On the Road Again - Eclipse 2024

i have named one of my xong Xoid pieces the Rooster:.. . . . . . . . __
15.. . . . . . . . \__/ <============== Rooster 5 awkward, but versatile
. . . . . . . . . . /If Percy allowed jpgs, I just made a small jpg that shows how it looks on the board. You might see it in the picture i use for my profile. It is the Red Xoid piece surrounded in the upper left corner by another Red piece against it from the left and a Blue piece against it from the right. The little black border lines marking each Xoid are hard to seeThere was a game that had the tail part of the Rooster make an important contribution.

Fishing lure known for trout.One of my favs. Sharp treble hook (barbs removed). 1 oz weight. Tie it to the end of a 2lb fishing line. Plant another 1/2 oz lead shot at the nose of the line. On my Shimano I can cast out 15+ meters. Slow retrieve she swims just below the surface. Play her a little left, a little right, sink then sprint. A 3lb Rainbow trout. Entice, lure, play the fish. Be the fish. STRIKE.

I'd rather you used 6lb mono ...

If you can make the image web-accessible then you can post it. EvC doesn't itself host images, except for avatars. You could make it your avatar, as long as it's not too big (avatar images have a size limit so that they don't overwhelm the site's disk space).--Percy

It's tricky trying to plan the fastest most snow free route across the Rockies and the plains states. The plan is to leave this Friday, March 29 and head to Salt Lake City and then decide whether to head further south to I70 toward Denver or take I80 to Cheyenne.

We got off at 1:30 this afternoon and everything went smoothly until we were about 30 miles out of Portland on I5 and the traffic slowed down to a crawl and stayed that way for the next 50 miles. So we made it to Le Grande ~328 miles from home. Still lots of mountain passes to go over but we should start making better time.My wife kept discovering things she forgot, but it turned out every item was indeed packed, she was just really tired!

The real important thing to remember is to take the lens caps off. When the time comes don't forget to do that.

No problem, I lost the lens caps years ago!

Yesterday. Saturday, 3-30 we made it to Ogden, Utah. We had heavy rain overnight and there was a lot of fresh snow on the mountains.Today we made it to Grand Junction, Colorado. Drove through heavy rains early but then it cleared a bit. On I70, we came through some spectacular geological exposures. Utah has far more beautiful scenery than they deserve!

Yesterday the change was jarringly dramatic coming out of the Rocky Mountains into the Great Plains. Two days spent driving up steep passes and back down in between and then coming down and it's just fricking flat. The highest pass we drove over yesterday was 11300 feet (3442 meters) above sea level and boy was it cold and snowy up there! We stayed in Pueblo, Colorado last night.We made it to Abilene, Kansas today. What a drive! We had high winds all day and my wrists are really sore from fighting them. The wind chill must have be 150 degrees below zero and the only thing that kept my hat from getting blown two states away was my ponytail!

4-Apr-24 We made it to Warrenton, Missouri today, a bit west of St, Louis. High winds blowing colder than hell for 2 days has made driving a white-knuckle experience.We stopped for a couple hours to visit the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. It is really quite nice, with some small dinosaur fossils and lots of partial skeletons. They have a really nice, large Mosasaur. Lots of bird, mammal and reptile specimens and ice age and older fossils. They have numerous well planned and executed dioramas, some quite large. I'm usually not a fan of dioramas, but these are the best I have seen.The trip through Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri was absolutely a white-knuckle experience trying to stay on Interstate 70, HOLY CRAP!!!! We survived!

We arrived in Indiana last night. The skies are cloudy today and storms are predicted Saturday, and Tuesday through Friday with Monday Eclipse Day being partly cloudy.The weather may obscure the eclipse but that is always the risk wherever we are. I have plenty of time to get ready to get maximum visual enjoyment and photography success of the event, but if we miss it we still are going to enjoy a large family gathering. Several of my sister's husband's sisters will be here too, including one who is married to Neal Stephenson , the science fiction author.There's going to be an awesome eclipse party whether we see the eclipse or not.

Looks like we lucked out weatherwise in northern Vermont. My son found a field north of Burlington that will have 210 out of 212 minutes totality. He talked to the owner and has set up permission to pitch tents and brings the telescopes. But Mr. Trembly did say that they just got a foot of snow (similar to what happened here in Fitchburg, MA). Now we are renting a van to bring the family with 2 other vehicles not being enough to carry all of us. 3.5 hour drive in normal traffic, but we might go up Sunday night. we plan to make a video through the 10", plugged in and tracking, and maybe view through the 6" with shielding. There is an exciting opportunity to get an un-telescoped pic of Jupiter, comet Pons-Brooks, Saturn, Mars, Mercury and Venus all lined up in one shot during totality.Had my 2nd right eye surgery Mar.28th to fix the Feb.14th surgery that had the lens slip out of the pocket and gave me double vision - one in perfect focus through the first acrylic lens, the other way out of focus with no lens, instead bypassing the first lens. The 2nd lens still is still recovering and probably wont be ideal. it is now only 1 week later and still out of focus. The left eye is still under the yellowed, way blurrier fog of the cataract and will be scheduled late April. But this hasn't changed my eclipse plans.Hope everyone gets a chance to see it. But the traffic!

This morning, Saturday looks like it is going to be a perfect eclipse day, clear skies and the sun is just about to come up. Sunday thru Friday don't look very promising. I will be ready no matter what....well, except if it's raining!

I wasn't planning to do anything, but we live roughly an hour from totality, so maybe if we're not doing anything Monday we'll drive up. My daughter and her husband drove from Colorado to Missouri to see it. I think they're in Springfield now.Sorry if it's already been discussed in this thread, but if I happen to go, what would I need for glasses and to take pictures with an iPhone. If I put on two pairs of sunglasses, would that be enough?--Percy