by Richard Crisp
The road up to the site was amazingly full of cars. I have never seen so many cars on that road and it was about midnight when I was travelling up the hill.
Upon arrival I found the gate nearly blocked but a kind soul let me in after I had identified myself as with TAC.
A walk-in with a red flashlight would have been nice to help with settling logistics, but everyone was too busy observing I guess.
I noticed lots of meteors to the northwest and also to the south and southwest. It seemed they all emanated from above SF and were heading down our way. About the time I'd see one to the north, there would be four more to the south. In short my head was moving about all the time.
Feldhouse indicated we were running at a rate of 2000 per hour at the peak from what I remember, and I think he was being conservative.
Several left trails that persisted for several minutes.
About 3am I quit and left. But before that time I did do a few walkouts for folks leaving earlier.
The place was a zoo. The entrance to the park was blocked for a while so no one could leave, but the owner of the car finally moved it. Once that was moved, several cars came driving in. We really needed a ranger to control access and to keep the gate from being blocked. But all worked out at in the end.
Rich Ozer, Jim Feldhouse, Eric Ayers and me were the only TACos I saw. We were a little concerned about two issues: One was the potential mess that the non-Tacos had left behind and us getting blamed for it by the Rangers and 2) worry about how we could leave with other non-Tacos behind and make sure the gate was locked. Fortunately Richard O found a Mr. Wright that was a TAC lurker and he agreed to stay until sunup and make sure the area was policed and gate locked.
Normally these issues would not have been a problem, but the publicity surrounding the event was so intense, that it seemed a lot of people that would not normally come up did so.
Anyway if we ever have some situation like this arise again, it makes sense to have a well-thought out plan for dealing with non-permit holders and the potential litter issue. If I didn't need to get back before dawn, I'd have been happy to hang around to help clean up etc. I also didn;t mind doing a few red light walk-outs for the courteous drivers that drove out with the lights off. I for one would be quite willing to share turns with walk-in / out duty if someone else wanted to pitch in.
Too many white lights, too many people, too many cars, too disorganized for my liking, but once we got used to the fact that this was like a concert emptying out of Shoreline, the show made up for the hassles.