Well… That was amazing!… Today was my first total solar eclipse. Jonesville was right in the path of totality and we had over three minutes of total darkness. It was amazing.. …… absolutely amazing. ! With all the hype about becoming eclipse, I was wondering if it would feel anticlimactic… It did not in the least.

It was really special having Max back here, so Max Diane and I sat in the back.… And I know this might sound weird… But we had Sam with us… (his ashes)  and several samstones. Picture above is from our friend Marie.. with he crest sun shining through a colander. 

I set up my telescope with a solar filter and camera to try and record the actual image of the sun.. it sort of worked.. what’s below are some pictures of my phone as it tracks the sun’s occlusion . Max is going  to help me put it together as a movie (I hope 🙂 

We watched the sun slowly get more bites taken out.. as it did, the light changed.. it was cool and freaky ! ..

One fun thing is that we could see many images of the cresant sun as it shined through all the wholes on our fire pit (which I’d made of an old dryer drum).. Look at all those little suns ! 

Then it happened.. the sun slowly just disappeared !.. Everything got quiet… there was like a sunrise glow all around the horizon, birds stopped speaking . ..bugs appeared !  

The whole sun turned into just a ring of fire !!!!! It was magical !!!.. 

Even some of the really bad pictures came out as interesting.. check out this unintentional double exposure

Then the sun started to peak back out.. as soon as it did.. it was instantly brighter !

Then things slowly got back to normal-ish.. I say normal-ish because all of a sudden all the roads got packed.. in a few minutes it was back to back traffic on the interstate, and on route 2.. a few minutes later, a ton of traffic started going down Duxbury rd. I checked google maps and sure enough.. the mapping app was counting people down the 10 mile dirt road..  just after mud season.. Diane  even saw a semi truck go down there !

The rest of the afternoon was peaceful.. in the evening a bunch of our/maxs friends came over for a post eclipse dinner..  Jaq and her friend were in town,. As were Alex and Chris. .. Super nice way to finish  this day . 

What a memorable day !
so amazing…

Nite all
-me

Super fun day. I had arranged to bring 12 supporters of FIRST Robotics down to the FIRST District Regional Championship in Springfield Mass.  We were just making a quick down and back trip in a day. FIRSTinVT graciously offered to pay for a nice van and nice driver to take us down… which gave us all a great time to talk  on each of the 3 hour drives. We had folks from industry, prospective team coaches, one  robotic team member and one team coach and even a UVM Dean. It was soooo fun.. The Vermont teams met our van and brought us inside to show us their robot and show us how it worked. Then we got to go in and watch some competition. It is amazing what these kids have learned and making these robots. They’re so sophisticated. Not only did they learn, hardware, software, mechanical design… But they learn, teamwork, ethics, finance, communications… It’s really a great steam package.

It was really fun to see my friends from hackclub down there talking about our onboard program. They had lots of cool handouts and Blinky circuit boards.

we had a ton to talk about on the way back.. Everyone was excited about getting more students to build more robots !

One strange and amazing coincidence happened on the drive back . We were having a fun conversation about burning man… And I was talking about the technology there. My new friend Dave from Linden, Vermont picked up his phone looked through his pictures and then showed me a picture of a piece. I knew well. It’s the fear beast. It was designed  by Max and Becky’s good friend Tigre and a large group of makers including Max and Becky.  I actually helped with it one day on the Play in 2022.
 Sadly, Tigre decided to hand their own life shortly after burning man. There was an incredible shock to many of us.   Last December we visited the place where Tigre and all his friends built the Fear Beast .. I wrote about it here. 

I couldn’t believe that of all the pictures David would have a picture of that piece. It turns out that Dave’s sister was  Tigre’s partner   for many years. . It turns out that Tigre’s mom Linda was going up to Vermont for the Eclipse.. and we were able to reconnect with her by txt.  

It was all a really crazy  coincidence that brought back both happy and sad memories

Crazy day !  … and tomorrow is the eclipse !

nite all, nite sam
-me

Started the day with a nice ski in the beautiful snow with my beautiful wife.  

The next big thing of the day was our event at Generator. We were giving a talk/film viewing/ panel discussion and fiery dance party as part of the Generator’s Reckless Ideas  program. I’ve been so looking forward to this. Two of my big passions intersecting.. ( I was one of the founders of Generator.. ) We got there about 4 to help set up..    It was so great having Max in town for this event. He was instrumental to the way we did the lights and helped us debug generator issues from across the country !

Soon we had a crowd ! at 6:30 Meg introduced us and Duane got up and started things off. He had a few comments on ‘why fluufy’ (a question that is very often asked 🙂 .. Then we played the “Making of Fluffy” movie that Duanes son Duane III had made .. I had only seen it once.. it was a really good capture of all that went in to the early and late parts of making fluffy. Duane III got married that year.. so there’s not much in there about either the lights or the fire systems.. but the rest of the stuff is covered very nicely. Have a look !

After the panel discussion we all went outside and sparked up Fluffy..  We had a small crowd that stayed steady through the night. Max DJ’ed the entire night with was FANTASTIC !!!.. 

Super fun night.. ! Glad to share fluffy with so many others. It was always our intent to be able to roll fluffy out to more events than burning man.. and it’s happening !

Nite all, nite sam

-me

Max is in town for the eclipse.. and we marked his arrival with almost a foot of snow !   Max and Diane got in a short ski.. Tonight we went out to A Single Pebble  one of our favorite restaurants with Tim, Jen,. Nate and Hannah. It was de-lish !

We all split one dessert .. and got a candle on it for a late birthday celebration for DIane !

Happy birthday my love !

Nite all, nite sam
-me