The 22nd day of the 11th month of the year of the Camellia

FRIDAY NIGHT, SATURDAY MORNING

There was (or supposed to be) the best day/night on Friday to watch the Leonid Meteor Shower.  Well actually Saturday morning.  A very COLD, early Saturday morning.  The reports said the meteors could be seen best just after moon set and before dawn but this could have been just another Internet hoax.

I had forgotten from my hunting days just how exciting it was to get out of a warm bed at 2:00 AM on a COLD morning to go outside (probably under dressed) to do anything.  Let alone standing next to a tripod with a camera set on bulb for time exposure, and hoping that a meteor would come by.

We had pulled off the road into a farmer's hay field.  A couple of houses across the road and very light traffic on the road proper.  It was too COLD for other cars.  My fear was that a trooper would come along and wonder what those two idiots were doing in the middle of a field at about 3:30 AM.  Well, a local prison cell would have been warmer.

We drove about a half hour west of Columbia in order to get away from all the light pollution and thank the lord we had a compass built into the car.  We never would have found East left to our own devices.  As you can see from the photo above, the sky was pretty barren with no streaks of molten rock hurtling towards, around, or past earth.  Oh, did I say it was COLD?

Then when I got home and opened all the photos ........Yahoooooooooooooooo!

Two very COLD streaks of light across the top of the photo.  I hope you can see them.  Meteors?  Must be.  The only things moving in the eastern sky that I could identify.

But then again.

They must have been the telephone wires I had not seen earlier because it was too darn COLD!