Today I went on my first EVA with crewmember and engineer, Alyssa Rzeszutko. It was a fine morning. I awoke at 5:30 to refill the diesel containers and the generator. A warm breeze was blowing and a sliver of moon rose above the eastern horizon, which was just beginning to flare orange and pink. The rest of the sky was still a midnight blue twinkling with stars. Rzeszutko was nearly ready to go by 7 AM, so I had to move quickly to get suited up. I slurped some coffee, crammed a breakfast bar into my mouth, and zipped up my canvas space suit. Since we're near the end of the field season, the suits are a bit worse for their wear. All of them desperately need a good laundering. They are covered in grime and the cuffs and collars are soiled with sweat. Some of them have torn knee pockets or buckles that don't quite buckle, greatly diminishing their stowing capacity. However, they are well made and tough.

Rzeszutko and I headed down the Lowell Highway, a well-maintained dirt track road that winds through the desert for approximately ten kilometers from the Hab, terminating at Muddy Creek, which has, over time, carved a jagged, twisting canyon deep into the desert floor. The EVA mission was going great at first. Rzeszutko and I found our primary objective, a so-called "fossil field" located by an earlier crew. We didn't find any fossils-to our untrained eyes, anyway-but we did find rock samples of bacterial "varnish" requested by Commander Frederick. We also found large quantities of petrified wood. Then things got complicated. Rzeszutko's ATV, or rover, wouldn't start. I had noticed from the first day that this particular ATV ran a little rich, but that only made it a bit more sluggish upon accelerating than the other ATV. We tried everything we could to clear the carburetor of gasoline, but to no avail. We were, in effect, stranded out on an open, sun-baked plain about six kilometers from the Hab.

Finally, after yanking the starter cord until my arm was numb and sweat pooled inside the rim of my helmet, running freely into my eyes (to maintain the simulation, I didn't even reach my hand under my helmet to wipe my face), I removed my helmet and gloves. After that, it was easier to yank the starter cord and adjust the choke and throttle to get the perfect mix of gas and air into the finicky carburetor. I got the ATV started and jumped on it. Rzeszutko jumped on mine, which had been idling the whole time, and we set off back toward the Hab. Now I wished I had the helmet. A hot wind had picked up in the afternoon heat, driving sand and sharp bits of dirt and rock into my face. I found it necessary to drive with one eye open, blinking away the grit with my other eye. Sometimes I laid off the throttle and closed both eyes. Perhaps that's what got us lost, me driving blind. Somehow we ended up far east of the Lowell Highway. I was navigating by sight as most of the landscape-I thought, anyway-was recognizable to me. Rzeszutko correctly suggested that we head back west and we eventually found the Lowell Highway, but not after I had lost the last shred of credibility I might have earned with our GPS training session a few days earlier.