How Much is that Igloo in the Window?

In February of 1979, the downstairs cellar gang decided to take a trip to Winnipeg, Alberta to see our first total solar eclipse. The recent Siberian eclipse brought back some fresh memories of that trip. We were raw beginners as far as air travel was concerned. We booked our flight months in advance and had our ticket info. I was a little nervous as I had never flown before and I am not a lover of heights. We went to the airport and discovered, to our horror, that the flight time had changed and we had 10 minutes to get our butts to the gate. Thank God this was before TSA and the rediculous crap people are subjected to in airports today. We sprinted down to the gate, ran onto the plane, they rolled out to the runway, and before I even had a chance to be nervous we were on our way to Chicago (plane change). We circled Chicago for a while then literally dove in to land. When we took off again it was like barnstorming. We climbed high and fast and rolled out to get out of the traffic pattern. Wild. Winnipeg was a nice city but Winnipeg in February was an exclamation point on what a Canadian winter could be. It was bloody COLD! Block heaters for your car are a requirement and the parking lots had electrical plugs in front of the spaces so you could plug the heaters in. We had never seen that before. We walked around town and found a nice Chinese restaurant, then, VERY EARLY next day, we took our little rental car out to find a good spot to set up for the eclipse. We found a reasonably flat, open spot next to "Bob's Road." We never did figure out if it was someone's driveway or an actual road. We set up the equipment to "cool off" and within minutes found that we were freezing. We had parkas and mittens and boots and hats, in layers, but by the time the eclipse started in had only "warmed up" to 5 below zero. As we contemplated the situation, and whether anyone would find our bodies before Spring, a piece of crap rusting hulk of an old van pulled up with a wild looking little bearded guy. He said it looked like we had a nice spot and asked if he could set up wit hus. We said yes and found out the guy's name was Walt. We came to love Walt. First of all, he was a carpenter and had hand made one of the most gorgeous (and freakin heavy) telescope mounts ever. Beautiful craftsmanship. We helped him unload and set up. But what sealed our devotion to Walt was the fact that he pulled out a generator and a mini kerosene torpedo heater and fired it up in the back of the van. We must have looked shocked and envious because he graciously offered to let us warm ourselves up in the back of the van. We nearly crawled over each other to be first into the van. The eclipse was awesome! The pictures were fantastic! Walt was a lot of fun. And if he ever reads this I'd like to truly thank him for saving our pre-frostbitten butts from disaster. Strangely enough, a few years later I was on a s Summer vacation and I decided to loop back up through Canada and see if I could find our eclipse spot. I found it! Still no clue as to where "Bob's Road" went, but, I found out we were just a few yards from being permanently frozen additions to the Winnipeg tundra. Once all the snow was gone you could see that the area we thought was a nice flat field, was actually an 8 foot deep ditch and creek that was covered over by the snow. Had we walked out to try to get a better position we would probably have sunk to the bottom of the ravine. I took lots of pictures and reported back to the cellar on my return.