A few friends and I tried to go stargazing last night, away from the light pollution of Cleveland. The Perseids meteor shower was apparently visible after 10pm, so I rounded up the troops, we borrowed a car and headed east. We didn't really have any particular destination, we were just looking for some land to lie down on where we could see stars.
I guess that was really our first problem. Being spontaneous does require permission, after all.
Well, we headed east on Fairmount, all the way into Pepper Pike, a nice upper-middle class suburb. I took a random turn down a quiet street, and we struck gold. There was a cul-de-sac at the end of the street with a nice grassy area in the middle, and there were cars parked along the side of the street. I pulled in behind the cars, and we laid our blankets out on the grass.
I was driving a friend's car, an old American beast that sucks down gas at an amazing rate. It didn't really fit in among the Audi, BMW, Lexus, and other luxury cars we were parked alongside. When I write "luxury," I mean "really fucking expensive and symbolic of people who just want to be left alone." So all the signs were pointing to this being a short-lived trip. But we were determined.
We didn't see any meteors, but we had a fun time trying to find constellations. The light pollution, at least 15 miles from the city, was still keeping part of the sky illuminated. The moon wasn't visible, but we did see a few planes.
About 15 minutes after we laid down, we saw headlights. Looking more closely, I saw that it was in fact a police car. He explained that he had received a complaint that people were camping out. He had expected to find tents and a bonfire, and seemed to have as much frustration as we did that he was out here, breaking up our very peaceful party. I asked him if we were trespassing, to which he gave a very circumlocutive answer. I knew we weren't, that this was city property, and unless we were taking a poop or drinking on it, there was nothing he could do. But why give him a hard time? He was being nice, and giving us suggestions as to where else we might be able to go. Plus, we weren't seeing any meteors, so we got up and left.
When we were pulling out, we noticed that people started to emerge from across the street. About 50 college-age people and a set of parents were on the lawn (and as we found out had all been drinking their share), and started excitedly asking us what we were doing. Their interest was obviously more out of curiosity than concern, and so we told them what were doing and that we had come from Cleveland.
They were flabbergasted. They couldn't believe we had come all the way to their street just to go stargazing. Now, this was entertainment for both of us. Imagine, 50 people on their lawn at 11pm talking to 5 strangers in a car from a city 15 miles away who were looking for something the other 50 had every day of the year, in full view of two very bored police officers. Same planet (same county), different worlds.
