Bucket List Update

Gary and I seriously investigated a visit to see Northern Lights. This was a bucket list item for me.

It has been struck from the bucket list, joining other de-bucketed items such as an outdoor wedding, and for the same reason: it just isn't remotely practical.

To see the lights at their best, you have to travel very far north. The uncivilized North. Canadians don't even live there. Russians send their prisoners there. Without the wind chill it's negative X degrees.

I could get past the -40 degree weather as long as I was insulated, especially in a pod like this:

I just can't gamble thousands of dollars on the weather. I can picture being trapped in that pod with Gary, our gasses mingling as we stare at a leaden sky. 

I've always heard that the aurora is impossible to capture on film, but evidently they've invented cameras for that purpose now, and they're just waiting for the spectacular solar storm that's supposedly going to hit this January. Some film called "Mysteries of the Northern Lights" is in development right now that supposedly lets you experience the lights in an IMAX theater. A climate-controlled theater in a major city where you can get a pizza afterward then go diffuse the gases into a reasonably sized house.

Stupid inconvenient auroras. They will have to come to Mohammed, then.  

Comments

[Hattie]

Some guys went way far north in Lapland, I think it was, to film the aurora with the best camera and equipment available, and we saw on our local astronomy center screen.
A total waste of time. They can't be filmed.

[TheQueen]

Hattie - as yes, but they built new technology for this new movie, which will be out next year or 2015.

[Suebob]

I love the idea of northern lights, but snow frightens me, so I doubt I will ever take the plunge. In one of Bill Bryson's travel books, he goes to see them and spends weeks waiting for them to appear, bored out of his mind the whole time. No thank you.

[Hattie]

Queen: I believe this was the touted new techonlogy. But we shall see.