I have a lovely red souvenir from sitting out in the sun yesterday. I took sunblock with me-- and a hat and umbrella-- but like a dummy I didn't use the sunblock because I don't like putting lotion on my skin (too icky), the umbrella was a hassle to hold onto, and the rim of the hat kept getting in the way of my view through the eclipse glasses. Plus, I'm whiter-than-white from being an avowed lover of the indoors, so I thought I could benefit from a little color. Silly me! Fortunately, I have a high tolerance for pain, so I'm not having much trouble shoving it to the back of my mind, but my knees are especially sore.
My best story from the eclipse has to do with a tee shirt. Several weeks ago I met a friend downtown for lunch, and right next door to the little cafe is a tee shirt shop that had eclipse tee shirts on display, so I was telling my friend which one I liked the best. She bought it for me last week because she happened to be near the shop-- and I paid her back-- so she was telling me I had to (not should, but had to) wear it when we took our little eclipse road trip to Newberry. I packed it, but wore a different tee shirt while driving. Once we got there and she saw a vendor selling tee shirts from a van, she realized I wasn't wearing mine and asked me where it was. So when we walked back to where we'd parked I switched into my eclipse tee shirt. No sooner did I do that than people started asking me, "Sir, if you don't mind my asking, where did you get that tee shirt?" The vendor in Newberry had several designs, but none that were-- in my opinion-- as nice as the one I was wearing. So I had to keep telling people about the shop in Aiken and where it's located downtown.
After totality was over, we packed up our picnic stuff and walked back downtown to see the Newberry Opera House. When we came out of the Opera House and started strolling back toward the car, a young couple stopped us to ask about the tee shirt. They were just acquaintances-- he was from Sweden, she was from Holland, and they were in the states to attend a seminar in Washington, DC but had driven down to Newberry, SC for the eclipse. They had to drive right back to Washington, DC and couldn't spare 3 hours to drive down to Aiken and back to buy a tee shirt, so my friend Bonnie says, "Well, Michael can sell you his, because he can always buy another one back in Aiken!" So Gunnar from Sweden walked back to our car with us, I switched back into my everyday "San Juan Puerto Rico" tee shirt, sold him my sweaty tee shirt (ew!), and he had Bonnie take a picture with his phone of me standing next to him while he held up the tee shirt. I can see the caption now-- "This nice man sold me the sweaty tee shirt off his back."
Today I went back to The Screenprint Factory in downtown Aiken to buy a replacement tee shirt. They have three or four different designs, but naturally I wanted the same one as before. It has an outline of South Carolina with the path of the eclipse going across it, which is why it was my favorite-- and apparently everyone who stopped me to ask about it were in agreement that it was better than any of the designs being sold in Newberry. I told the owners of the Screenprint Factory that I'd had the tee shirt and had worn it at the eclipse festival in Newberry, how I kept getting stopped by people who wanted to know about it, and that I ended up selling my sweaty tee shirt to Gunnar from Sweden. So I managed to buy a replacement, and told the owners that if they were to advertise the tee shirt online they could probably make a fortune selling it. I'm not sure if the owners are husband and wife, but she told me that he had come up with the design.
Here's a photo of my new, non-sweaty, replacement tee shirt:
And here's a link to the Facebook page for The Screenprint Factory:
https://www.facebook.com/The-Screenprint-Factory-448945335296490/?rf=142207889150068
