‘It was like in a dream’ — Windsor photographers witness total eclipse
The birds went quiet before the bugs, noisy until then in the melting humid Kentucky heat, suddenly also fell silent. And then the colours of the landscape in every direction drained away and everything turned silvery dark.
“It was wild, insane, the coolest thing — everything was shimmering, it was like in a dream,” said Gerry Kaiser, who travelled south from Windsor to capture the full eclipse of the sun Monday.
In a phone interview with the Star a short time after the moon travelled in front of our planetary system’s only star, fully blotting out its sunny rays for about 160 seconds, Kaiser said the experience was so emotional and overwhelming he was in tears.
“It was unbelievable — I have never experienced anything like this in my life,” he said.
It was quite an adventure for Kaiser and Steve Biro, two Ford autoworkers and avid hobby photographers from Windsor who joined the millions who flocked to the narrow band of total eclipse that stretched across the U.S.
With a cloudy forecast threatening the skies over their original destination in Missouri, the pair made a 3:30 a.m. decision to drive five hours west to a more promising location — Hopkinsville, Ky. But hearing along the way that that small city’s population of about 31,000 had exploded by more than 200,000 eclipse-chasing visitors, Kaiser and Biro diverted down a rural dirt road and encountered a friendly farmer who offered his field.
“It was nerve-racking, how fast that two minutes and 40 seconds goes by, but at the same time, cool,” said Kaiser. He said the temperature in the sun was about 103 F (39 C) but that during the total eclipse the temperature in the shade quickly dropped from about 96 F (36 C) to 84 F (29 C). “It was wild,” he said.
Kaiser has already started posting photos to his Facebook page.
It was nerve-racking, how fast that two minutes and 40 seconds goes by, but at the same time, cool.