One more day of sunshine

It was predicted to rain at home.  I was still in California enjoying blue sky and sunshine. The sunshine was going to be eclipsed today though.  The center of the eclipse elipse ;-) was right over Mt Shasta and the town of Weed, CA. The retirement community of Lake Shastina was holding an eclipse viewing party, heavy on the party.  7 live bands, food booths, and lots of green grass to relax on.  All of that added up to making it very enticing to spend a bit more time in the California sun before returning home to rain.

I arrived in Weed by noon (a 5 hour drive), found the park, unloaded my bike, and pedaled northward on US 97.  I kept looking for a paved road that would head east toward Mt Shasta, but every road I saw was gravel.  I finally just resigned myself to a ride out and back on US 97. It wasn't bad.  Traffic was low, and the shoulder was wide. As I pedaled, the blue sky gave way to some building clouds.  They were dark and appeared that they might result in lightning, but never quite made it.

I got in 72 miles  before getting back to the park.

I arrived back at the park with plenty of time to help out the local economy by buying "dinner" from the food booths and sitting back and enjoying some music.

The sky was still blue and cloudless to the east, but there was a dark band of clouds running longitudinally right over the sun.  We were going to have to catch that eclipse in the spaces between clouds.

I had my GoPro set on a tripod filming continuously.  I was doing my best with my phone's camera to capture the event and post updates to facebook.  I had my digital camera sitting nearby.

With the clouds making timing everything I completely forgot about my digital camera, probably my best chance of getting a good photo. I was messing around with the phone and finally found I could get an image of the sun in a "barrel flare".  The sun, even when mostly eclipsed, was still way too bright for my phone and I didn't realize until later that there was an exposure adjustment I could have fiddled with and maybe got something better. In the photo below, the actual sun is above the image in that bright white area. (the GoPro had similar results)

As soon as the sun was done playing hide and seek I continued on my way northward, another 5.5 hours of travel left to go.

It was yet another great day on the bike!

.........road bike.......rollers.........mtb.....lifecycle.....total
Today........72..............0..............0..........0............72
   Jan.........105.............34.............0..........0..........139
 Feb.........428............108.............0.........24..........536 March.......809..............0.............0.........22..........831
 April.........1010..............0.............0..........0.........1010
 May............758..............0.............20..........0...........778  YTD........3111............142............20.........46.........3294