21 August 2017

I'm Not Following This Eclipse. I Can't Ride That Far In A Day.

You can follow it here on WNYC.

Now, if you don't live in the NYC area, you can be forgiven for not knowing that WNYC is a radio station.  It's part of the Public Broadcasting System, like TV Channel 13.

So what can we follow on WNYC?

Well, according to Brian Lehrer, one of the station's many erudite and often witty hosts, you can "follow" today's solar eclipse on his station.


Of course, he was joking.  But whoever "follows" the eclipse on radio just might be paying more attention to it than I am.


Call me ignorant or snobbish or anything else, but I'm not making any special effort to look at it, mainly because it will only be partial in my part of the world.  I suppose that if I'd planned further ahead, I could have traveled to someplace within that swath of the US that will see a total solar eclipse. But I didn't, and I figure that it would be just my luck to schedule such a trip only to find rain or worse when I arrived.




I've seen partial eclipses before.  In fact, when I was about 11 or 12, I saw one that was 95 or 97 percent--or somewhere in that range:  almost, but not total.  And in my neck of the woods, today's show won't be nearly as complete.

So I'm going for a bike ride today.  I haven't decided where yet:  All I know is that even when I was in the shape I was during my racing days, or when I took those tours of the Alps and Pyrenees, I couldn't have made it from where I am to South Carolina, the nearest part of the Path of Totality, in a day!

Oh, and I probably won't ride to Connecticut:  I did that yesterday, on Arielle, my Mercian Audax.  The funny thing is that I got home faster than I got to Connecticut, even though I had the wind at my back most of the way up to the Nutmeg State!

I've heard that eclipses affect the wind.  Is that true only of total eclipses, or partial ones as well?

2 comments:

  1. My wife and I drove four hours to Casper, Wyo., to experience totality, and it was well worth the effort. We pulled over about 10 miles north of town, landing in the parking lot of what we thought was an abandoned strip club. About 10 a.m., the owner pulled up and started demanding $10 per car. Fair enough. We moved right across the road and parked in the public right of way. As the sky darkened, the temperature immediately fell by about 10 degrees.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MT--I am glad you had the experience. Had I planned better, I might've taken a trip to South Carolina or someplace else where I could have seen the total eclipse. Here in NY, we had about 80 percent, and some clouds.

      Delete