At the beginning of August, The Brother and I decided to drive up and see if we could catch the eclipse. The plan was simple. Choose an out of the way place, drive up, see the eclipse, and drive back to Tampa. Based on the horror stories, we expected there was a very good chance we would miss it because of traffic jams prevention is from reaching the totality zone.

We left Tampa around midnight Sunday night/Monday morning. The Brother mapped out a route to Greenville, South Carolina. The first leg was simple. Take 75 North until we hit Macon, Georgia. The second leg would be state roads the rest of the way up. Since my brother had a wrestling event the night before, I was going to drive at least the first leg. While my brother dozed, I cleared out my significant backlog of podcasts.

At Macon, we stopped for food, and looked at our mapped route. It wasn’t to Greenville. The Brother routed us to Greentown. Still in the totality zone, and about twenty minutes closer. We considered the mistake serendipitous and went out into the early morning. Every twenty miles I kept expecting to hit traffic. Nothing. The roads were gloriously free of anything resembling a backup. About the only issue was we had to do a detour shortly after crossing into South Carolina due to a bridge being out. Of note, we passed an establishment named “Yo Mama’s Cooking Restaurant.” We both found this witty and amusing. We might have been tempted to stop, but neither of us are into soul food.

We pulled into Greentown around 10. Being the introverts that we are, The Brother and I eschewed the town’s various events and found the perfect place to ensconce ourselves – a Panera. We had air conditioning, easy access bathrooms, and Wifi. In short, civilization. As we sat in Panera, there was concern as the clouds rolling in. Feck. Did we just drive all that way and not be able to see the sun? We did our best to be nonchalant and agreed that even if we couldn’t see the sun, at least we’d see everything go dark.

1:30 – We used the special glasses and looked up. The sun looked like an Apple logo. Very cool. We returned to the AC and waited.

2:30 – nine minutes to go. The Brother and I step outside. Wait. Did my transitions lenses darken? Nope. That was an almost totally occluded sun. And not a cloud in the sky. I put in my earbuds and flipped on Holst’s “Mars, The Bringer of War.”

2:39 – Total Eclipse – Twilight in the middle of the day. Somehow, I timed the music perfectly. As the strong music boomed in my ears, I was looking at the corona of the sun. The black orb with flames of silver dancing along its edge. It was awesome It was glorious. It was an entire thesaurus’s worth of superlatives. It is a sight I will treasure for all of my days.

Definitely worth the twenty-five hours.