What happened yesterday with this solar eclipse is something
that last happened in 1979, a total eclipse. Basically what happens is the sun
is blocked out by the moon. This can last up to three hours in total, from
partial to totality, and can be very harmful to your eyes if you don’t look at
it with these special glasses. My eyes and head hurt just thinking about it.
What are my thoughts? Bah humbug. What a bunch of craziness
and nonsense over relatively nothing. Now I’m not trying to be a sour puss
about this, I’m really not, but you have to remember where I live. In the North
Georgia mountains where I live things are quiet. Things are peaceful. Things
are as they usually are every single day, there’s very little change. I like
it. What something like this brought to my little town and community was chaos.
A town with roads set up for maybe 25-30K people had double
and triple that. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper and I witnessed two car accidents
myself. I didn’t just see them sitting on the side of the road waiting for a
police officer to do the police report, no, I actually witnessed the cars
hitting one another on two different occasions. I was almost in two car
accidents myself because people simply weren’t paying attention or are just bad
drivers in general. It was an absolute mess on the roads. My kids were out on
these roads, my wife was out on these roads. I worry.
Then you had everyone flipping out because of gas shortages
and groceries shortages and this and that. You couldn’t rent a motel, a cabin
or an RV spot in a 50 mile radius. You couldn’t do anything but just sit and
watch it all go down. Some businesses closed down yesterday and all schools
closed down, of course my business didn’t shut down, and all for what? 25
seconds of totality? If that?
I get the historic side of this and the scientific side of
it and the “cool” factor but I have noticed that these things become less “cool”
when you’re actually out in it fighting the masses. I can remember how I used
to love snow until I had to drive in it. Same difference. I’m glad that I was
alive to see it happen but dammit am I happy that it’s over. I hope everyone
else enjoyed it and I hope everyone made it home safe from it as well. Enjoy
the rest of your day.
