After seeing full totality of the 2017 solar eclipse, I vowed that I’d never miss another. I marked the calendar for April 8, 2024, and scheduled a vacation day a year in advance.

There were several cities in New England in the path of totality within four hours’ driving distance, so I didn’t make a hotel reservation. I planned on being flexible. If traffic looked manageable, I would head to totality; if it looked dicey, I’ll settle for a partial eclipse in a sunny field with two donkeys. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon.

Eclipse Day dawned with two miracles: Clear skies throughout New England, and traffic heading to Vermont seemed normal.

I packed a sandwich, two apples, a jar of peanut butter and a couple of bottles of water. I took a lawn chair, a pillow and a couple of blankets, in case traffic was bad coming back and I needed to sleep in the car. I had not one, but two pairs of eclipse glasses. I’d identified bathroom stops to include a McDonald’s in Barre, Vermont, which was advertised as in the path of totality.

I did everything right but this: I trusted GPS.

When I hit the road, GPS told me I’d be in Montpelier, Vermont, an hour before totality. I congratulated myself on my great planning. I knew traffic would be bad coming back, but figured most eclipse-chasers had gotten there early, leaving the highways clear for stragglers like me.

Because who goes to a once-a-in-a-lifetime event at the last minute? Really, who would be that dumb?

A lot of people, it turned out.

When I hit I-93 North, GPS recalculated. Now I’d be there 30 minutes before totality. Fine. Traffic was heavy, but moving well.

When I hit Manchester, New Hampshire a little thrill ran through me. Until that moment, I’d been unsure if I was actually going to see the eclipse. Suddenly, I knew that I was, and I was possessed by a joy that lasted for about 20 minutes, until the moment every driver in front of me slammed on their brakes.

The GPS now said I’d get there three minutes after totality.

What do you do when you are on the verge of great transcendence, and it is suddenly, cruelly ripped away from you by an unfeeling witch named Siri?

You keep going, of course. Because what else can you do but cling to hope that the unfeeling witch will recalculate. And recalculate she did. Sometimes I would be 20 minutes late for the eclipse. Sometimes four. Sometimes 15.

Everyone around me was in the same fix, and people started to get desperate. There was an accident, making traffic even worse as the rest of us inched around it. Several cars screamed past us on the road’s shoulder. My friend Bob Ventura had recently dubbed people who were maniacally obsessed with the eclipse “awe-holes,” and I was passed by a couple of them.

Collectively, we were in a pickle.

I don’t know what happened to the people who doggedly kept heading toward Montpelier even once it was clear they would miss the eclipse, but at one point, I remembered that McDonald’s in Barre, Vermont, and exited the highway at awe-hole speed. I got both of my sons on the phone to calculate the best route. Precisely two minutes before totality, I screeched into Barre, passing a woman sitting in her yard on the hood of a pickup, wearing eclipse glasses and holding a shotgun. There was a sign in her yard that said “Take Vermont Back,” although from what, it was not clear.

Up ahead, I found a group of people by the side of the road who did not seem to be heavily armed, so I parked on the shoulder and whipped out my lawn chair. And there, with the good people of Barre, Vermont, I learned that Barre was just barely in totality. Meaning, it didn’t get totally dark, and there wasn’t any awe, and no one applauded or gasped, and we all just got up and left quietly a couple of minutes later.

You are probably thinking that I was disappointed. That this is yet another cautionary tale. And it kind of is, in that you probably shouldn’t leave for an eclipse you’ve been looking forward to for four years a mere five hours before it’s supposed to happen.

And yes, I did have a “what the hell did I just do?” moment as what passed for totality passed.

But experiences, like eclipses, are all about how you view them. And I have chosen to view this experience this way: I’m so glad I went. It wasn’t the experience I’d planned for, but all in all, it still was a blast.

I learned something valuable about myself: I am a screecher. I screech into lots of things late, not just solar eclipses. I routinely miss the opening hymn at church because of my screechiness. I am often the last person to arrive when I meet friends for lunch. I have been the last person to board a plane more than once. It is because I always think I have time to do one or two more things. Now I know I do not. I will never have time to do one or two more things. So that was a valuable lesson, and I am going to work on my screechiness.

The second thing I learned is, as beautiful as the state is, I’m not ever moving to Vermont.

I also got a perspective of eclipses that the news media never covers, which is the frantic people who drive for long distances and just miss the eclipse. There were people in this pickle from all over the East Coast, not just New England. I heard some of their stories.

Waiting in a 20-deep line for the bathrooms at the Barre McDonald’s, I talked to a woman who had been headed to Burlington with her husband to watch the eclipse with their son and his family. They got a flat tire a couple of hours away — a nail from construction going on at their house. Amazingly, they were able to find a mechanic who patched it so they could get back on the road, but like me, they had to settle for the meh-clipse, not the transcendent one. We were all in good spirits though, because even though we didn’t get transcendence, we got a story. And good stories are the next best thing.