Leonids: Finding One and then Losing It

3:45AM: I'm awake and moving. I've thrown
on a turtleneck, a sweater and a jacket.

Pants too.

4:04AM: Unfortunately it's overcast right
now. And it's cold out. So I'm staying
inside checking websites. I have NasaTV on
right now. I have accuweather.com on my
browser so that I can check for holes in
the cloud cover. There's a rain front
coming in.

4:10AM: My core body temperature is low.
In fact, I'm freezing. I'm inside and have
turned on the heat but am just barely
warming up. I'd like to get my temp way up
before getting onto the roof in the cold.

4:16AM: On the sattelite image it looks
like there may be a hole in the clouds.
With the peak coming from 5:00AM to 5:30AM
I think that I will head onto the roof at
4:45AM. That's my plan.

The dudes on NasaTV have no idea how to
fill empty time. You can hear them whisper
to each other "why don't we go to Bob in
Arizona." Makes sense... they're probably
rarely in the live TV game.

4:33AM: Still warming up. Still looking
cloudy. About to head outside in a few
minutes. No updates for a while.

4:39AM: They just said on TV that in
Savannah, GA they're seeing high
continuance counts. That's my cue. I'm
heading onto the roof.

5:50AM: I'm back from the roof. I saw one
meteor.

And I caught it on film. There was cloud
cover over the entire sky except for one
single tiny sliver. I point the camera,
open the shutter and BANG... a big orange
meteor passes directly in the middle of
it. This was the perfect shot!

But then on the next shot the film ended
and I continued to force the camera wind
mechanism, eventually popping the film out
of its canister. I didn't realize what I
had done until after I opened the camera
and exposed the film. ARGHHHH! I was
frustrated! The one meteor that I saw all
night I happen to catch beautifully on film
and I expose the film.

Darn.

It wasn't as cold as I had expected. I
made it to the roof around 4:50AM and
settled into my sleeping bag and foldable
chair. It was peaceful and relaxing but a
little depressing that such a celestial
light show was happening without me as a
spectator.

After I screwed up the film I kept trying.
I set up my video camera with a wide angle
lens covering most of the sky and just
started recording. My hope was that I would
catch something... anything. But I didn't.

At about 5:40AM I had to give up. The
clouds were too thick and there were only a
few tiny breaks every now and then. I
hadn't seen a star in a while.

Well, I tried. Frustrating to succeed and
then erase that success with stupidity, but
that's part of life. I'll always have the
memory.

7:59AM: I've been at work for about an
hour and a half and I'm already exhausted.
I'm hoping that I can get some calls out of
the way early and then make it home to take
a nap.

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  misc