Four Hundred Kilometers From Totality

 

I didn’t create this Instagram reel.  But I was in the vicinity—near the World Trade Center—on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike.

Someone confirmed what I suspected: Many of the people were students or teachers at a nearby high school and college. What could be more educational than seeing a solar eclipse, even if we were about four hundred kilometers away from the path of totality.

The Right Kind Of Protection?

As I promised, I went for a ride yesterday.  And, yes, I was out during the eclipse.

I didn't have a pair of eclipse glasses.  I vaguely remember projecting a 95 or 97 percent eclipse through a pinhole onto a piece of construction paper or something when I was 11 or 12.  Since I couldn't recall the method exactly, and couldn't look it up, I wasn't able to view an image, let alone the eclipse itself.  Then again, even if I had remembered,  I might not have been able to see it:  Clouds moved across the sky and, I believe, the sun.  No one seemed entirely sure of whether the momentary dimming of the sun was caused by the moon or clouds.

All right...Maybe I'm just trying to rationalize not witnessing the big cosmic event of the year.  I wasn't prepared, pure and simple.  But, perhaps, someone else was:

At any rate, someone was more prepared than I was

and found an interesting way to use an old bike rack!

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?