected to be able to see it from miles away and I never really got a peak. We went the rounds through Florida and Alabama on that trip. It was cool. I was 16 at the time and not quite as wedded to my surroundings.

 

I figured you flew into Hailey once a year to divide up the wealth... From the sounds of it not. That must be the .1%... I only kid of course, hard to mock someone for not being in the .1% when I am probably sitting in the 70s.

 

On the ApocEclipse, as some around here have come to call it, it is going to be interesting. Nobody really knows how may people are going to show up around here, they just know it will be too many. The cellular network in the prime viewing area in Eastern Idaho (just north of Idaho Falls) is at 95% of capacity at the average peak period. Apparently Verizon declined a request from local officials to put in temporary infrastructure so we just have to expect outages. I heard on the news that the the Idaho Transportation Department has ordered 750 porta-potties to put along I-15, that sends lots of interesting messages. They are warning residents to stock up on gas and food. I have no idea if this is a Y2K scare thing or not. We shall see. I decided to hike and pitch a tent instead of take the camp trailer though, don't want to end up next to some Californian douche-bag.

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I live in Columbia SC and we're expecting a ton of people to come here to see this thing. Normally no one comes here for anything other than a football game, so I expect it to be a crazy day.

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Marc

 

If by Hailey, you mean Hailey Idaho.. then yes, I've flown in there a few times before, to go to Sun Valley. Not every year, but it's in the rotation of places I visit in the winter- one of my top 5 favorite ski-towns in the US. :)

Cool, I did HVAC work over there for a decade. Met lots of rich folk, and I mean the richest in the world. Found out they are mostly just regular people. The .1% are mostly different though. Disconnected from reality. Allen & Co. has their retreat at Sun Valley every year. It's basically the modern day Bildererg meeting. Why was Facebook worth more than Boeing at it's IPO? Because a bunch of people at an invitation only convention hosted by a company with so many connections it is redundant to list them all (a managing director is George Tenet) decided to make it worth that much. What did Facebook have to sell? You... All of you... And by association me... It's like vaccination.

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I'm going to laugh at everyone spending all this money if it ends up cloudy and raining.

Shush, you. But yes, I will be sad. But I needed to get out to Nebraska one last time to check on my mom, so it worked out. Just had to stay with family instead of getting a hotel because they were all booked.

 

One last time?

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Did I tell you guys my mom had a hypoxic brain injury in March? She's essentially out to lunch and recuperating from that and a horrible bed wound in a rehabilitation hospital. I go out and check on her every 6-8 weeks since this happened. I just can't keep this up with Quinn starting public school in September, so I'm taking a break from visits for awhile. These visits really suck and are generally unproductive. My mom doesn't recognize me at all, I'm not sure if she recognizes her siblings, either, but there's a chance she might. I realized in May that she didn't recognize my kids, and in June, I realized she didn't recognize me, either. The rehabilitation hospital has agreed to try to keep her there in their long-term wing, I have a feeling they are just waiting to have a bed open up to move her there. I've thought about moving her here, but the nursing homes out here are terrible, multiple violations. And I would be her only visitor.

 

Honestly, at this point I'm just waiting for her to pass away, which really sucks. If I had a crystal ball and the ability to see 3 months into the future, I would've made some very different decisions about her care in March. But I was trying to respect her wishes, and her wish was always to fight. Now it doesn't seem like there's much worth fighting for. At least she is pretty pleasant and enjoys watching the birds.

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Thanks. I think that's the biggest thing. I flew there last November for her own mom's funeral and she was just so nasty to me the whole time. I feel terrible but I'm just done fighting with her. She's honestly more pleasant to deal with now. How terrible is that?

 

My dad and I had a quick phone call yesterday to talk logistics. I am ready to bunker in for this. We're going to the family cabin just outside of his hometown. I told him we need to buy food the day before and be prepared to be there for 8 hours while the roads clear. His hometown of 1700 people (with 4 bars, mind you) thinks they are going to get some locals to do a BBQ and just charge everyone $10 for a plate. It's going to be an absolute clusterfuck. They have no idea what they're in for. Then my dad said we should be prepared to get on the road if the weather turns cloudy. Like hell, Dad. We will be stuck because everyone else will think the same thing. Please pray for good weather and my sanity. My dad is an amateur astronomer, so this is a huge deal to him. He will be so disappointed if this doesn't happen.

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We're just about an hour and a half south of the total path. Some buddies and I are going to drive an RV to the path either the night before or first thing the day of.

One thing I am carefully planning is my route there. Most other people in our area are just going to Nashville, I can almost guarantee that the main interstates and highways there will be an absolute parking lot. We're just going to take old country roads to go to a middle of nowhere town in Tennessee where hopefully we should have no problem.

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Thanks, everyone, for the kind thoughts. I haven't said anything on Facebook because I've learned from our experience with Ethan that some people are just emotional vampires pretending to help.

 

We're just about an hour and a half south of the total path. Some buddies and I are going to drive an RV to the path either the night before or first thing the day of.

 

One thing I am carefully planning is my route there. Most other people in our area are just going to Nashville, I can almost guarantee that the main interstates and highways there will be an absolute parking lot. We're just going to take old country roads to go to a middle of nowhere town in Tennessee where hopefully we should have no problem.

I would go the night before, if you can. The area I'm going to is extremely rural, too, and these areas are the most likely to be overwhelmed by the influx of cars and people. We're planning on taking country roads for the 10 or so miles between my aunt's town and the family cabin. Worst case, my aunt's house is actually in the area of totality. My dad is just hoping his buddies will come up to the cabin. (I doubt they'll be able to get out of "town", actually.) Good luck to you guys!
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I'm not anywhere particularly close to a full eclipse-viewing area, though I know a few people here going up to Tennessee, too. We are still supposed to be getting around 70% of the eclipse, so my university is having a viewing party and will be providing safety glass for looking at it. I'm planning on going to it so that I can hopefully see it as best I can.

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I would go the night before, if you can. The area I'm going to is extremely rural, too, and these areas are the most likely to be overwhelmed by the influx of cars and people.

 

Yeah after some thought, we're going to venture out Sunday night after Game of Thrones is over. I know every campground will be booked, so we're just going to have an adventure and park the RV outside a Walmart. The one I'm probably going to stop at is used to us weirdos staying overnight the week of Bonnaroo, so we'll be good.

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It's starting to get pretty busy around here. The commute is going to suck tomorrow afternoon. I passed more cars today than I normally do in a few weeks.

 

The locals are hitting the grocery stores hard to stock up. If you are headed to a Rural area I would make sure you have enough food just in case. Restaurants won't have the capacity for what's coming, so I wouldn't count on that. A guy I know that owns a grocery store said he had more sales yesterday than he normally does the day before Thanksgiving. Gas could be an issue too, at least as far as price if not availability, keep your tank full enough to get back out a ways.

 

Thinking of rigging up a pinhole projector in a dark tent to watch before and after totality. Could be a cool science project with the kids.

 

I ended up having to bag the camping trip. Some "expert" (that I better never find) told my wife's grandmother that 1/5 of the people coming in were going to be rapists, thieves, and murders... The story gets long and depressing from there. Crying grandmother begging you to cower in your hole with her great-grandchildren. fuck.

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