The Great Solar Eclipse of 2017 crossed the continent, from Oregon to South Carolina, and gave millions of people the chance to witness one of the most awe-inspiring events in the natural world.

But you had to be within the "path of totality", a narrow band across the earth's surface several thousand miles long but only about 70 miles wide. Outside that band you would only see a partial eclipse, not a total eclipse.

And there is no such thing as a "partial total eclipse", despite the impression blogs and the news media might give. I honestly think that's why so many people misunderstand the utter beauty of the spectacle; they may have seen a partial eclipse in the past that was total somewhere else, and even though they weren't in the path the news kept gushing about it being a total eclipse, so they assume they must have seen a total eclipse and just didn't find it all that impressive.


Posted by Dan 08/29/2017, revised 09/06/2017

Kim won a raffle in February for entry into her first half-ironman in Rockford IL on Sunday. The original weather predictions were in the 90's and humid, not great conditions for a 5-6 hour endurance test. But they ended up with storms instead of heat.

I guess there were about 500 participants...with everyone starting the swim at the same time. There were only guys around her during the swim and she's decided guys are messy swimmers. She got elbowed in the face by someone.

She was in first place starting the bike split, ahead of the woman Pro in the race! During part of the 56 mile bike ride she felt like she was in a hurricane as the storm front came through. Then she was out in the wide open with nobody around when she started seeing lightning. She said it made her ride faster to try to finish the last 6 miles!

She finished 5th overall among the women, which should mean $200 in prize money. Might almost cover her expenses (hotel/travel), but she may "break" even by the fact that when she got home she broke her blender, dropping it when she was trying to make a smoothie (lack of coordination after the exertion).

Posted by Lucy 06/10/2008

Well we managed to extricate ourselves from Koh Tao last week. The trick is to do it fast and with no warning. We went down to check on tickets to Chiang Mai and found that it was either leave the next day or wait another week for availability, so we booked it and got the next boat off.

Goodells Rule!

Posted by nik 10/21/2008, revised 11/05/2008

Wow. My last blog was from Koh Phagnan... that seems like ages ago! I guess it seems like ages ago to Mom and Dad, too, 'cause they haven't been diggin' the long silence from their (awesome) daughter.

There's good reason for my silence, though. I was lost. I was lost in an amazing Neverland of happiness and fun. I was living the life on Koh Tao, and for me to sit in front of this computer screen with the task of "write about your month on Koh Tao," well, that's quite possibly the most immensely intimidating, overwhelming task I've faced in lifetimes. But you know what? There's no possible way I could ever ever portray to you the amazingness that was my month on Koh Tao. So with that fact having been recognized, I can now approach this in a "just write something and it's better than nothing" manner. Much easier to get my mind around!

The reason I haven't written a blog in so long

Koh Tao is a little island off the east side of Thailand, in the Gulf of Thailand. It is warm and tropical and happy - essentially everything you want your standard tropical paradise to be. There's so much to be said about the island itself, and there's so much to be said about my personal experience on the island. But I can't say it all in any reasonable number of days, so I'll break it down like this...

The 5 aspects of Koh Tao that make it what it is, ...or 5 reasons "1 week" turned into a month

A picture's worth a thousand words... this one should suffice as a substitute for a blog

Posted by Whitney 10/24/2008