A6
Eclipse
Blue Mountain Eagle
Meet those who traveled here
for this awesome experience
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
‘Podcycle’ globetrotter cruises into John Day
By George Plaven
EO Media Group
Eagle photos/Rylan Boggs
Wind, left, Leslie and Miles Lothamer
Wind Lothamer, from Portland, said he wasn’t prepared for
how awe-inspiring the eclipse would be to see in person.
“You look at pictures, and you have an idea of what it’s going
to look like, but just seeing it in person is just crazy, wild,” he said.
“I didn’t think it would be as impressive, I guess.”
He also found relief the event didn’t signal the apocalypse.
“The world didn’t end, so that’s plus,” he said.
Leslie Lothamer said the totality was her favorite part and,
during it, she was so cold she had to put on a jacket in the middle
of a hot August day.
“I liked that everyone was cheering for it,” she said. “It was a
fun place to see it. It’s neat in the crowd when people are excited
about it.”
Totality was unlike anything she had seen.
“That was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen,”
she said.
Caitlin Heath
Robert Bakewell
Caitlin Heath, from Pend-
leton, described the eclipse
as “phenomenal” and “worth
it.”
“A lot of people in Pend-
leton were like ‘we’ve got
96 percent, good enough,’”
she said. However, Heath
wanted to view the eclipse
without glasses and so came
to John Day.
She said one of her fa-
vorite aspects was seeing
the sun set all around the
horizon and watching a
wall of shadow created by
the moon move across the
valley.
“One minute it was there,
and the next minute it was
here,” she said.
She also enjoyed being
surrounded by campers who
had high-tech telescopes and
camera equipment.
Robert Bakewell traveled to
John Day from San Francisco.
He experienced his first
eclipse in 1964 but said it rained
the whole time. After that he
promised himself he would see
another one. On Monday, he
got his chance.
He said what he enjoyed
most about the trip was the peo-
ple he met in camp.
“The people are terrific.
We’ve got Italians, we’ve got
Canadians, we’ve got Ameri-
cans, we’ve got some English,
people from Japan, Spain —
it’s a real international crowd
with a lot of families,” he said.
His group passed the time
by telling stories, sharing food
and wine and enjoying the
young folk playing.
“It’s like a mini Burning
Man without the late-night
drinking,” Bakewell said.
Patty Sprunk and Eric Sprunk
Eric Sprunk, from Carlsbad, California, saw his first eclipse
when he was 12. At the time, he didn’t know what was going on.
“I thought I was going blind or something,” he said.
Since then, he has come to understand and appreciate eclipses.
“There’s no words that describe it. It’s just a natural phenom-
enon, and you just never see anything like it,” he said. “Basically,
a hole opens up in the sky right on top of the sun.”
This is the fourth solar eclipse he has viewed, and he still feels
humbled by them.
“You look up, and you see something that big, you should feel
small because it points out that you are,” he said.
From left, Ruth, Adrienne, Ted and Evan Stern
Ruth Stern, from Seattle, said she most enjoyed the mix of
technology used to view the eclipse. Her family used a spa-
ghetti colander to view the eclipse. All the holes in the colander
created crescent-shaped shadows mimicking the eclipse.
Their neighbors at the Industrial Park had a large telescope
hooked up to a laptop and were more than happy to let the
Sterns family view.
“It’s just such an awesome thing to do with your family,”
Stern said.
Eileen Poxon and Dick Williams
Eileen Poxon’s favorite aspect of the eclipse was the rays of
light that came off during totality.
“We came to John Day to share a moment with a lot of people
across the earth, and it was absolutely stunning, spectacular,” she
said. “The contrast of the planets, the ring and the light emitted
from it made you feel like you were in a different space and time.”
Philip Funnell calls it
a “podcycle,” with a tiny
sleeper-trailer made out of
thick foam and fiberglass
rigged to the back of his Ya-
maha 250 motorcycle.
At just 5.5 feet long, the
homemade camper has bare-
ly enough room for Funnell,
80, to stretch his legs. It’s
not always comfortable,
Funnell admits, but he
says it has served him well
during multiple tours across
the globe, spanning more
than a million miles and 74
countries since he began
riding in 1953.
“It’s not tiring for me,”
he said. “It’s an instinctual
thing. It’s become automat-
ic.”
Funnell arrived Saturday
in John Day from his home
in Chilliwack, British Co-
lumbia, where his latest ad-
venture has brought him to
experience Monday’s total
solar eclipse.
Inside his podcycle is ev-
erything Funnell needs for
the trip — a butane stove
and utensils for cooking,
spare sweaters, a can of
bear spray, a deck of cards
to play cribbage and an old
cassette tape recorder to
take down his thoughts and
experiences. Though he said
he has traversed deserts and
jungles on his bike, watched
the most beautiful sunrise
in Costa Rica and met the
Philip Funnell of
Chilliwach, British
Columbia, Canada, has
traveled all over the world
riding motorcycles.
EO Media Group photos/E.J. Harris
Philip Funnell, of Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada,
sits in his pod bike, the “World’s Smallest Camper,” after
arriving on John Day on Saturday. Funnell designed
and built his pod bike. It is the third pod bike Funnell
has constructed.
toughest people in Afghan-
istan, this will be Funnell’s
first, and likely only, solar
eclipse.
“The light will disappear
alarmingly,” he anticipates,
“and then it’s over. And I’ll
never see another.”
Born in South London,
Funnell speaks in a soft
British accent with an in-
credible memory for details.
His whole life has revolved
around motorcycles, and
the places they have taken
him. He has been around
the world twice, including
every state, country and ter-
ritory in North and South
America.
Rifling around the back
of his podcycle, Funnell
finds a bound edition of
a book he once self-pub-
lished, titled “The Sport of
Not Getting Tickets.” It was
written in 1980, when he
says he was still going fast.
“I had a reputation for
fighting these things,” he
said with a chuckle.
Nowadays,
however,
Funnell said he prefers a
more gentlemanly, low-anx-
iety style of riding, taking
the time to soak in the prai-
ries and Canada plains.
“When you go through
those places slowly and look
at the antelope, you learn to
appreciate them more, and
the journey doesn’t seem so
long,” he said.
Funnell is no stranger to
John Day, where he says he
has visited before and greet-
ed every deer that wanders
into the small town. He
plans to watch the eclipse in
the grocery store parking lot
before eventually making
his way back to Canada.
Funnell has built three
podcycles in his life for
these kinds of journeys. The
first, he said, was stolen and
the second now resides in a
BMW motorcycle museum
in Maryland. The little trail-
er, with its all-too-appropri-
ate decal, “Snug as a bug,”
offers him a place to kick
up his feet at the end of a
long day.
Funnell said he was at-
tracted to motorcycling
at first because they were
cheap, and he couldn’t af-
ford at the time to buy a
car. Since then, he has been
inducted into the Canada
Motorcycle Hall of Fame
and spent years as a BMW
dealer in Canada, where he
earned the nickname, “Dr.
BMW.”
“People have done the
most amazing things with
motorcycles,” Funnell said.
“Your whole lifestyle goes
over to it.”
ECLIPSE
Continued from Page A1
According to travelers, it was well
worth the trip.
Mike Ziemke, of Merrill, Wisconsin,
drove two full days to John Day where
he met his friend, Chuck Stewart, of
Vancouver, Washington. The two as-
tronomy buffs settled in Wednesday and
spent every night stargazing through
their telescopes and eagerly awaiting
Monday’s eclipse.
Ziemke, who watched the 1979 to-
tal solar eclipse from his home in Wis-
consin, described the experience as
life-changing.
“It’s something that’s just unbeliev-
able,” he said. “To think of all the people
across the country coming together to-
day, just to watch ... you’ve got all walks
of life.”
Kevin Knowles, an astronomy teach-
er at Mount Si High School in Sno-
qualmie, Washington, wore his enthu-
siasm on his sleeve — literally — with
not one but two shirts adorned in planets
and galaxies. He said he first heard about
the eclipse in March while attending the
National Science Teachers Association
conference in Los Angeles, and made
his arrangements.
“I would have loved to have this a
few weeks later so I could have brought
my whole class,” Knowles said. “Defi-
nitely, this brings alive everything I
teach.”
For others, traveling to the path of to-
tality was a last-minute decision. Patri-
cia Johnson, of Sacramento, California,
drove up to Oregon with her adult son,
Edek Sher, who was home visiting from
Rhode Island.
The two were not able to find eclipse
glasses on such short notice anywhere
in northern California. Fortunately, they
were able to stop at the Powerhouse Sci-
ence Center in Sacramento, where they
learned how to make their own using pa-
per, Popsicle sticks and decorated with
crayons. The center also provided the
proper viewing lenses.
“We were embarrassed,” Johnson
said with a smile. “But we wanted to
come prepared.”
A number of visitors traveled not just
cross-country but across an ocean to
see the uniquely North American event.
Bart Verbrugge and his wife, Véronique,
came all the way from their native Hol-
land with their two children, Isabel, 11,
and Jurien, 9.
SCIENCE
Continued from Page A1
creating a film, but to allow
detail of the sun’s corona for
astronomers to study.
Smith said she was glad
her team of students met a
few times to practice with the
telescope, fitted with a cam-
era connected to a laptop.
“The data we collected
is awesome, and the totality
was so much more intense
than I expected,” she said.
“Many thanks to Tom Schad
and the National Solar Ob-
servatory for giving us this
training and opportunity.”
Smith said a bonus to their
EO Media Group photos/E.J. Harris
Thousands of travelers gathered at the industrial park in John Day on
Monday to view the eclipse.
Traffic clogs Highway 26 in
downtown John Day as eclipse
travelers make their way home on
Monday.
Gabriel Porter, of Sandy, right, reacts
to the start of the eclipse while
watching it with his twin brother,
Nathan, on Monday in John Day.
Bart Verbrugge said
“It’s like some special
he has witnessed two
kind of gray darkness,”
other solar eclipses in
Schatzman explained.
his life — one in north-
“At the same time, the
ern France and the other
sun gets this silvery kind
in Zambia, Africa. But
of shine.”
he wanted to be able to
After totality, some at
share the experience Kevin Knowles, an
the industrial park decid-
with his kids, so they astronomy teacher at
ed to stay while others
flew together to Van- Mount Si High School in
hit the road right away.
couver, British Colum- Washington, sports a pair of Worries of severe traffic
bia, Canada, about three celestial shirts while viewing backups were perhaps
weeks ago for vacation the eclipse in John Day.
overblown, according to
and made their way to
Tom Strandberg with the
John Day by Friday.
Oregon Department of Transportation,
“We wanted to show the kids this who said only minor delays were report-
awesome experience,” he said. “I just ed along highways 395 and 26.
want to share with them this magical
“It’s actually been a lot calmer than
moment.”
we anticipated,” he said. “People seem
Bernd Schatzman also flew in to to be behaving, for the most part.”
the U.S. from Germany, where he met
The United States will not experi-
friends in Los Angeles before coming up ence another total solar eclipse until
to the path of totality together.
2024, and Oregon will not see anoth-
The feeling of watching an eclipse is er until 2108, when one is expected to
incomparable, he said.
graze along the coast.
involvement in the program
is keeping the equipment,
and free software, to use at
school.
Brandon’s experience ce-
mented his thoughts about
pursuing a career that in-
volves astronomy.
“With such a beautiful,
once-in-a-lifetime event, I
think it’s convinced me this
is the kind of thing I want to
do with my life,” he said.
Donavan Smith said
he was just about brought
to tears at the sight of the
eclipse.
“I’m amazed that John
Day just happens to be in the
middle of the path of totali-
ty,” he said.
Allen said the experience
was beyond his expectations.
“I feel lucky and blessed,
and unbelievably sad that I
won’t be seeing it again in
my lifetime,” he said.
“The light quality (as the
sunlight faded) reminded ev-
eryone of looking at old sepia
photographs,” Sonna Smith
said.
During totality, the dark-
ness was much like what one
would see around 8 p.m.
Horses on the property be-
came active, running around,
the teacher said.
The group recorded the
temperature for NASA
every 10 minutes, an
hour before and an hour
after the partial phases.
Air temperature dropped
11-12 degrees Fahrenheit and
ground temperature fell 40
degrees.
Sonna Smith said they no-
ticed shadows changing.
“Pre-eclipse shadows were
sharp on the right edge and
blurry on the left,” she said.
“Post eclipse it was reversed.”
Jensen, now a Lane Com-
munity College student, said
she feels fortunate to have
been a part of the event.
“I always thought this
town wouldn’t be able to
provide any opportunity for
me to test the waters of as-
tronomy, and I’m glad I was
wrong,” she said.