Those of us who are familiar with the inner workings of the International Space Station will know that the most complicated piece of machinery up there is the toilet. And likewise the toilet in the hab is a very complicated collection of machinery, pipes and waterlines. But as you flush the toilet (now that it is working) you have no inkling that this is so. You press the flush handle just like you do at home and it flushes. Nothing to it. Now the workings of the shower are another matter. That is just simply hot water coming down to and cold water too. Should be just as simple as the toilet. Think again.

Yesterday I tried to take a shower. I am on my third crew shift so I should be able to do that without help? Wrong! To take a shower here you need at least one engineer and one scientist to assist you. The shower you see has four (4) handles. They all have to be turned the right way and just so. And with 4 handles you have 16 possibilities. And these 16 ways to have the knobs turned baffle me. So in came the engineer and the scientist to help me figure it out. Good thing for my self respect is that they immediately discovered that the directions next to all these handles were very confusing. And in most cases downright wrong. No wonder nothing happened when I had turned the knobs. So Paul, the engineer, and Anthony, the scientist, got to work and scrubbed the directions from the wall. Tried the knobs and figured out the true way of the Hab-shower. There upon I received instructions. One knob needed to be up, one needed to be down, one needed to be aligned and one needed to be to the right.

Simple. The engineer even added a hook up for the showerhead on the wall for added comfort. While congratulating each other engineer and scientist left. I undressed and started the water and got wet! While this is meant to happen while you are in the shower itself. It is less desirable while you are still outside. And thinking of the smug departure of engineer and scientist I subsided laughing. Which was overheard by the engineer who came to find out what was so funny. He adjusted his handiwork and then finally I could wash my hair. Taking a shower on Mars is certainly an adventure.

Talking of adventures, this morning I went into town with old blue to get an iron from the Foutzes to repair the space suits. Now I have driven Don Foutz's pick up truck recently, but old blue has not just a name but a personality to match it. Add to this the rains of last night and you can see that driving into town sounds a lot more mundane than it is. After sitting in Old blue 15 minutes with the engine running I back her up and drove off. Now driving in reverse takes a bit of doing as the stick shift does not react to your prodding promptly, to say the very least. It works like this: you change the position from Drive to Reverse and then sit in the sun and get a sunburn before the gear is truly in reverse. Well I got a nice tan, and started out towards Lowell Station.

It is a good thing that I am a very experienced driver. Driven in countries all over the world, in places where the word road does not really apply. And driven cars that have been shoddily repaired from fatal accidents. So I am not easily phased. Still. Sliding down the road is not my idea of a controlled vehicle approach. For because of the rains of last night the road was more of a wash than a road. All in all I did the Camel Trophy Slide in and out of town. And to be truthful it does get better after a few hundred meters. No, not the road, but you get used to the sliding from side to side. And since I had driven over this road now numerous times in the last 4 weeks I knew where the tricky parts are. And gently, ever so gently I eased around corners and over hills and bumps and through troughs. And reached the road into town. Little later I slid back to the Hab one iron and one inverter happier.

Now what did I need an iron for? Did I suffer from a sudden attack of civilisation? On Mars? Hardly. I needed to iron pieces of repair material onto the suits. For three of them were in a very bad way. They were 'venting' air in embarrassing places. On Crew 33 I had tried to repair mine with the material and sewing kit at hand. Which turned out to be very hard going. Wiser by this experience I brought from home several short cuts for doing repairs on cloth. Both of them need ironing on and so the loan of one. Back in the hab I trundled over to Antarctica and brought a piece of lumber into the had. I placed this on the hab table and fashioned myself an iron board on the table from a piece of lumber and a thick blanket. That could also have been a towel folded several times. Cutting pieces of cotton with glue on the back side I ironed these on the insides of the suits to cover up the rips. Then I turned the suits back out and ironed pieces of press on patch on the backside of the repair material for the suits. Removed the paper from its back and ironed the now glue-able piece of cloth onto the rip on the outside of the suit. It made for very neat and rapid repairs. After the patch was glued on, I stitched the outline of the patch onto the suit for good measure. Old repair work had to be removed to do it right and all in all this household chore took the rest of the day. I am proud to say that all the suits are in great shape again and fit to last the rest of the season. BTW all the while my sewing was visible on the webcam as Mission Support pointed out to me when they reported in tonight.

While I was doing my work inside the rest of the crew cleaned up the hab, brushed the floor downstairs, collected the surplus material and hooked up the new waterline into the hab, so that the new water pump will be operated from inside the hab. The powerline to the greenhab took about all the crew we got. But now that I am typing this report, the switch to the water pump is being installed on the kitchen wall. And the last bit of critical refit is getting out of our way. Paul and I will be leaving the station tomorrow. With all the refit still needing last twisting and tuning the departure of the last of the refit team keeps being postponed. We are confident that we can do the last really necessary refit installations tonight. So tomorrow we descend to Lowell Station. After living a month on Mars it will no doubt be really strange to leave for Paul and even for me who went to Earth for 9 days in between it is still unimaginable and sad to say goodbye to the Hab. For life on Mars may be very, very tough and basic, nevertheless it is a good, good life.