Total eclipse of the sun
Trip Start
Aug 20, 2008
1
10
23
Trip End
Jan 03, 2009
Salinas, California
Friday, October 10, 2008
Sitting on Amtrak's daily service from LA to Seattle ( I'm only going to SF) at around 6.10 pm, after 8 hrs since departure from LA, everybody is sitting in their seats, dreaming away or sleeping, probably cursing the moment they decided to take the train and not the plane. The sights are bautiful though - Californian farmland, hills covered with yellow grass and a few scattered green trees and the sun swttingbehind the higher hills that can only be seen as silhouettes far in the distance.
Suddenly we hear an announcement by the conductor that a total eclipse of the sun can be seen from the train just after 2 minutes. Suddenly everybody jumps to their feet, even the old lady in front of me, who uses a walking stick and was so slow going down the stairs at the previous station that I almost missed my chance to step out of the train for a smoke. Everyone flocks to the left of the train where we could see the sun setting. I managed to grab my camera and was only hoping that the eclipse would take place before the sun has totally gone down behind the hills. And there it was - all of a sudden everything went dark - pitch black. It lasted for a few seconds and before the train staff had managed to turn on the lights, everything was bright again and the sun still going down towards the edge of the hills. Our eclipse turned out to be a short railway tunnel.
I guess it's never too late to be tricked with old tricks by funny Amtrak staff ;)
Anyways, this all happened somewhere around the farm where John Steinbeck was born.
