The Committee.
TVCTPMO (The Vast Conspiracy To Piss Me Off)
That’s very cool. Somewhat akin to the midnight baseball game in Fairbanks, Alaska. This is a very different solar event from the eclipse, but still…
Durango, Mexico looks like our only dwindling option. Reasonable travel, no visa needed for my Russian wife. If it were just me I’d probably go with Texas-Arkansas with more car rental options and highway.
I guess Mazatlan works too yet as a contractor in the UK it’ll cost a fortune in missed invoicing and travel expenses. Also she has no enthusiasm for TSE’s which I reckon and have described as one of the most profound events to witness, Have any of you “dragged along” a blasé spouse who found it at least a bit impressive?
Other than that, it’s August 2026 in Svarlbard which I hear has nice weather year round.
Not a spouse, but for the 2017 eclipse I was camping with a friend, whose teenage son was very uninterested. In fact, he said that he was going to stay in their van and watch it on YouTube! His father flipped out at that and told him he was absolutely not going to watch it on YouTube. As it turned out, the kid was indeed pretty impressed with the event.
Pretty funny. It’s a good thing his dad dragged him out to see it.
I was 14 for the March 7, 1970, eclipse that passed within a couple hours’ drive of our house in Maryland. My mother wanted us to see it, but rather than simply saying, “We’re going,” she asked me if we should go, and being a sullen teenager, I said no. And she let that stand.
I knew nothing about eclipses, had no idea what it would be like, and I don’t remember her doing much to explain or try to persuade me.
Bad decision, Mom!
We finally saw one together in 2017, and I gave her a hard time about letting me have a veto 47 years earlier. I might have become the next Carl Sagan if I had seen an eclipse at 14!
Why is it mandatory to drag her to something she doesn’t want?
I agree with the idea of sharing your enthusiasm and maybe broadening her horizons. But if dhe donwanna, the price of the trip to [wherever] just dropped 50%.
I’m not going to bother. He isn’t interested and would get bored and want to go and do something else. I’m taking an interested and excited friend instead cause why bum my high with his boredom?
If my wife is absolutely not keen to travel to see one of the most awesome spectacles I certainly won’t force her to go. (I have promised a trip to Tenerife once I had the funds). She has taken a glance at a lunar eclipse or two and was out with me and my scope when Jupiter and Saturn were really close a couple years back.
Often enthusiasm isn’t shared. I was never a stamp collector (my Dad was) yet we’d would be awestruck to see a mint Graf Zeppelin (almost $4 in 1930 when regular postage was 3 cents?!) or an “inverted Jenny” - merely an upside-down image of a Curtis JN-4 biplane. Yeah yawn boring.
And that’s OK. He used to have hobbies I didn’t enjoy, there is nothing wrong with that.
If I really wanted him to come with me, he would. Chances are he would miss some or all of the totality because he was playing around on his phone, but he would be there if I really wanted him to. Just as I have gone to a couple of his things knowing that I was going to be bored to tears but it was important to him.
Dunno yet it seems like you’ve gone/been at one or two of them. If I’d remained in NYC I’d have seen the 2018 TSE (I sent everyone I knew a pair of good glasses to use instead of those paper kind). And for this one my brother is going from NYC up to Buffalo (really, good luck with that!).
In 2014 I was in my backyard with my scope and solar filter and talked to my GF (at the time) and best friend. In both calls it was like,
“Why did you take the day off from work? What are you doing”
Me: Watching the transit of Venus.
They "What does that look like?
Me: Well Venus, being a planet, is a black dot moving across the disk of the Sun,
They: “oh, interesting,”
Having experienced a less-than-ideal, partly clouded over TSE in 2017, and seen ordinary folks, non-astronomy types, as excited as they could be, I have to urge people with indifferent friends or relatives to try and persuade them that this will be one of the most amazing experiences of their lives.
I used to have a nice little telescope, and most people were interested in taking a look at Saturn or Jupiter, but many were noticeably underwhelmed. And since they could see images from Hubble or Cassini online, it’s understandable that a small, fuzzy, shaky little image in my scope wasn’t exactly life changing.
And naturally, some people will be fascinated by stamp collecting or Formula 1 racing while others will say Meh.
A TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE ISN’T LIKE ANY OF THOSE THINGS!
The entire outdoor environment changes from night to day in moments, the birds stop singing, everything is dark for a couple of minutes, then daylight returns. It is profoundly weird and unusual. It is not just a matter of seeing the moon cover up the sun, which is pretty much all they can show on TV. EVERYTHING CHANGES in a way that is unlike any other experience you will have in your life.
Don’t allow anyone you know who seems not to be interested to miss it, because if they live in North America, they aren’t likely see another one. Drag them along kicking and screaming if you have to. They will thank you afterward.
Theres a gathering at Lake Erie college for this event and I am excited to go.
But it being Ohio westher, I would not rule out snow.
I was 3 years old for that one and all I recall was my parents or general talk of “DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN TODAY!”. In all of New York it would be partial and if you do look an 86% crescent Sun your eyes might be a lot more susceptible to looking too long and doing some retinal damage. I averted my eyes from the Sun that entire day.
Bruce:
Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun
Woah, but mama, that’s where the fun is, oh yeah
There was no total solar eclipse visible in the United States in 2018. Do you mean the 2017 eclipse? But that one wasn’t visible in New York.
I did mean that one, yes. I did send good glasses to friends and family. You are correct - I looked it up it was Oregon to South Carolina so would have been - offhand about 70% or so NYC. Rather short max totality at under 3 minutes.
At the time I was poor in Ireland. If I was in New York I’d have tried to convince as many people - certainly my brother - that getting to the centerline would totally be worth it. I’ve flow to Hawaii and Romania to see TSE’s - totally worth it.
I remember a certain political figure watching in 2017 while shading his eyes with a hand, a tiny hand at that. Maybe this time, since it lasts longer, he’ll go blind.
Did you know fellow Doper @panache45 ? He took a nice time lapse of the transit. Check out his avatar.