Hello Steemit!
I will introduce myself with Part I of a short story I'm writing... great to be here and I hope you enjoy!
I. An old college friend calls me pretty much out of the blue to ask if I'm taking the family to see the eclipse - we live only a couple hours drive to be "in the the shadow" and to experience "Totality".
This friend happens to know I bought an early auto-align / motorized / computerized telescope for consumers in California - carried it on as odd-sized baggage on a flight from San Francisco via LAX en route to Auckland, New Zealand - where I was living at the time working on permanent residency.
In any case, it was July 2017, we had just returned from our summer holiday - getting back to a normal routine with "summer" - as short as it was - coming to an end, and our girls starting 5th grade.
The call set the alarms off - the eclipse was only 4 weeks away! Already!?#*
II. Straight after that call, I called out to my wife "Hon?! That was [friend], you remember her right? Well, there's a small eclipse festival going on near [rural farm]. It's booked out but we could probably spend the day there, then go on to [closest major city] which is in the path of totality! What do you think?".
Well, then all the normal logistical queries ensued :
- When is it?
- August 21st, it's a Monday.
- The girls would miss a day of school, and [sports] practice.
- How far a drive?
- A couple hours to the festival, then maybe another hour to the city.
- Traffic will be nuts, right??
- Where will we actually stay?
- Camp out?
- Find a campground or cabin?
- Sleep in the car?
- Find a hotel?
- Are there even any vacancies?
- What will we do on the actual day of the eclipse?
- Where's the best place to view it?
- Do we need tickets? ;)
- What if it's cloudy?.........
Parallel to all of those questions, it also dawned on me (pardon the pun), that I'd never photographed or filmed a total solar eclipse (TSE) in my life!
...to be continued...