Sunday, February 09, 2014
Old Man Winter
“He just keeps rollin’, he just keeps
rollin’ along.” Or
sumpin like that anyways, muchachos. If’n you live in the northern U.S. of A., I
don’t have to tell you it’s been a nasty winter. But those of us way south of the
Mason - Dixon Line had missed the bad stuff. Oh, there were a couple of nights
where the thermometer went purty low and I had to let the water faucets drip,
but nothing too much out of the ordinary—though last winter I don’t believe we
had a single hard freeze.
Then came
this nasty dude named “Leon.” When did they start naming winter storms like
they do dadgum hurricanes? I don’t know exactly, because I normally don’t pay much
attention to the icy blasts that rock the midwest and northeast. But I figgered
beginning to name ‘em wasn’t a good sign.
Anyhoo, a couple of days before the coming of Leon, I did sit
up and take notice, since the weather goobers on TWC and elsewhere were hinting
I might want to. That his icy breath would be felt as far south as our Gulf
Coast.
While those of us who reside on this normally sunny and
placid coast knew Leon was coming, we welcomed
him at first, believe it or no. Snow is such an extraordinary thing for us down here that we actually long to see
it. Well, “we” not to include your old Uncle Rod, who spent some weeks of the
winter of ought-six in Bath, Maine, and saw more than enough snow to last him a
cotton-picking lifetime.
I didn't long for snow, and I was growing ever more concerned
about what the storm would bring to us, since for most of our area what was on
the weather map was “wintry mix,” which means lots of sleet and ice in addition
to snow. I knew very well that sleet and ice would shut everything down.
Get that stuff on the roads, it melts a tiny bit and freezes again, and you get
surfaces even the most hardened Yankee snowbird can’t drive on. Without any
snow removal equipment to clear the roads, things could get nasty,
real nasty, in a hurry.
How much would this impact me and Miss Dorothy? Not much, I
hoped. We are both retired and wouldn’t have to go out on Tuesday – Wednesday
when conditions would be the worst. I do, of course, teach my astronomy labs at
the University of South Alabama, but I’m only doing one day/night a week,
Monday. Preparations? We did our usual grocery trip a day early, but didn't buy
anything out of the ordinary. Other than that? I knew from bitter experience that if you’ve
got a big Victorian home like Chaos Manor South with miles of water pipes
running underneath it, you’ve got to let the water drip inside and out when it
is real cold.
The beeeeeg question was what Leon would do to our January CAV
trip. Making a run down to the Chiefland Astronomy Village in January is a
tradition with Unk, something I’ve been doing since at least 2008, and I was hoping we wouldn’t have to cancel
it because of lousy weather. Thankfully, it appeared the storm would miss CAV
by a large margin, passing to the north. What I was worried about was getting there. Didn't look like the
Florida Panhandle would be spared, and we’d have to traverse that to get to
Chiefland. Still, if the storm hit as predicted on Tuesday, that gave us two
days for things to get back to normal before our Thursday departure. I crossed
my fingers and toes.
Tuesday dawned cloudy and cold, but there was absolutely
nothing falling out of the skies at noontime, by which time Leon was supposed to have
struck. Afternoon came and went and nothing, absolutely nothing happened. Unk
began to relax, “We’ll have to drip water tonight, but it will be warming up by
Wednesday afternoon. I’ll get the truck packed and we will skedaddle south
early Thursday a.m.” Then I started hearing a curious noise coming from
outside.
I hied myself to the front porch and saw white beginning to
appear on the front lawn. Not the white of snow. The white of ice crystals, of
sleet. The funny sound I was hearing was heavy sleet falling. And it kept going
and going and going like the pea-picking Energizer Bunny. The lawn got whiter
and whiter—with ice. I may have seen a flake or two of honest-to-god snow, but
not much. Not much at all. It finally let up about ten p.m. as Unk was watching
an episode of his fave “new Sherlock Holmes" series, Elementary. There was plenty of ice in the yard, and, worse, on the
road, but I figured it would have plenty of time to melt both in Possum Swamp
and on the Florida Panhandle before we left for CAV.
Wednesday? Absolutely
miserable. While it did warm up some and some of the ice did melt, not all
of it did. Then the power went out and Unk got colder and colder. At his advanced
age, your old Unk thinks “75F” is on the chilly side, so you can imagine.
But the power did come back on in a couple of hours—I suspect
they’d turned it off in our neighborhood because they needed to do maintenance
somewhere else. I saw no downed or ice laden power lines, anyhow. Things was
looking up, I thought. I set about loading up the 4Runner, Miss Van Pelt.
As y’all know, I hate, absolutely despise, packing on a star party morning. It is oh-so-much nicer to
be able to get up, throw a suitcase or two in the truck and boogie. And packing
the Toyota ain't hard these days. I spent quite a lot of time thinking about the packing “problem” recently, and after all these years
finally developed a PLAN, so despite the punk weather, gear load-out was a snap.
It was cold and I had to be careful going up and down the ice coated steps of
the Old Manse, but I got ‘er done.
I spent remainder the evening watching another Sherlock Holmes
show, Sherlock, which is fine even if
it doesn't tickle my fancy quite like Elementary
does. Honestly, I am not that hip to modern dress Holmes, anyway, but if I have
to choose, I’ll choose Elementary.
Up bright and early Thursday, all seemed A.O.K. We did delay
our accustomed 8 a.m. departure to let the temperature get high enough that we
could shut off the dripping water, but that appeared to be the only hangup. I thought that would be the only hangup,
till I wisely heeded Miss Dorothy’s recommendation that I check the status of
I-10 in Florida. Surely, though, it wouldn’t be closed. Not in Florida.
But it was. A long stretch east of Panama City was marked in
red on the map I got from the Florida D.O.T. website. Should we take the chance
it would be open by the time we got there? Risk being shuttled off to side
roads that might be worse? Sadly, I didn't think we should. I thought the wisest
thing would be to change our motel reservations from Thursday through Sunday to
Friday through Sunday and see what things looked like in the morning.
Which is what we did. That would only give us two days at the
CAV, but we had cabin fever big time, and were sick of sitting in the cold (you
are not going to get a big, old Victorian that warm) and wanted a vacation in warmer climes, even a shortened one.
I was kinda sad not to be out on the Chiefland observing
field Thursday afternoon as we’d planned, but we declared ourselves on vacation
anyway, and seeing as how the surface streets looked passable, we went out to one of Unk’s fave restaurants, Logan’s Steakhouse. I tell Miss D. it is lucky
for our bank account that Unk has plebeian tastes in restaurants: Logan’s, Applebee’s, Olive Garden, with a BBQ
joint or three thrown in. I like Logan's steaks and enjoyed my Onion Brewski Sirloin, which was
accompanied by a couple of their monstrous Tall
Boy beers.
Back home, a little Call
of Duty on the Xbox 360, a little Ghost
Adventures on the cable TV, and I was on my way upstairs. I wanted to make it as
early an evening as I possible. The drive to CAV is not too long, six hours, but not
entirely inconsequential. I wanted to ensure I was rested and raring to go as
possible for the trip and for a long night at the scope Friday evening. I had packed a full
Mallincam setup. The Xtreme. The Junior Pro, too. The Edge 800 and her VX
mount. Computer and video display. Lots of gear boxes. I planned at the very least
to image 75 – 80 Herschel 2500 objects that were originally shot with my old
black and white video camera, the Stellacam II, and which I needed to retake
with the Mallincams.
If I got a chance
to do any shooting. Friday morning, the CAV weather forecasts, which had looked
good earlier in the week, had degraded, going from “mostly clear” to “partly cloudy” and
even “mostly cloudy.” Whatever. Chiefland’s weather is hard to predict, and,
honestly, we really didn't care if we saw a dang thing through the scope or not. We just wanted to escape the cold, dreary Swamp.
The trip down south, which began after Unk had his
customary fried chicken biscuit at Micky D’s, wouldn’t have been bad if the Sun
had been out. We saw some ice, just a little, on a couple bridges between
Pensacola and Tallahassee, and even that would have been gone with a little
Sun. But there was no Sun. What there was was fog. Heavy fog. Enough to make me slow down and switch on Miss Van
P.’s fog lamps once in a while.
Nevertheless, we made it to the spot just east of Tallahassee where we exit I-10 and pick up Highway 19 in goodly time. As always, I refueled the
vee-hickle at the Sunoco station there, grabbed a Jack Link Sasquatch Big Stick, and proceeded down the
Florida – Georgia Parkway, the Gateway to the Nature Coast, at a good clip. How
did the sky look? Not that good and not that bad. At first it appeared we were
running out of clouds and into blue, but the closer we got to the Suwannee
River, the more the fluffy white devils multiplied, and when we hit C-land, it was
completely overcast.
I did not panic. As always, we stuck to The Plan: Check in at the motel, head to CAV, set up if set up is
possible, back to town for a Wal-Mart run and supper.
How was the motel? Not bad, even though, almost unbelievably,
the same thing has happened to the Best Western that happened to the Holiday
Inn Express. It has changed chains and gone one click down, just like the
Holiday Inn (now a Days Inn) did. In this case, to Quality Inns. The sign that once read “Best Western” was slightly
pitiful looking, covered with a tarp and some ancient looking plywood. I
suspect the same cost-conscious (and short-sighted) bunch who own the Days Inn
now own the Best Western—err, “Quality Inn”—too.
Despite that, the place actually seemed in better repair than
it had been when we were there in July. I even saw workmen doing painting and
other renovations. The main downcheck? No
Internet. None. I mentioned that
to the little girl at the desk (who seemed somewhat confused about running a
motel), and she allowed as they’d “had a lot of problems with it lately.” It
never did come on, as a matter of fact. But that was alright, I had the iPhone
if I just had to look at the web—like at the Clear Sky Clock—or read email. Having
fewer distractions allowed me to get some writing work done. Including on a
new/old book project you-all will hear about in due course.
The next part of The Plan was a run out to the CAV. I was
slightly worried about that, imagining the place would be utterly deserted due
to the clouds. Nope. Plenty of my old buddies were or soon would be onsite:
Carl, Paul, John, Bobbie, Margie, Marty, and a couple more. That was the good.
As we stood out on the field shooting the breeze about Paul’s new Astro - Physics
mount, it began to drizzle. Bobbie, Margie, and Dorothy declared we didn't have
the sense to come in out of the rain, and Unk and D. were shortly on our way
back to town.
What’s that? Gear set up? Nope. No way. There was simply no chance of it clearing Friday night. And not only would the drizzle have
made putting up the tailgating canopy and scope extremely unpleasant, I was
beginning to think the only thing that would come of it would be me having to
repack wet gear in the truck come Sunday morning. I took a few photos of the
field and my friends and that was it.
In a changing world one thing remains a constant, the
Chiefland WallyWorld. Same bargain basement stuff, same slightly countrified
folks (nothing like the mutants you
see on People of Walmart.com, however). What did we get? As always, we stuck to
The Plan: granola bars and Jack Links
for field snacking, bottled water for the room and the field, Monster Energy
Drinks to keep me going through long nights, Kolorado Kool-Aid for post run celebrating,
and a new Star Wars T-shirt for Unk’s wardrobe. And one other thing whose
purchase did not bode well, a fracking umbrella.
After that, it was back to the room for a short interlude. In
more normal circumstances, with clear skies expected, we would have grabbed a
quick supper, usually consisting of, for Unk, the Dorito Taco BIG BOX from the nearby Taco Bell. But this would not
be a clear night. The clouds meant we had plenty of time to kill. At the motel, I tried the
Internet (nada), and got the beer chilling in the room refrigerator. Shortly thereafter, it was going on five and time to eat.
Supper at Bill’s
Bar-b-que has, unfortunately, become a tradition for us over the last year.
It’s something to do when we have clouded-out no-way-in-heck nights at the CAV,
which seem to have become all too frequent of late. On those evenings, I
usually order Bill’s excellent rib-eye with all the fixins, but I’d
had a steak the previous night, so I went with the Pork Plate Special. Which consists of a heap of sliced pork, mound of fries, garlic bread, BBQ beans, and the
old-fashioned salad bar. How was it? Danged if it wasn't better than ever. It’s
as if the food at Bill’s has gotten ever better as the weather pattern has gotten ever worse. Go figger. Washed it down with several beers, and then back to the motel for
some Big Bang Theory and hopes that
Saturday night would be better.
Our time in Chiefland had been shortened and so had our
itinerary. Normally we’d do Manatee Springs State Park or Fanning Springs State
Park Friday morning followed by lunch at Bill’s or the superb 19-98 Grill. Saturday
would bring a trip to beautiful Cedar Key (a.k.a. “Duma Key”). Unfortunately,
losing a day and us waking to the threat of rain Saturday scotched our park and
Cedar Key plans. Instead, on Saturday morning Miss Dorothy relaxed in the room
and Unk headed to the CAV to see what was up and what the consensus was about
the weekend.
I was excited to see Paul’s beautiful new AP1100 mount in
action. Well, slewing around under cloudy skies, anyway. What wasn’t so
exciting was the glum looks on everybody’s faces engendered by the complete overcast. Too thick to even get a hydrogen alpha scope pointed at Sol.
Dorothy and I had been discussing maybe extending through Sunday night, but it
‘peared we’d be alone if we did. Also, while the weather forecast looked better
for Sunday night, it was not better enough to make me want get up at
oh-dark-thirty Monday to get home in time to teach my 3:30 p.m. astronomy class.
Anyhow, Paul’s massive new rig, which had a beautiful Edge
1100 and a big Explore Scientific refractor riding on it, was extremely
impressive. Unk has neither the skies nor the talent to put an A-P GEM to good
use, but I suspect Paul will do great things with it in the imaging realm, and
seeing the gleaming white mount in all its glory, yes, made me want one. Alas, Meade
and Celestron, like Logan’s and Olive Garden, are more your old Unk’s speed.
I told my friends they could bet that if the clouds began to
break before dark, I’d be back in a flash. And that if that didn't happen I’d
see them again at the Spring Picnic run in March. I suspected as I was leaving the field that I wouldn’t be back till the picnic. The overcast didn't look at bit
thinner; if anything it appeared thicker.
At the room, I sat down at MS Word and did some
more hunting and pecking. No, there still wasn’t any pea-picking Internet,
and, again, that was maybe a good thing. I was able to do some more on the book
and also on the missive you are reading right now. I kept sneaking peeks out
the door, but nothing had changed and it didn't look like anything would. We’d head home in the morning. There was only one decision left to be made, and it
had nothing to do with setting up telescopes:
“What’s for supper?”
We considered Bubbaque’s Barbecue across the street. I used to joke about the place’s name, but we really
enjoyed their food the last time we were Down Chiefland Way. There was also the excellent ABC Pizza, which I’d often eaten
out on the field when somebody made a run into town for a pie. We could walk to
ABC right next door to the motel, so it seemed a natural. Alas, ‘twas not to
be. In the course of getting an umbrella out of the truck “just in case,” Unk tripped
over the curb and went face-first into gravel. Wham! "Miss Dorothy, HALP!"
I hit pretty danged hard, and my first thought was, “Oh, for
god’s sake. I’ll have to hunt up a doctor in fraking Chiefland, Florida on a
Saturday night.” Luckily, it was not quite
that bad. My upper lip bled copious amounts, but eventually stopped, and my
teeth seemed intact. My knee had a real good scrape, but no worse than I
used to get when I crashed my bike as a youngun. Lest y’all think I am
getting too old to be allowed abroad, I did the same freaking thing back
in ’03 at the Tennessee Star Party, if not with quite such dire results.
The pain of my split lip, which was admittedly pretty
intense, was assuaged by the ice Miss D.
kindly fetched me (she also went and got a large pepperoni at ABC in case I felt
like eating later). The “medicine” I “applied” most enthusiastically, however,
came out of a great, huge bottle of Rebel Yell, which I’d been prescient enough
to purchase at Bubbaque’s liquor store earlier that afternoon. It took all my pain away.
Such was the denouement of a slightly misbegotten CAV
odyssey. It was a complete and utter skunking, no use denying it. This was, in fact, the first time I've been at CAV and not had a single minute's observing time since March 2009. But in spite of it all, in spite of being clouded out and falling flat on
my face—ironically before I had had drink one—I
still had a better, or at least a more “interesting,” time than I would have had sitting home shivering in front of the boob tube. Anyway, as you-all know, muchachos, when
it comes to Uncle Rod observing runs anything
can happen—and usually does. Just ask Miss Dorothy.
Nota Bene:
You can find plenty of pictures of our Chiefland trip on Unk’s Facebook
page.
Next Time: Chasin' Supernovae with Unk...
