The clouds wanted to watch the eclipse. Again.

There was a sun annular eclipse today. It once only a partial eclipse in the Belgian sky but these are still fun to watch mostly because you just can't guess there's an eclipse going by looking around: Even though there's 2/3 of the surface of the sun hidden by the moon, you just don't see any difference in terms of general brightness. Only when you look at the sun (with protections !) you realize that part of it is hidden.

The eclipse lasted from around 9:30AM till around 1:00PM. Unfortunately, the clouds arrived around... 9:15AM and left around... 1:15PM :-(

It reminds me the total eclipse in 1999. Belgium was not in the strip of totality but we were pretty close. Actually, the (very) rural village of my grand-parents in north of France (roughly 2 hours drive away) was right on the path of centrality. Therefore I decided to take my motorbike and ride there. I arrived there a little late (around 15 minutes before totality) : It was cloudy and I only had 15 minutes to find a better place. For the first time in my life, I decided to ride behind a piece of blue sky ! And I'll tell you what: Pieces of blue sky run fast ! I rode as fast as I could (Yes, obviously faster than what can reasonably expected from the husband of a pregnant woman expecting twins). Very soon, I didn't even know anymore where I was but I didn't care : Just catch up with the blue sky, and do it fast ! Tough decisions had to be made at every crossroad : there's one on the left and one on the right but I need to go straight ahead. Which is the less worse choice ?
But I was catching up... when suddenly daylight disappeared ! Noooo ! I remember at that very moment there was a traffic light. Red ! Come on ! I guess I passed the ultimate test before being sent to hell for eternity : I refrained from crossing at red light but these 30 to 40 seconds were among the longest in my life. Green ! go go go ! I reached the border of blue sky piece, threw the bike on the side (people there looked at me as if I were total nuts), took off my helmet, took the special glasses, raised my eyes... and saw the light coming back........ Boy, I missed it for one damn second :-(

Actually, I'm not sure I missed it. Because as I was approaching the limit of the clouds, they were getting thinner and I could somehow see the sun through (er... yes, while riding like crazy !). I remember I somehow saw the sun disappear. But when it came back in the open sky, it was too quick: The first ray of light is enough to blind you and prevent you from seeing the details. It appeared a posteriori that a thin layer of clouds is not that bad a thing to look at a total eclipse.

Damn good memory anyway !