"Trip chart"

[Jim Eshelman]

Over the years, dating back to the '70s, I've routinely set up a chart for the start of a trip as a "birth chart" for the trip. It always seemed a "radical" (persistent) chart for the entirety of the trip. For air travel, it's the time the plane takes off. For a road trip, it's not necessarily the time you pull out of the drive way (in case there are side trips, 7-11 stops, or whatever) but the moment (it's intuitively obvious) that you say to yourself, "We're on our way."

Our current trip is a remarkable example of how these charts work. We left LA by train that pulled out exactly on schedule October 6 at 6 PM. (Use the standard coordinates for "Los Angeles" because they are for the Terminal Annex post office one block from Union Station.)

For an interesting astro-journey, set this up for Los Angeles then relocate it to Milwaukee.

As a trip chart itself, it doesn't inspire confidence. Saturn is exactly at MC. Moon opposes Neptune (foreground). Sun is also foreground, but not strongly connected to anything. We might have picked a different time if we'd had a realistic choice, but we didn't; so it was what it was, One would expect from this not necessarily big problems, but smaller "if it can go wrong, it will!" problems. We knew there would be inconveniences and minor discomforts from two days on train, sleeping in reclined seats; but we're used to that sort of thing and the adventure was worth it.

Relocate the chart to Milwaukee, though, and Jupiter is half a degree from setting! Also, Uranus is partile square MC. It's quite an opposite sort of chart.

So far, the trip has included a series of frustrating, Saturn-themed "things going wrong" that have, in each case, turned out to be a precise setup for something really nice - in the causal sense of the word, a small "miracle."

[Jim Eshelman]

The latest of these: We usually pick cheap motels - seeing no reason to spend our money on a place to sleep and shower when we won't be there much - and that's what we did this time also. It was a Saturn choice in several ways (austere, small, inexpensive) but clean, reliable, and workable. We'd already discovered they had some unusual, nice amenities, though, like free car / shuttle service anywhere within a few miles until 2 AM - a great boon and Jupiterian sense of luxury (besides saving us three or four days of Uber costs).

But the room had one serious flaw: A plumbing problem that, were I to describe it in detail, would be a string of Saturn keywords. Result: The only room they had to give us as a replacement was a king suite. Note focus on the word king and that the room is more than twice the size, better equipped, feeling spacious and luxurious compared to the other. A real "turning lead to gold," to shift my metaphor a little.

An earlier example: Boarding in LA (as Moon-Neptune had just crossed the horizon and Saturn was culminating) was an infuriating stream of frustrations, blocks, and delays. We got there early to find a long line already and, just as we got to the front, they closed the window and rerouted the line - so that we were again at the end of a still long line. Then, just as I got two people from the front of that, they moved it again! For the third time, we were at the end of the line. All I wanted to do was check our largest bags (which were physically panful to keep dragging around, up and down ramps, up and down stairs) and every single time I tried to do something to make that happen I was blocked. We ended up having to carry everything on board with us, check nothing, a great, cumbersome burden.

But then, after other delays (which didn't bother us, because we were laid back on the train in a spectacular lounge car mostly open glass, enjoying scenery across nine states), several things delayed us (more Saturn), such as huge thunderstorms overnight across Kansas (we slept right through them) so that the train was almost 2 hours behind schedule when we hit Chicago. On the original schedule, we only had 2 hours 20 minutes to make our transfer to the second train - now we had 25 minutes! We grabbed everything, raced across the back halls of Chicago's Union Station, and were at the front of the line for the second train with 15 spare minutes. We could not have done this if we had checked our bags in LA! They announced that bag pick-up would begin 15-20 minutes after we arrived, which would have meant that we completely missed our train to Milwaukee.

We were saved by all that "no, no, no" in trying to check bags early in LA. (The Chicago chart is practically indistinguishable from the Milwaukee chart).

There have been smaller things, too. Structurally, the trip is described by the chart as it set up; then, once we were somewhere near our destination, the new angles started delivering the experience at our destination.

There were probably other shifts along the way. If we'd been awake across Kansas, the Mars, Uranus, and Pluto lines of the trip chart surely would have described the thunderstorms that slowed the train. (And remember it wasn't just our trip. All crew and passengers started the trip at the same time and place.) A Mercury line in NE New Mexico matches where the train had to slow for an hour or two because the state of New Mexico hadn't told them it had updated its signal-broadcasting software, and the train staff had to work with them to get the train's software upgraded before continuing at full speed.

Little stuff, but (I think) some great examples of how a chart for the moment of starting a trip lives as a radical chart.

[Danica]

Very interesting! I have not been looking at the trip charts before, will have to correct that

[Lance]

I love the luggage story. Hope everything keeps going mostly your way. lol

[Jim Eshelman]

So far, so good, (In the hour Moon conjoined my Saturn, I realized I forgot to transfer money on the right schedule and got slammed with an overdraft fee - that's the worst downside, and it was my own fault.) And by not being in Los Angeles today, I miss the one and only exact transit of Saturn to SSR Ascendant.

The real test of the charts will be whether, after returning home, things are primarily jovian or primarily saturnine.

[Jim Eshelman]

At 9:52 am we pulled out of the 7-11 near our home to hit the road to Flagstaff. This week is vacation part 2, heading for the Grand Canyon and then Arizona'best wine country.

Jupiter broke the horizon shortly before and my Venus degree (but not my Venus) was rising as we hit the road.