I know of several reasons why the long line can't be a covering space for the circle, but I'm more curious in what exactly goes wrong with the following covering map.
Let $L$ be the long line and define $p: L \rightarrow \mathbb S^1$ by wrapping each segment of the line around the unit circle once, essentially in the same manner as with $\mathbb R$. Clearly we have that for $x \in \mathbb S^1$ the cardinality of the fiber $p^{-1}(0)$ is uncountable, which isn't possible since the fundamental group of the circle is countable. But it's not clear to me why $p$ is not a covering map. It's certainly surjective and seems to be continuous and a local homeomorphism. Yet one of these conditions must fail. Is the map not as well-defined as I originally thought.
I assume I'm misunderstanding the long line in a fundamental way.