The Month Of The Solar Eclipse: April 2024 Recap

This might have been the fastest month of my retired life. I had a great time, but fast travel is definitely not for me because while I had a lovely time, I can’t remember the last time I was this tired. It was probably during my career 4 years ago and I don’t like it! So let’s see what I did this month that was worth messing up my sleep schedule and my relaxed lifestyle 🙂 .

I Saw My First Total Solar Eclipse!

Basically, this:

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I chose to come back to the US specifically to see this eclipse and chose to go to Texas because of the lower chance of cloud cover and because the line of totality went through a lot of cities and towns, so we had options of where to stay. I’m ecstatic that this wild plan worked out and I got to see one of the coolest things my eyes have ever seen.

During our adventure, I found the Eclipse page of Time and Date very helpful (see below). Also I’ll talk about all the fun eclipse facts I learned in my usual Astronomy section below.

I Bounced Around The West Coast

After returning to the US after almost 3 months in Costa Rica, I pinballed all over the west coast and stayed in 5 cities in 3 different states (California, Arizona, Texas). Doing all of that in one month was obviously way faster than my usual slow travel approach, but I planned part of my trip around seeing that eclipse, going on a road trip to California National Parks with my Mom, while showing her Sacramento after I raved about it while living there last year, and visiting a friend I’ve had for almost 20 years before attending a family get together.

As a result, I’m way behind in posting my adventures on social media, such as visiting the giant redwoods at Lake Tahoe, Muir Woods, the Golden Gate Bridge and Yosemite National Park, but here’s one of my adventures:

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I Hung Out With People

This month involved some of my usual virtual meetups, such as that weekly Spanish call with my Mom and Weekly Movie Nights where we watched the below. If you’re curious about my ratings of movies, I have a Letterboxd account here.

1. Ides of March
2. All Of Us Strangers
3. Taylor Tomlinson: Have It All
4. Taylor Tomlinson: Look At You

RE-WATCHES

1. Godzilla vs Kong
2. The Meg
3. Pirates of the Caribbean

In addition to that, I got to visit my stepbrother in Austin, saw a friend I made in college in Sacramento, and visited an old friend in Phoenix. That’s in addition to the blog related meetups I’ll go over below. It’s been a wild time and I need at least 3 introverted months to recover 🙂 .

I Read 11 Books

How embarrassing 😉 . I jest, but this number is obviously much lower than my usual 25+ books a month that I’ve been reading lately. I suspected that my faster travel schedule wouldn’t allow a lot of downtime for reading and I was right. Oh well 🙂 . The books I want to read will be there when we start slow traveling again.

Here were my favorite reads this month:

1. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
2. Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
3. Dark Space by Lisa Henry

To see the other books I read this month and my ratings of them, I have a Goodreads account here.

I Wrote 4 Posts

In case you missed it, this month I published the below posts:

1. My Partner Reached FI!!! A Q&A
2. Lessons Learned After 3 Years Of Airbnb Nomad Life
3. Review: Glowworm Waitomo & Ruakuri Cave Tour From Auckland, New Zealand
4. The Month Of San José: March 2024 Recap
5. Review: Air New Zealand

I also have been dealing with some blog issues that I’m having trouble replicating. My Mom uses an iPhone and told me that when she reads this site on Chrome, it refreshes constantly and makes the page jump. I’ve been troubleshooting that but in the meantime, I asked if she could use Safari because it seems like it’s an issue of Chrome and the iPhone not playing nice together. Anyway, please let me know if you experience this issue or any other while reading my blog. I want to make it easy for y’all to read what I’ve written if you’re so inclined 🙂 .

On a happier note, something I said to Business Insider was posted on MSN Spain’s website and it was really cool to be able to understand my words being said in another language. Spanish immersion for the win!

• MSN/Business Insider España: 4 Formas de Ahorrar lo Suficiente Para Jubilarte en 10 Años

And as for random and strange companies that I declined working with this month, here are the highlights:

• A matchmaking service for financial advisors (that matches them with clients – not each other 🙂 )
• A crypto wallet company (nope)
• A company targeting Stay-at-Home Moms Going Through Divorce, which I found humorous since I am literally none of those things (childfree and marriage-free)

I was also asked by a fellow blogger if I wanted to host a writing retreat, which sounds like a fun thing to attend, but lots of work to set up. And I’m allergic to work these days so I declined 🙂 . I also was able to meet up with a blogger in Sacramento, which was some fun serendipity since we were both visiting the city.

In addition to all that, I met up with readers in Austin, TX and in Sacramento, CA! It was lovely to meet y’all. If you want to meet me for coffee, feel free to drop a comment below or email me at purple [at] apurplelife.com. I’m going to be in the below places this year and next year:

• Montréal, Canada
• Iceland (All of it)
• Zurich, Switzerland
• Zermatt, Switzerland
• Bologna, Italy
• Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Tokyo, Japan
• Kyoto, Japan
• Osaka, Japan
• Sapporo, Japan
• Auckland, New Zealand

Seeing that all listed out seems like I’m entering my “international” era 🙂 .

Physical

Sleep

From one POV, my sleep this month was great because I was moving at least every week and was able to fall asleep quickly and deeply because I was so tired. However, the week I spent with screaming children made it so that I never slept more than 2 hours at a time, which is a huge change from my nightly 8-9 uninterrupted hours coupled with an afternoon nap and waking without an alarm. So in summary, I’m proud of myself but my sleep could and will be better now that I’m back to my childfree lifestyle. I’ve also been able to get back to my beloved nap schedule, which has been lovely.

Food

I knew in advance that I wouldn’t be able to stick to my usual food preferences this month because:

1. I was traveling super fast (which is challenging to do with dietary goals and restrictions)
2. I was visiting a friend with lots of kids who kindly asked for my dietary preferences, but since they’re preferences and not allergies, I said I’d eat everything (because I technically can eat everything) and so I ate what they made for their family and me. I’m not over here trying to make people’s lives more difficult 🙂
3. Similarly, during my family reunion I didn’t want to be difficult so I ate what was offered
4. I would be in cities that I love for their food

So because of all of the above, I only had 9 keto days this month for a grand total of being keto 30% in April. However, I’m happy with that because I was able to sneak in more keto days than I expected and I know that it’ll be basically keto all the way now that I’m back to slow travel.

Exercise

The first part of the month, my exercise was pretty great despite how busy I was. I was running regularly and still keeping up my daily yoga routine. Then we went to Yosemite and had a 12 hour travel day and I accidentally missed my yoga streak for the first time after almost 2 months of doing it daily. Oops 🙂 .

However, I found that my running was turbocharged so it’s not all bad:

However, the bad sleep I mentioned as a result of lots of babies coupled with period cramps caused me to not run for a lot of the second half of this month. Sadness. I’m looking forward to running 3-5x a week once I’m back to my normal lifestyle in May.

Mental

Learning

So it’s time for my favorite segment: Fun Facts Nobody Asked For! Here’s what I learned and explored this month:

Lake Tahoe

• Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America and an alpine lake is a high-altitude lake in a mountainous area. Lake Tahoe sits at 6,224 ft! My ears were popping while getting up there.
• Lake Tahoe has a max depth of 1,645 feet, which makes it the 2nd deepest lake in the US after Crater Lake in Oregon (which is 1,943 ft). I find this fact more fascinating because the water at Lake Tahoe is so clear it feels like you can look down all those feet.
• There are 39 trillion gallons of water in Lake Tahoe. If the amount of water in Lake Tahoe was poured onto an area the size of California, the water would be 14 inches deep!
• Lake Tahoe is one of the purest bodies of water in the world with apparently 99.994% pure water. For comparison, commercially distilled water is 99.998% pure.

Yosemite National Park

• Yosemite was formed by glaciers! A million years ago, glaciers reached a thickness of 4,000 feet and then began to move down the river valleys. The movement of these giant pieces of ice created the Yosemite Valley. The interaction of the glaciers and the underlying granite rocks made the unique land formations of this park.
• Yosemite is home to one of the tallest waterfalls in North America! It’s Yosemite Falls that is a wild 2,425 feet tall. And the best time of the year to see them is right around when I visited (April). It’s the spring when the snowmelt is at its peak because waterfalls usually run dry by August and are refreshed in fall by an increase in rainfall.
• Yosemite has two weird natural phenomena. One is that at sunset, the rock formations glow so much that it looks like they’re on fire. This phenomenon is known as “firefall” and thousands of people flock to Yosemite to see this wild sight even though it only lasts for a few minutes before the sun moves during the sunset. The other is “moonbows” which are rainbows that are created by moonlight. In late spring and early summer, “moonbows” or lunar rainbows appear in the waterfall’s mist. A “moonbow” is an optical phenomenon that is created when the light from the moon refracts through water particles in the atmosphere. It is extremely rare to see a moonbow because the conditions to create it need to be extremely exact, and the sky must be clear.

Muir Woods

Basically, this:

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And here are some other fun facts:

• A reader mentioned this fun fact to me and it was so wild I had to look into it. Apparently, Redwoods don’t have taproots, which are standard roots that grow downward. Instead their roots grow only 10-13 feet down and then spread horizontally 60-80 feet and intertwine with the roots of other redwoods in a grove for stability. That’s so cute! Like otters holding hands while they sleep so they don’t drift away from each other.
• Redwoods are closely related to the giant Sequoia that grow at higher elevations in California. Both are members of the cypress family and while the giant sequoia is not as tall, it lives longer (over 3,000 years) and is much wider than redwoods.
• My Partner mentioned that redwoods’ wild heights are maxing out the possible ways a living tree can distribute water so I was curious how they did that. Well it turns out that redwoods deliver water from their roots to their top branches through a feat of physics that involves water evaporating from the tiny pores in their leaves that creates enough suction through the tree’s water pipelines to lift it to the top of the tree. However, redwoods also absorb water from fog and in the dry summer months, fog is nearly 40% of their water uptake. This is also why these behemoths only grow in specific climates that have heavy fog.
• Old-growth redwood forests like these historically covered 2 million acres of California. However, after humanity’s intervention, only 4% of original old-growth forest remains today and a lot of it is in National and State Parks.

Astronomy

So this Solar Eclipse was been dubbed “The Great American Eclipse” because while solar eclipses happen fairly regularly around the world, they are rarely visible from the US and in this case, it was estimated that over 30 million (or 10% of the US population) lives on the path of totality and would be able to see the total solar eclipse, which is wildly different from even a 99% partial eclipse viewing. Another total solar eclipse won’t happen in any part of the contiguous US until 2044.

Here is a really cool video that shows the eclipse and the time it would be over certain locations. I used that as well as the amazing information from Time and Date to determine where and when we should be able to watch the totality.

The other reason this was a big deal is because similar to the Moon, the Sun has cycles. And a solar cycle lasts 11 years. During that time, the Sun’s activity (including the number and size of sunspots, level of solar radiation, solar flares etc) varies.

The total solar eclipse of 2024 fell during the maximum activity period of the Sun, so the Sun’s corona (the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere) during the totality was expected to be huge. Also the planets Venus and Jupiter were going to be in the sky along with the eclipsed Sun, which I spotted and can confirm was FUCKING wild!!!

Birds

One thing I love about traveling is the variety of birds I can see across continents, countries and even states, so here are the birds I saw across Texas, California and Arizona this month:

Mountain Chickadee, White Headed Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Steller’s Jay, Common Raven, House Finch, California Scrub Jay, Yellow-Billed Magpie, Brewer’s Blackbird, Carolina Wren, Song Sparrow, White Winged Dove, House Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Chimney Swift, Northern Mockingbird

Creativity

This month did NOT go well creativity-wise. Apparently if I don’t have time to think and breathe, I find it difficult to create. For example, it was a serious challenge to get out my last post about Air New Zealand while my friends’ 4 kids were following me around the house trying to kill themselves accidentally…as all children seem to try to do. This is also why I’m so behind on posting about my road trip adventures. However, I know my life will be less hectic going forward and am looking forward to catching up on…everything 🙂 . And enjoying the process.

Emotional

My emotions this month were also a challenge. Luckily I didn’t have a depressive episode even though I’m due for one based on my usual timeline, but I wasn’t feeling as great as usual. I was constantly tired and at first trying to be present for amazing occurrences and then staying upbeat and patient for children. So then I was emotionally tired and felt drained of my personal reserves and as a result I felt a little more down than usual. That was an unexpected side effect to a packed schedule 🙂 .

Money

Money continues to feel like pieces of paper in Monopoly and I continue to find ways to save it:

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While I was distracted with all of the above adventures, this is what the market was doing:

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Conclusion

And that’s what I got up to in April! After that lovely but tiring whirlwind, I’m really excited to slow down again and just focus on exercise, eating well and recharging my introvert batteries in Upstate New York before heading to Montréal, Canada for the summer. Until next time!

If you’re interested in the other weekly and monthly retirement updates I’ve written, they’re all here:

Weekly (2020)

1. Early Retirement Week 1: The Freak Out
2. Early Retirement Week 2: The Vacation
3. Early Retirement Week 3: The Whiplash
4. Early Retirement Week 4: The Heartbeat
5. Early Retirement Week 5: The Election
6. Early Retirement Week 6: The Trophy
7. Early Retirement Week 7: The Train
8. Early Retirement Week 8: The Challenge
9. Early Retirement Week 9: The Question
10. Early Retirement Week 10: The Game
11. Early Retirement Week 11: The Recharge
12. Early Retirement Week 12: The Holiday

Monthly (2021)

1. The Month Of Rest: Early Retirement Month 4 (January 2021)
2. The Month Of Birds: Early Retirement Month 5 (February 2021)
3. The Month of Change: Early Retirement Month 6 (March 2021)
4. The Month of Atlanta: Early Retirement Month 7 (April 2021)
5. The Month of Portland, Maine: Early Retirement Month 8 (May 2021)
6. The Month Of New Hampshire: Early Retirement Month 9 (June 2021)
7. The Month Of The Northeast: Early Retirement Month 10 (July 2021)
8. The Month Of New York State: Early Retirement Month 11 (August 2021)
9. The Month Of City Hopping: Early Retirement Month 12 (September 2021)
10. The Month Of The Southwest USA: October 2021 Recap
11. The Month Of Santa Fe: November 2021 Recap
12. The Month Of Family: December 2021 Recap

Monthly (2022)

1. The Month Of Freezing My Balls Off: January 2022 Recap
2. The Month Of Thailand: February 2022 Recap
3. The Month Of Spring(?): March 2022 Recap
4. The Month Of México: April 2022 Recap
5. The Month of Mérida: May 2022 Recap
6. The Month of Seattle: June 2022 Recap
7. The Month of Washington State: July 2022 Recap
8. The Month Of New Hampshire: August 2022 Recap
9. The Month Of Maine: September 2022 Recap
10. The Month Of Acadia: October 2022 Recap
11. The Month Of Argentina: November 2022 Recap
12. The Month Of Holiday Cheer: December 2022 Recap

Monthly (2023)

1. The Month Of Snow: January 2023
2. The Month Of New Hampshire: February 2023
3. The Month Of Sea: March 2023
4. The Month Of California: April 2023
5. The Month Of Seattle: May 2023
6. The Month Of Chicago: June 2023
7. The Month Of Montréal: July 2023
8. The Month Of Troy, NY: August 2023
9. The Month Of Australia: September 2023
10. The Month Of New Zealand: October 2023
11. The Month Of Puerto Vallarta: November 2023
12. The Month Of Warmth: December 2023

Monthly (2024)

1. The Month Of Family: January 2024 Recap
2. The Month Of Costa Rica: February 2024 Recap
3. The Month Of San José: March 2024 Recap

What’s a fun fact you learned this month?