For some strange reason, I wake up at 1:45 a.m. My eyes are gooey and difficult to open because I fell asleep with my contacts in. I gaze outside my windowsill, and there’s the full moon gleaming down upon me, and I remember that today, there’s supposed to be a lunar eclipse.

So naturally the first place I go is to my computer, and I immediately Google “lunar eclipse” and find out it’s like starting in 10 minutes. Restless, and realizing that it would probably be futile to try and get back to sleep at this juncture, I head outside, intending only to get the box of bottled water I left in the trunk of my car, and maybe to get a glance at the beginning of the eclipse.

I walk past my cute neighbor’s window on my way to my car, and I see that she’s still awake watching TV, but I walk on by and tiptoe slowly down the stairs. Over the fence, there’s a couple already outside, waiting for the celestial event to commence.

I experiment idly with my camera which I knew would be incapable of capturing any sort of image from the sky. I finally figure out how to change the shutter speed on it, but this is of little consequence.

MSNBC, incidentally, popped up as the first news site on Google, with an article talking about the lunar eclipse. NASA has a detailed site that describes what to expect from the event. (As I type this, the moon is now leaving the Earth’s umbra.) I had read about the turquoise fringing caused by ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere scattering light onto the moon and was gratified to see them.

With lack of anything better to do, I hop in my car, hoping to find somewhere dark enough to get a better look at the sky.

The great thing about San Diego is that it doesn’t take very much to leave the city limits. In less than 20 minutes, I find myself on a rural highway heading to the sleepy little town of Jamul. I end up turning down some godforsaken side road, now facing the prominent San Miguel Mountain, where it is very dark indeed, but unfortunately, there aren’t any turnoffs. Eventually, I am faced with a sign reading “Pavement Ends.” But that’s never stopped me before, and sure enough, the asphalt turns into dirt. But as the road curves, I am greeted by the highbeams of an SUV. Damn. Law enforcement. (Sorry, it’s my reflex as a person of color.) Or maybe INS? However, I grow at ease as they don’t turn on any sirens and in fact turn off their lights entirely, which actually freaks me out more, and I’m wondering if they’re dealing drugs or trying to rid of some bodies. So I turn around.

I go back to the main road, but instead of heading home, I continue east on the way to Dulzura, but before I get there, I decide to head back west on Otay Lakes Rd. On my left (to the south) is bright light emanating from behind a mountain, and I’m wondering, is it dawn already? But then I remember that that’s where the state prison is, right before you get to the U.S.-Mexico border.

At this point, the moon looks like my dog had gotten a piece of it. It’s still too bright to really appreciate how red the shadowed part is (and it probably doesn’t help that I’m red-green color blind.) I start passing a few parked cars of people who are watching the eclipse. Despite the glaring lights of the state prison, it’s actually nice and dark enough to see quite a few stars, even. But unfortunately, they’ve taken up all the nice turnouts where I’d be willing to stop, and eventually I find myself unceremoniously dumped into the middle of that existential limbo known as suburbia. Defeated, I decide that it’s probably for the best that I head back home.