I’m bringing things with holes to play with and I’m also bringing my needlepoint and easel because looking almost straight up all that time just won’t work for me. Happily, needlepoint canvas also has a bunch of holes, so that’s just another fun thing to do.
A few bottles of mead are traveling with us and if we find a thrift store in the DFW area, we will try to get some wine glasses that we can donate back or leave for the hotel cleaners when we leave.
Well I arrived in San Antonio but my bag did not! I was forced to check my bag at the gate by an over zealous flight attendant who decided they were going to run out of room for overhead bags and so some of us were just going to be forced to check them. Then I was asked if I wanted to catch an earlier flight to San Antonio but they kept my bag to go on the later flight. The baggage lady at the airport was super nice, looked up where my bag was and told me to go to the hotel and they would drive it over when the flight comes in in a couple of hours. She gave me a little amenities bag with some toiletries but I only have the clothes on my back and not really much else. Fingers crossed that it shows up.
Watch or re-watch the video below from Smarter Every Day, in which Destin talks with an eclipse expert about all the the scientific observations you can make while the eclipse is in progress. I’ve downloaded the guy’s app and paid the $2 for the eclipse data and I plan to review the video and run the test version of the app a couple of times on Saturday and/or Sunday.
You’re right about it not being all over after totality. There’s lots you can do then, when you won’t be as distracted waiting for the Big Event. E.g., lay out a big white sheet on the ground to look for eclipse bands after totality. The video covers some other opportunities.
Shortly after it’s all over, shoot video of your friends and family members, together or individually, describing their reactions, before, during, and after. You can’t really capture the full experience of the eclipse, but you can record how people felt about it. As I mentioned above, in 2017 I set one of my point-and-shoot cameras on a tripod to record our group’s reactions starting a few minutes before totality.
Ill be laying on the sand looking up at the sky amidst multitudes but utterly alone. No recordings of other’s reactions in a language I don’t comprehend well enough to capture their meaning.
I think I mentioned that my eclipse plan was to drive to the house of a friend who lives farther south and within the totality zone. In preparation for a modestly long drive, I was going to take the car for an oil change today. Yeah. I thought it was odd that the interior lights didn’t come on when I opened the door. Turning the ignition did absolutely nothing – not even the infamous clicking sound. The battery was totally flat. So flat, in fact, that even my trusty booster pack which never failed me before did nothing but produce clicking sounds instead of silence. Just in time for eclipse day!
By happy coincidence, my son will be in town for about four days for unrelated reasons, so we can use his car. He can also give me a ride to and from the repair shop. The mechanics say there’s nothing wrong with the battery, but the alternator is wonky. Something about an alternator diode. It will get a new alternator on Tuesday. Meanwhile I have it hooked up to a trickle charger.
[pedant mode]
No, you’ll be lying on the sand. Laying is what you do to carpets and floor tiles.
[/pedant mode]
Your nitpick is well taken, oh worthy pup!
OTOH, …
There are a great many things I will lay
But mere flooring ain’t even in the top 3000, much less the top 300. 
I just had the brilliant inspiration to change my location on the weather app from its usual value to where I’ll actually be on eclipse day! Perfectly obvious, I know, but I never claimed to be all that bright (I’m a pretty smart dog, but I am, after all, a dog!). 
In my defense, the latter location is only about 50 or 60 km away at most, and indeed the forecast is exactly the same: mix of sun and cloud for April 8. It’s been remarkably stable for several days now.
CNN has an article about how the original eclipse path predictions may have been ever so slightly off. It won’t matter unless you’re on the very edge of the umbra; the error bars are apparently on the order of a few thousand feet.
But the article fully lives up to the standards of mass media science reporting:
But the uncertainty accounts for only a few hundred feet, while the moon is millions of miles across.
Colour me amazed about this new revelation about the size of the moon! I wonder how big the Earth really is? 
ETA: Wow, the forecast is a real nail-biter. Pissing rain tonight, then clearing for two sunny days and nights, then starting to slowly cloud over on April 8 as a warm front moves in, but not overcast until Monday night, and pissing rain for some days thereafter.
I might also add that Niagara Falls, ON, has the same forecast as my local area. This is the area that’s declared a state of emergency because of an expected influx of a million people or more. There’s going to be a lot of bitter disappointment if the warm front and its overcast skies moves in more quickly than expected!
We’ve driven 2,700 miles since San Francisco CA. We’re now in San Antonio TX.
This was midnight last night, Friday night, on I-10 eastbound just west of Ozona TX. The sign is telling us we should have driven our old classic 356!
WX forecast for Mt Magazine is less good – 20% chance of rain after 1 PM.
NWS says 44% cloud cover. Still meets my “good enough”
Here is the Little Rock discussion:
Regarding Mon, the main message and potential viewing outcomes does not appear to have changed much. For Cntrl to Nrn AR, viewing condns look to be more optimal, though still not ideal, w/ mainly higher lvl clouds/cirrus potentially present thru the early aftn. For those south of I-40, a greater concentration of lower to mid-lvl clouds may manifest, possibly restricting viewing condns.
Brian
My daughter is in Toronto going to university. I suggested she find some way to totality but her class ends 20 min prior to the eclipse and is the last class of the term so she doesn’t feel right skipping it (as someone who basically missed all of my classes at university and depended on book reading, I’m not sure she’s mine )
Going on a road trip today. My original plan of Kouchibouguac National Park may be scuppered as they are not doing anything special and have recommended people find another spot (something about a lack of prime viewing locations). I shake my head at the stupidity. I would have thought the tourist dollars would be a draw and that the beach would have been a prime spot with lots of space for viewers. I’m thinking I might try the boardwalk at Bouchtouche. Failing that I’ll find a patch of road with an unobstructed view of the south west sky.
Ok now I have two things I need to see while I’m here in Texas, Painted Buntings! I didn’t realize they were here!
Forecast seems to be holding, clouds dispersing in the afternoon.
We’re leaving BOS for CLE tomorrow morning at zero dark thirty, then driving about 25 miles to the house of some college friends who live in the zone of totality.
Weather report is looking good, so with luck we should be able to relax in their back yard and enjoy.
My company is sending us home to work on Monday and Tuesday to avoid traffic. As much as I enjoy working from home I’d rather stay at work so it’s a shared experience like the last annular eclipse was.
More support for my recommendation that you don’t let the potential for cloudy weather deter you from going to the path of totality:
What to expect if it’s very cloudy during the eclipse
If your eclipse-viewing spot is covered over with heavy, low, “looks like rain” style clouds, you may still be able to see the sun, kind of. “It’ll still be an eclipse," Bill Nye told the Austin-American Statesman."It’s still spectacular. In general, even when it’s cloudy, when you look straight in the sun’s direction, you will still see the sun.”
Even if you can’t see the sun at all, the secondary effects of the eclipse will be apparent, and it can still be an awe-inspiring, if more subtle, experience. Daytime will seem to change to nighttime, and the world will seem to darken, as if the universe just lowered a dimmer switch. In total cloud cover, the darkness will seem to come on faster than it would on a clear sky. You might not notice any change in light level in the run-up to the totality, until the light drops faster than you’ve ever seen it drop and it’s suddenly dramatically, dark.
This was exactly our experience in Kansas in 2017. Bad weather does not ruin an eclipse, it just makes it awesome in a different way.
I drove from Lawrence KS up to Atchison in 2017 to be in the path of totality, and was disappointed that it was cloudy and rainy (and annoyed that the weather cleared up on my way back home) but it was still a good show.
We are driving to the St Louis area on Sunday for my grand-nephew’s baptism, then on Monday we are heading down to Cape Girardeau to watch the eclipse, then head back home. Looks like rain all week except for Monday so I’m hoping that forecast holds up.
I drove to Kansas City in 2017. It was cloudy and dreary all morning. About 10 minutes before totality, the skies opened up and we saw everything perfectly. After that, the clouds reappeared. You just never know what’s going to happen.
Well, this morning I finished canceling all of my travel plans for Texas: flights (including backup flights), hotels, etc. We were supposed to get on a plane for Houston two hours from now. Fortunately my hotel was fully refundable (until today); I got flight credits from Southwest, and my backup flight on American was also fully refundable.
We are now officially planning to head north from Connecticut to see the eclipse: likely to Vermont. I’m still trying to nail down an exact viewing location.