PROLOGUE

A while back I decided that a good way to spend the day before my 40th birthday was viewing the last total solar eclipse of the millennium (for you millennium nitpickers, there's no eclipse in 2000, so the 1999 eclipse is unambiguously the last eclipse of the millennium :-)

After looking over the eclipse path and various weather predictions, it looked like the best compromise between comfort, safety, and decent viewing weather would be found in Turkey. Given my inexperience with international travel, and potential language problems, I decided it would be a good idea to hook up with a tour company. With that goal in mind, I started some serious web surfing. One of the many search results was Explorers Tours, a tour company based in England that specialized in (among other things) astronomical event tours. Their prices were quite good, and the prospect of traipsing around Turkey with a bunch of Brits seemed preferable to traipsing around Turkey with a bunch of Yanks, so I decided to join up with their six-day tour.

One advantage of going with a British-based tour company was that it gave me an opportunity to combine the eclipse trip with some sightseeing around England (and a few nearby places). My partner in crime for the expedition would be Bonnie Petheram (our principal photographer and logistics expert, who skillfully arranged travel and accommodations for the non-Turkey parts of the trip), and we managed to talk Bena Currin into accompanying us for the whole trip, and Castor Fu tagged along for the Turkey tour.

It must be a law somewhere that the day before I leave on a vacation is a dizzying muddle of frenzied activity (culminating in little or no sleep). At least this time it wasn't quite as bad as my last eclipse trip in 1991, which I dubbed the "Pre-Vacation Iron Woman Triathlon": the day before we left for Mexico, we had to (1) pack up all our belongings and move them into the landlady's half of our rental house (she was having some serious remodeling done to our half of the house) (2) drive from Oakland to Los Angeles in 110-degree heat in an unairconditioned car and (3) upon arriving in LA, play a gig. This time, we just spent the entire night doing our tax returns (the due date was during the time we'd be gone), draining and disassembling the waterbed (so the cats wouldn't trash it during our absence), and running around the house looking for things to throw into suitcases. (I managed to find everything except the neato insulated water bottle I'd bought specifically for the trip - which would have come in pretty handy in Turkey. Couldn't find it anywhere - and of course, I found it within a day after I got home, in relatively plain sight in the basement.) I managed to get a hour or so of fitful sleep, while Bonnie didn't get any sleep at all. Procrastination, verily thy name is Jean and Bonnie...

At 5:30 a.m. the shuttle arrived to take us to the airport (Bonnie had finished packing about 5 minutes earlier!). At the airport we met up with our friend Bena. She, having had almost four hours of sleep, was positively chipper in comparison with us. We got our boarding passes without incident (woohoo! the first time someone asks to see my brand new passport!) and settled in for the first leg of the journey, the flight to Charlotte, North Carolina. I guess it was a boring weather day that day - caught a glimpse of the Sierra Nevada, and then nothing but clouds all the way across the country. Tried to regain a little lost sleep, but I'm terrible at sleeping on airplanes.

Landed in Charlotte where, according to the pilot, it was 90 degrees and muggy. Thank the gods for airconditioned airports. The Charlotte airport is a trip - it's like a huge shopping mall that happens to have planes nearby. They even had a live jazz combo playing in one of the concourses. Makes our local airports seem pretty dull and lifeless by comparison. We wandered around for a couple of hours waiting for our flight to England - I managed to locate a cheezy (and, as it later turned out, leaky) water bottle to substitute for the one I couldn't find at home. But hey, it says "North Carolina" on it, so it's not all bad...

Coming from relatively arid California, I'm always amazed by places where it rains - even in the summer. The South is so green, and there's bodies of water all over the place, and I love the contrast of the red soil and the green vegetation. You can keep the hot & humid part, though - aridity does have its advantages.

How you know you're in the South - the airport cafe has a stock car racing theme, complete with chairs made out of car wheels. And did you know that Charlotte's nickname is the Queen City? Though, to my disappointment, it apparently came from the fact that the city is named after George II's wife Queen Charlotte, and not from the overabundance of swishy guys.

Eventually we boarded the transatlantic flight, and set off for England. I don't know if other airlines do this, or just US Air, but apparently working an overseas flight is considered a cushy job that you need seniority to get - the flight attendants were at least ten years older than any flight attendant I'd ever seen before. And the food was actually - decent. Maybe they figure if you're shelling out that kind of dough for a flight, and being uncomfortable for that long, you might as well get edible food. They even handed out these hot moist towel things - too bad they only handed them out after the peanuts sessions, rather than after the meals. (but they were good for getting peanut debris off your hands)

Tried to sleep again, with perhaps an hour or two of success. As we approached Gatwick, I caught my first glimpse of land - haphazard layouts of green fields, hedgerows, the occasional farmhouse. Green, everything so green. Even greener than the South. The plane touched down - ye gods, we're in *England*!!

On to Stonehenge and Salisbury