![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
In Which I Fail to See an Eclipse
Today was the solar eclipse. We aren't in the path of totality here in the Bay Area, but we were promised that a pretty big chunk of our sun would be missing, so I made plans.I'd leave the house between 9 and 9.30, walk up to the hill above Clark Kerr, enjoy the shifting shadows as I neared, watch the eclipse through my eclipse glasses, then walk home, and get a slightly late start to my work day.
Not so much.
The problem was Berkeley's frequent grayness. Friday the weather report said there wouldn't be any morning cloud cover, Sunday it said it'd clear by 9am, today it said we'd only get 50% of the sky by 11am. So I woke up and it was gray as gray, and I didn't plan to go much of anywhere.
Around 10 o'clock I walked out of the house, up to Telegraph, then looped back a few blocks up. The object was to at least be outside during the maximum eclipse that we got so that I could enjoy the eerie darkening of the sky.
Not so much.
We get such dark, gloomy gray in the mornings that if there was any darkening beyond that, I didn't notice it. So it was back at home by 10.20 or so and back to work.
Ah well.
Not the first time I've missed a celestial phenomenon due to Berkeley's gloom. I made great plans to see the first of our quartet of blood moons, but when I got up to an overlook above Lake Temescal all I could ever see was clouds; the moon was just as absent that day as the sun was this morning.
The gray gloominess is actually one of the things that bugs me about Berkeley. There was one summer several years ago now where it felt like it was gray all year long. I was going out of my mind by the end of it. And that's not necessarily figurative. I used to get depressed over winter, as the gloom really cut in, though in recent years Vitamin D and trips to Hawaii seem to have held that off.
Just this Saturday I was desperate to get away from the gloom, so I hauled my bike out to Pleasant Hill. As soon as I got through the hills (on BART) everything brightened up. I went from gray and 60 degrees to bright and 85. It was like a different world. I had a great bike ride and then when I got to the Lime Ridge Open Space I hiked around that for a while. (It was kind of hot and harsh, so I only went a mile or so and back.)
This morning, I thought about heading out to BART and going somewhere where I might be able to see the sun disappear. Orinda or Richmond. But ultimately I shrugged my shoulders. It seemed like a big disruption to the day to no guaranteed results.
So no eclipse today, though the sun had certainly disappeared.
I took to the hills in the evening, after dinner. And I saw a glorious sunset. Apparently all those clouds are good for something.
Not so much.
The problem was Berkeley's frequent grayness. Friday the weather report said there wouldn't be any morning cloud cover, Sunday it said it'd clear by 9am, today it said we'd only get 50% of the sky by 11am. So I woke up and it was gray as gray, and I didn't plan to go much of anywhere.
Around 10 o'clock I walked out of the house, up to Telegraph, then looped back a few blocks up. The object was to at least be outside during the maximum eclipse that we got so that I could enjoy the eerie darkening of the sky.
Not so much.
We get such dark, gloomy gray in the mornings that if there was any darkening beyond that, I didn't notice it. So it was back at home by 10.20 or so and back to work.
Ah well.
Not the first time I've missed a celestial phenomenon due to Berkeley's gloom. I made great plans to see the first of our quartet of blood moons, but when I got up to an overlook above Lake Temescal all I could ever see was clouds; the moon was just as absent that day as the sun was this morning.
The gray gloominess is actually one of the things that bugs me about Berkeley. There was one summer several years ago now where it felt like it was gray all year long. I was going out of my mind by the end of it. And that's not necessarily figurative. I used to get depressed over winter, as the gloom really cut in, though in recent years Vitamin D and trips to Hawaii seem to have held that off.
Just this Saturday I was desperate to get away from the gloom, so I hauled my bike out to Pleasant Hill. As soon as I got through the hills (on BART) everything brightened up. I went from gray and 60 degrees to bright and 85. It was like a different world. I had a great bike ride and then when I got to the Lime Ridge Open Space I hiked around that for a while. (It was kind of hot and harsh, so I only went a mile or so and back.)
This morning, I thought about heading out to BART and going somewhere where I might be able to see the sun disappear. Orinda or Richmond. But ultimately I shrugged my shoulders. It seemed like a big disruption to the day to no guaranteed results.
So no eclipse today, though the sun had certainly disappeared.
I took to the hills in the evening, after dinner. And I saw a glorious sunset. Apparently all those clouds are good for something.