I saw the light!!

Hallelujah, I saw them!!! I saw the Aurora Borealis!
Work had called wanting me to work an extra 4 hours, even through I really wanted to go to bed early, I said yes because I want to have some extra $$ for when I go to Nome. They wanted me to stay another 8, but I'd been up since 0630 and had a very short nap from about 3 to 4:30 there was no way I'd last a full shift.
After I got off work, I decided to go to the grocery store that I knew was open 24/7. On my way home I decided to try a different street to get home. It turned out to be a residential area, and because my sense of direction is soooooo screwed up here, I ended getting myself lost. While I was in the process of trying to find my way back to the main road, I noticed something in the sky. At first I passed it off as low lying clouds that were reflecting street lamps, then it dawned on me:
#1 when Martina & I left work we looked at the sky and saw the stars
#2 the color was wrong for the street lamps that they use here in Fairbanks (the orangy colored ones, this was greenish white)
#3 I don't think that Fairbanks is big enough to have that large of an effect on even low lying clouds
And that was when it dawned on me,
It's the Northern Lights!
Somehow I managed to find my way back out (wasn't too bad, lots of people had their Christmas lights up, so I was enjoying those) got home, grabbed my big camera and the instruction book of it, the tripod that I had purchased two weeks ago and headed out to a fairly dark parking lot that I saw when I was coming home.
I get out to the parking lot, get the instruction book out, find the page that tells you how to do prolonged exposure, did the settings it told me and tried to take a picture....nothing happened. Went through the whole thing a second time, and then nothing...I don't know how many times I tried the settings and nothing happened. At some point, it did take a picture, but that was when I had the light on in the car. It was at this point that I rolled the window down and used the window to steady the camera, obviously it wasn't steady enough and I was getting to the point of chucking the camera into the Chena River (it's open at this point because to the power plant that is about 1/2 mile up stream). I decided to grab my baby Cannon and see what it could do. I could actually see the lights on the screen but not on the actual photos, but I decided to wait and see if they would show up on the computer....no such luck.
After using the little Cannon Powershot that I've got, I decided to try the Rebel again. Not too hard to cool down when you are standing in the dark when it's about -10. When I picked up the camera, it dawned on me that MAYBE I need to turn off the auto focus and viola, it was working. I was happy now, but the lights had dimmed quite a bit so I waited a couple minutes and they brightened up. I get out of the car, and realize, I have no clue how to get my camera attached to the tripod! So, now I'm fighting the tripod, on the verge of cussing, again. Then things slip into place and I finally get 3 pictures on the tripod before the lights get too dim for the settings that I some how managed to get.
I'm very happy with the pictures I got. Now I want to see the other colors that can show....like purple & red!
Lessons learned:
1.Read the instruction book!!!!
2.Make sure there is plenty of gas in the car
3.Always were long underwear!!