🚀 go-pugleaf

This past weekend was a tad hectic, as I was "planning a possible road trip"
that I was basically *set on* turning into an *actual* road trip.  Plans were
made and directions printed out on Saturday evening (4/6/24) for a trip to a
Wal*Mart in "Mountain View, Missouri"  and the car was mainly loaded and other
things prepped, like baggies for individual dog food servings.  (I saved the ice
chest, ice and bottled water, etc., for Sunday afternoon, right before leaving.)


*Saturday night/Sunday morning* I had a dream / vision snippet: a flash view of
totality:  the ring of the coriolis of the sun surrounding the darkness of the
moon, set against (within) a dark background.  (It was immediately recognizable
*in the dream/vision* for what it was, so *that* would qualify as "clarity 10"
despite the sheer black & white nature of the scene.)


Sunday morning, I watched my local Church service (live) on YouTube (because I
just wasn't "geared" for going to Church *and* going on a trip) and also checked
the DVR (digital video recording) of "CBS Sunday Morning" (possibly one of the
*least* offensive, least-far-left, least-sickening *nonfiction* programs on CBS)
as I was looking forward to seeing *something* on the eclipse, and possibly
analyze their 10-to-20 second national weather map for the week.


Lo and behold, they actually had a "cloud coverage forecast" for Monday (the day
of the eclipse) showing Mountain View (and most all the western US) had a 60%
cloudy forecast (and the other places were too far to drive for my personal
taste) and the *only* place within comfortable driving range of Middle Tennessee
with 0% coverage was the SW-to-NE path across the State of Indiana.


During my early childhood, my family would go every year to Fort Wayne, Indiana,
to visit my grandparents and cousins (and aunts and uncles) living there.  In my
very early 20s, I drove there myself a few times, and was *fairly* comfortable
with the directions.

In the center of the path of totality in Indiana was/is a town named Franklin,
relatively small *and* with a Wal*Mart, so I switched up the plans to go, laid
it into the Google Maps app, and *presto!* I had a route.  (There's a
neighboring "Franklin, Tennessee" near Murfreesboro, so it made the connection
that much easier to remember.)

Oddly enough, the "shortest route" involved *toll roads* which the maps app
easily circumvented.  Time was not an issue, because I was driving up Sunday, to
sleep the night in my car, to be ready on Monday (the 8th, the day of the
eclipse.)

Being a tad too cocksure of myself (and wanting to save paper and ink, as the
step-by-step directions that I'd copied from the app were a tad cumbersome and
lengthy) I *clipped* them at the point where I-24 had something to do with
another road notification.  (Possible error #1)

On the starting leg, still in Murfreesboro, I was at the intersection of Lokey
and US-41 (headed towards I-24) when the app seemed to be giving me a strange
direction (perhaps I was too anxious to be off?) so I pulled into the parking
lot of the nearby Hardee's (also called "Carl's" in some areas of the country)
to use the free wi-fi (my tablet needed a wi-fi connection to *plot* the maps
app directions) to re-plot the route, and avoid toll roads.  Re-set, or so I
thought.  (Once the route is set, the app has no direct need for further Wi-Fi
as it is GPS-based.)

I kept following I-24 (West) looking for the connection it mentioned.  I saw one
exit for a south-bound Interstate (69S?) which is what I *thought* I was looking
for, only I wanted to go *north* so I kept on driving.

On and on along I-24 West, across the Kentucky border near Clarksville (which I
was familiar with from a job contract I fulfilled one week at the 101st Airborne
in Clarksville) until I came to the Kentucky-Indiana state border (the Ohio
River) and noticed two *different* bridges across the river.

"Huh!" I thought, thinking "*Maybe* it's been a few decades since I last
crossed; *maybe* they rebuilt the bridges???"

I soon noticed I was in the State of Illinois (! -DEFINITE error #1!)-  the GPS
app on the tablet seemed "off" for some reason as well.

I pulled into a rest area to walk my dog (Ginger) as well as myself, and found a
pair of folk I thought to be a married couple in matching, yellow-ish T-shirts,
but they turned out to be the janitorial staff.  They had a *paper* map and I
*quickly* noticed that I-24 (headed East, back towards Nashville) made a sort of
U-shape, and at the bottom of that U bend, in Kentucky, it tied into I-69 (which
is what I knew led into Indiana.)  I thanked them (I think!) and departed, only
this time, I decided to "pinch in" (zoom out) the map perspective, and it showed
me somewhere in a relatively barren area, and I figured it was "off map"
(although that's not an entirely accurate description) but I *also* discovered
that *somehow* the volume had been dropped *all the way down* which is why I
never heard the audible directions heading north of Nashville.  (DEFINITE error
#2!  But what caused the volume drop???)

About the time I tagged back onto I-69 North, the tablet / maps app began
"talking to me" again, only to avoid the toll roads, it took me through state
routes and highways I'd never traveled before, *plus* by this time, I felt the
need to fill the gas tank (in Kentucky, which was a *huge* mistake- prices in
Indiana were roughly $1 per gallon lower! - what had cost me a little over $34
in Tennessee cost *$60* in KY! (Possible error #2)) and also, it had gotten dark
(I shoulda been very nearly "there" by "then" and also never spotted "the
bridge" over the Ohio) *and* it began to rain- a LOT!- like,
following-the-headlights-in-front-of-you-time, lightning, etc., but fortunately
Ginger just napped out in the back of the car (2012 Toyota Venza, perhaps an
SUV) so *when we finally got there,* it was dark, and the Wal*Mart was *closed
for remodeling* but I managed to find a nice, quiet parking spot (aimed
*southeasterly* near the northwest corner of the lot) which was in a parking row
ahead of an RV (from South Carolina) that was parked *diagonally* to the lot
stripes painted on the asphalt, roughly aimed southwesterly) when an idea that
had bugged me just a bit before the trip began to reform:  "What are you gonna
do all day while awaiting the eclipse?"

Taking Ginger (and myself) out for a late-evening walk around the lot, it turns
out the RV folk were well-experienced in the OTR (on the road) travel lifestyle,
and had a small, portable fire pit (about 2' tall, cylindrical, about 1' in
diameter, up on legs, raising the bottom of the pit about 1' above the asphalt.)
They were also friendly, welcoming actually, and invited me to join them.  About
that time, it also began to occur to me that, if *I* had thought of coming all
the way there to view the eclipse, it's very likely many others may have as
well.

The "alpha" male of the RV group was named "Rich" (which made it easy to
remember, despite my dain bramage) while none of the other names seemed to have
"stuck."

At any rate, I ended up sleeping in my car with Ginger (as planned) which brings
us to the dream of the evening of Sunday, April 7th / morning of Monday, April
8th:

The dreamer was facing two individuals who were facing the dreamer:  The guy on
the left looked like a very frail male, sort of a cartoonish version of a wimpy
potato chip.  The person (gender undetermined) on the right was of a light,
luminous-greenish hue, sort of like a hairless, ogre-like head portrayed as a
balloon.

There were two interactions, one where the dreamer shook the hand of the wimpy
guy (to the dreamer's left, appearing to the right of the ogre-like face) with
the dreamer being careful to avoid crushing the wimpy guy's hand, and another
where the ogre-balloon head seemed to be complaining of a headache, and the
dreamer reached forth with *both* hands and gave a *very short,* gentle massage
to the ogre's temples, so as to demonstrate how to alleviate headaches.  Clarity
7+/8-

IRL:  We (the dog and I) got an early Monday start / morning walk, soon after
which it became increasingly evident that *many* other people had had the same
idea (about journeying to Wal*Mart there in Franklin) and the longest-traveled
couple were from the State of Washington (Seattle)- they'd actually flown to
Illinois for a friend's wedding, and rented a car from IL to IN, but still, that
counted.  There was a (possibly Japanese / definitely Asian) family of which,
the older spoke very little English, whereas the kids spoke fluent English, and
it turns out they were from "Illinois," which is what they said, so "verbally,"
the couple (a young, mulatto male and white female) from Seattle remained the
longest distance travelers there. :-)

This also led to joining something of a "tailgate party" of sorts with the RV
group, but also with some "milling about" to visit others there.  One guy in
particular had a range of equipment set up (he seemed like an amateur using
professional-looking equipment, and seemed to have forgotten to do his homework
on how to track an eclipse automatically) but another group (in a smaller RV
vehicle, properly parked) had three people, a male and female (I *thought* she
was his 80+ year-old mother- turns out she was his ex-wife!) and their son (who
looked to be in his early 20s, possibly early 30s?) which led me to think that
she'd lived a *very* hard life, as she was wrinkled and looked like "Aughra"
from "The Crystal Shard"
(syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/2019/11/thra-hero.png -likely due to cigarette
smoking, as they were both smokers.  The guy turns out wore dentures, by his own
admission, so I'm *guessing* he also died his hair, the color of dark shoe
polish.)

I gave them a "little" bit of political / religious food for thought, said
goodbye, and shook his hand, only to notice I had to be careful to avoid
crushing his (weak) grip.  Turns out the dream from the night before was
basically "spot on" regarding the wimpy potato-chip male, the handshake, and the
ogre-like balloon-like face, clarity absolutely 7.

At any rate, totality came and went later that afternoon, and Ginger never made
a peep.  I *suspect* she was napping under or beside the RV, and simply never
noticed.  Those events come and go so fast, it seems I always forget to do some
of the things I meant to do during the totality, like view through some of the
scopes that had been set up.

Still, I did notice that *during* totality, the "ring of fire" was less visible
through the eclipse glasses, if at all.

And yes, it rained *most* of the way home, through Indiana and Kentucky.

As I neared the KY/TN border, only about 90 miles away, the traffic was *so bad*
it was averaging 15 MPH or thereabouts, which ended up calculating to take a bit
*over four hours* to go a little over 60 miles, so we (Ginger and I) found a
quaint little gas station / truck stop to park in (beside a big rig) overnight,
and finished the journey home Tuesday morning.  Slept most of the day Tuesday,
and am playing "catch up" today.