Tom Petty/Seattle

August 18-21, 2017

Randy and I are big Tom Petty fans.  We found out earlier this year that he was playing in Seattle so we jumped at the chance on getting some tickets.  Randy also has family in Seattle so it was nice to see them again.  I suck.  I didn't get any pictures of them....

We rented a house for the first two days and then we stayed with is his cousin Debbie and her husband Brian for the next two.  We got really lucky on the weather.  It was beautiful!  Our rental was in the Fremont district, right around the corner from the troll under the bridge.  I can't believe how popular this guy is!!  There's always about 20 people there whenever you pass by.  I made Randy go with me at 8:00 in the morning so I could beat the crowd.  We weren't even the only ones there.  But by the time we got there the three other people left.

The concert was at Safeco Field...sold out!!  30,000 people!  It was a great concert.  He never lets us down...

It's super hard taking a selfie in front of these things.  Between the glare and the changing of the pictures, you gotta be ready!  We must've taken about 10 pics before we got a half way decent one

We were hungry for sandwiches so we tried out this place called Tat's.  Meh.  It was ok.  I wouldn't go back.

My friend Jason told me about a frozen custard place called Old School Frozen Custard.  We went around 9pm so most of the flavors were sold out.  It was reallllly goooood.  I want to go back when there's more flavors I can try

August 21 was the morning of the eclipse.  We didn't realize this when we booked our vacation, Randy had mentioned it to me while researching things to do.  We were thinking of driving down to Portland a day earlier to catch the total eclipse down there but we decided against it.  Good thing, they said it was a 6 hour drive from Seattle with all the traffic.  Lucky for us Debbie said that as long as you are looking to the Southeast then we should be fine.  Her house faces Southeast!!  Seattle would be in the 90% totality range, good enough.   She lives in Queen Anne, here's the view right down the street from her house.  We were walking around staking out eclipse spots...

One more bonus...her neighbor across the street said we can just hang out on her lanai and watch 

the eclipse from there!!!  SCORE!!  So we grabbed our eclipse glasses and headed across the street. 

I don't know if any of you have ever used these glasses but you can't see ANYTHING through these things!  It's amazing how protective they are too because the sun was super bright that morning.  You see the hat?  It's covering my lens, I wasn't sure if my homemade filter was going to work so I didn't want to take a chance and have the sun shine into it for too long.  Like my shirt? ;)

Homemade filter you ask??  Well there was a theory that I remember hearing back in x-ray school that you can use unexposed xray film as your protection while looking at sun.  The silver bromide that layers on top of it acts as a natural filter.  One problem.  No one uses xray film anymore!  We are all in the digital age and it's rare that anyone prints films anymore.  Also the dry laser printer uses different film so I wasn't sure if it would work.  With lots and lots of googling I found out that the film that we use in the office does have a silver coating.  Perfect!  The film was expired so no one would care if I took a few sheets.  I layered two sheets onto my filter just in case one wasn't enough...

 I guess it worked cause my pictures turned out fine. yay!  This was the sun at it's peak coverage, at 10:21 PST

Not as exciting as I had thought.  It just looks like a crescent moon!  And it didn't get very dark either.  I was hoping to see a huge difference in lighting.  It got really cold though.  Maybe about a 10 degree difference.  That was bizarre.  It was really hot waiting around for it.

I'm only showing this so I don't forget my settings.  I was at ISO 100

Seattle was fun, we even got to see some other cousin's of Randy's that we rarely get to see....but ahem, no pics again.  Fail.  Off to Portland next!