Did you ride during the eclipse?
 

I did. Why not, here in northern lower Michigan we had decent 88% coverage. Short 10 miler, no vain trips to Nova Scotia, just a fun memorable ride. Winds were stiff but hey if you want to cram a 20mi ride in 10 miles…do it in a 20-35mi wind swirling about.

I wanted to go see the total eclipse, but SWMBO didn't want to drive that far, so I made do with a local bike ride.

90% or so. Still kind of fun, like riding through a very long dusk. All the cars' headlights were on. Stopped a couple times and pulled out the solar glasses. Closest to totality was disappointing, as the clouds were too thick to see the sun, period. After I put the glasses away, though, I glanced up one more time (without the protection, gasp!). The clouds were still thick, protecting my eyes, but I did get to see the solar sliver!

Murphy's Law still applied: 15 minutes later the sun was out, it got bright quickly, there were shadows again, and I was thankful to have the eclipse glasses handy.

No bike rides, but I went out to Dallas to see it. We had seen the 2017 eclipse, and my SO wanted to see it again.

It wasn't looking good for a while there ... lots of clouds about. I actually laughed hysterically when it looked like this one black cloud was going to slide over just in time to hide everything. It was like something out of a Simpsons cartoon. But they all kinda cleared out during the eclipse itself. I think the 10F temperature change moves the dew point over enough that the clouds disappeared a bit ... right after the eclipse was over it clouded right over again.

Definitely worth seeing if you ever get that chance. A total eclipse is a completely different experience than even a 99% eclipse. You can shed the glasses and look straight at it, and it is truly spectacular. I don't know anyone who has seen it has thought it wasn't worth all the effort.

One bummer is that we managed to get a case of Norovirus (apparently peaking in the midwest right now). Ugh does that suck.

Blow ... I mean it blows. I sure was. lol

Sorta.. My bike was in the shop at REI, not far from work. Picked it up at lunch. Left my pickup and rode back to work.

The clerk at REI let me look thru his eclipse glasses.. Maybe 30%ish..

Yep, but with 22% max and heavy overcast, there was nothing to see. I've seen two total eclipses, in 1979 and 2017, and the experience is not to be missed!

I remember the eclipse of 2017. A major event that I'm glad I witnessed.

My Mazda 3. I was in WVA with mostly cloudy skies. The freeway was not quite traffic free during the occurrence, and I was cruising.

Our son and his wife drove out from Ventura county to our place (Just south of DFW) to do eclipse photography for a 2nd time. They traveled north for the 2017 eclipse
Our experience was similar to yours. Thin clouds that broke at just the right time.

They had 5 (I think) cameras on tracking tripods so I'm anxious to see his finished photos or videos in the future.

This is his 2017 video if you're interested.

And some still photos.
https://www.roadtriprip.com/the-grea...gust-2017.html

Hope you get to feeling better. I've heard that the Norovirus is rough.

I rode on the day of the eclipse, it wasn’t visible from Japan.

As a matter of fact, I did ride through the eclipse. It occurred during my commute time from work to grad school. I walked out of work and to the public bike rack and saw that my rear tire was flat. There was a crowd in front of the library (across from the elementary school where I work) watching the eclipse. I got to chat with the kids and their parents, and that was nice. When my flat was fixed, I rode off. I work in the Bronx where coverage was said to be 90.4% or something like that. It didn't really get very dark.

We traveled to Missouri in 2017 and saw the total eclipse. That was a lot of fun.

I did. We had about 84% occlusion here, so it got dim but not dark. I had the sun behind me on the return leg, and got the "camera obscura" projection of the eclipse through the helmet vents on the pavement in front of me while I rode.

Wow ... great job! I just sat there with a beer and a pocket camera, with the results you might expect. lol

Can't agree enough with the above. I feel sorry for people who were close enough to get into the zone but chose not to. Totality is a totally different experience from the partial eclipse, which is boring by comparison.

Saw the 2017 eclipse in Central Oregon and we knew we wanted to see the next one. My brother in law lives in the Dallas area so we immediately told him to expect visitors in 24. We were in Flower Mound and we were really worried that it would be obscured by clouds. During the partial phase, clouds were sporadically blocking the sun but just before totality, it cleared up and was amazing.

Won't be another total eclipse in the US for a long time but we're considering Majorca in 26 or Australia in 28. The 27 eclipse will have 6+ minutes of totality over Luxor Egypt with almost 0 chance of cloudcover. Some excursions for that are already sold out.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...39618e182a.png

My wife and I rode. Had to for bragging rights.

Those 2026 eclipse paths are just weird.

I went down to southern Illinois to see the eclipse.
Stayed away from the well known (relatively) Carbondale and found a nice park about 10 miles east in Marion. Had great weather, chatted with interesting folks, and got a few good photos too.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...9e7469_b_d.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...907911_b_d.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...c14297_b_d.jpg

They look like a lot of other photos of the event, honestly. Still very cool!

I did bring a bike along, thinking that I might stop near St. Louis on the drive home for a ride along the Mississippi. Unfortunately, the traffic within a 60 mile radius of St. Louis was just crawling, so no ride for me.

Steve in Peoria

OK ... I feel stupid for asking this, but how is it that a total eclipse can happen near the poles? I would have thought it to be pretty much limited to areas not much further than the Tropic of Capricon and Tropic of Cancer?

The paths in purple on the map are annular eclipses. The moon is in line with the sun but too far from earth to totally block it so a different experience. I went to see one last year in New Mexico and it wasn't all that special.

Ahh ... ok. That's more reasonable for an annular eclipse. And you're right ... they are interesting but not nearly as spectacular as a total eclipse.

Funny story: Years ago, an annular eclipse was predicted for the west coast at sunset. So my buddy took his 8" Newt to the beach so we could maybe take a look at some of it using the filters. But of course, since we were at the beach, it clouded over just before sunset. The Sun completely disappeared. With nothing better to do, we trained the telescope on distant boats.

I can't tell you how many people stopped to ask if we could see the eclipse through the telescope. Oy.

My son took his family to see totality near Austin TX. That's a lot different than the 63% I saw in 2017 at Big Bear Lake CA or the 55% we just got in San Diego.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...13804165f9.jpg

One detail that makes eclipses not work out well is the fact that the plane of the moon's orbit is tilted a bit from the plane of earth's orbit around the sun. As a result, the moon can be too high or too low for the moon's shadow to hit the earth.
This video explains this in the first couple of minutes...

(assuming that I haven't misunderstood it myself....)

Steve in Peoria

I watched from lawn chairs south of DFW in Joshua, Texas. It was spectacular. As mentioned above, it looked like it was going to cloud over completely but about 10 minutes totality before the clouds just parted and the entire total eclipse was visible. This was my second, having gone to see the one in 2017 too in Greenville, SC. My wife and I are planning the next two already, Spain and Sydney. I see from the charts above that the 2026 one may go over the Blue Lagoon in Iceland but my guess is that's already completely booked, if the lagoon is even open after the volcano. And if you didn't know this, the Blue Lagoon is not natural. It was formed by the runoff from a geothermal plant.

Almost all of the path of the 2026 eclipse is expected to be cloudy with the exception of Southern Spain and Majorca. I've read about some eclipse tours for Iceland but they are recommended only for people who would be happy just seeing the country and not disappointed if they miss it. eclipsophile.com has some good info including historical cloud cover maps, etc.

This is the reason we didn't go Buffalo NY even though it is much closer to home. I went to school there and the one thing about Buffalo is that after it finally stops snowing the clouds linger on until June.