Whew! What a day.
Got up at 4am.
Headed out to Eastern Washinton at 5am.
After driving 35 miles, I turn around to go back and get my barlow (RATS!!!!)
Back on the road an hour behind schedule.
Arrived at Manashtash ridge in Eastern Washington at 10:30am
Pull in to the south bound lookout parking lot and continue down the road to look for a "better" spot.
Discover the "road" is really the "on ramp" south bound, going down a looooong grade into the valley.
Increase speed to... slightly under the sound barrier to get to the next overpass down the hill.
Same speed back UP the hill to the NORTH bound lookout.
Set-up in the lookout parking lot - scope next to truck to protect it from the breeze, laptop on tailgate.
Plug in the camera, the mount, the filter and pull the grey video RCA/BNC
cord for the camera from the bag... huh??? WTF???!!! a USB cord???! Where's the video cord?????????!!!!
Rip through everything I own looking for the RCA/BNC video cord.
Look at my watch, first contact is 5 minutes away.
Cry for 4 minutes 39 seconds because I left my video cord at home.
Grab back-up imager - a Meade LPI plug into laptop.
What??? Software not installed, need disk???!!!
Rip laptop bag to shreds HOPING the LPI disk in inside - it IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Install *^%#ing LPI software.
Snap image of Mercury entering the Chromosphere! A tiny bite out of the Sun's edge Whoo-hoo!!!
No, wait, what's that little black dot off to the upper right in the eyepiece?
Re-center the scope and take a picture of the REAL Mercury already on the
disk.
Battery running the inverter for the laptop goes dead.
Cry while connecting back-up battery.
Back-up battery runs for one minute, goes dead.
Bang head on tailgate several times in frustration.
Plug inverter into power outlet on truck - I can always compression start the truck but I'm GOING to get an image if it kills me!!!!!
Think better about draining truck battery, start truck engine.
Return to laptop to start imaging.
Exhaust fumes from back of truck almost kill me....
Slap myslef in the face to force concentration on task at hand and to fight off the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Snap off 2 gigs of AVIs (using back-up back-up imager Meade electronic
eyepiece) and 100s of frames of LPI images.
Clouds roll in at 2:30ish.
Pack-up to head back.
Stop at rest stop to proccess some of the images.
Leave rest stop at 3:30 pm to drive home.
Get caught in commute traffic.
Arrive home at 8:30pm.
Proccess images.
Did I say whew what a day!!!!!?
Tom