We’re saying the same thing, though apparently I wasn’t very clear. I was referring to an ellipse in the generic sense where a circle is mathematically just a special case of an ellipse, much like a square is a special case of a rectangle. I was making a trivial observation about how traversing an elliptical area in any given direction takes longer when passing through the center than when passing through an outer periphery, just as you said.
Incidentally, my eclipse experience was much lesser than yours in terms of duration, because we were indeed much farther from the center line. The duration of totality was just a little more than one and a half minutes. But damn, I still marvel at how close I came to missing the whole damn thing! First deciding that because of bad weather I’d just go back to bed, then deciding no, I’ll go pick up the rental car and drive to my friend’s house, and then the weather being horrible after all, and then the weather suddenly clearing and producing blue skies just in time for the eclipse. My theory is that Mother Nature, who has been fucking with me my whole life, either took pity on me or was on break at the time and delegated eclipse weather to an incompetent underling who forgot that she was supposed to be making clouds.
I have been screwed so many times in my life by that “oh, it’s hopeless, I’ll just skip it. Then I miss out on something epic.” scenario that now it’s kind of an opposite trigger for me. As soon as I find myself thinking that, I go hard-over the other way.
I’m still disappointed from time to time, but never for lack or trying.
One of the people in our group said “My earworm is now ‘I’m Being Followed By A Moon Shadow’”. I helpfully started “It’s a small world, after all”.
She thanked me.
Friends who live in Boston said they drove to some place in Vermont. The 3 hour drive took 5 hours out, and 8 hours back. Soooo glad we got a place where we did.
There may well be Mediterranean cruises, as well, as it looks like it’ll basically be just off the shore of most of northern Africa. There will likely be hefty surcharges on those cruises (like the Greenland one, for 2026 - 20K per person).
We’re mentally targeting 2028 in Australia. It’ll go across most of the continent, so lots of choices (albeit, in some uninhabited areas), we want to visit there anyway, and that gives us 4 years to save.
As far as the hype for this one: it’s certainly related to the “post pandemic, can travel”, plus the fact that the population of the path is roughly 32 million people (versus 12 million in 2017), and I have no clue what the population is if you add in “within a day’s drive”. Probably more than double that, at a WAG. I mean, New York City and environs are 10-15 million, Chicago a few million, etc.
The friend who joined us drove here (VA) from Chicago, then up to NY and back, and then returned to Chicago. She’s very, very tired of riding in cars!
I wonder if the Ghan will set its schedule to be in totality? It only runs 2 trains a week, but it makes sense that they might tweak that as appropriate.
This says “another 150 million within 200 miles”. That’s 180 million people. Total population of US, Canada and Mexico: roughly 400 million, to put it in perspective.
I suspect that anyone who drove any distance that day will have no trouble believing that all 150 million people were on the road.
