Journalist's Report

February 9, 2008

Mic Faragalli



Wake-up at 6:45 AM didn’t bode well for the entire crew; however, we were
rewarded with a hot bowl of oatmeal. No, not freeze dried oatmeal, but
instant oatmeal. Which is probably the same, but it wasn’t scrambled
eggs with bacon or granola and blueberry! Some crew members even
managed to add Nutella to the dish, but we’ll leave it to our fans to
guess who.

So after a quick breakfast, we suited up for our first Hollywood EVA
for the day. The Japanese film crew rented a helicopter to take some
footage of us on EVA for a documentary. So after about 20 minutes of
waving to the camera, the crew was able, albeit a bit sore in arm
waving muscles, to start on the real EVA activities; except, of course,
for Arthur and Perry, who got positive feedback from the film crew that
just couldn’t get enough of their pretty faces. Mic, Arthur, Kerry and
John then headed off to Phobos peak to complete some field data
management training (FDM). On the way down Mic scraped his legs, so the
medics kissed his booboo to make him feel better.

Lunch consisted of beef stew, while our resident film crew showered us
with gifts in the form of pens and mouse pads (and waiver forms)! They
will go well with the new ComDev scarves Perry supplied us with last
night. In the early afternoon Perry and Cheryl piqued the interest of
our friends from the Land of the Rising Sun, so they did some final ATV
EVA shots. But that wasn’t all! Kerry did some mock “Hab Com” for some
inside footage to see what goes on at home during the EVAs. But it
wasn’t all lights, camera, action; Kerry and Arthur went off for some
geological field tests and the engineers got Wendy, our diesel
generator, running, and changed the oil!

So it’s now 6:44 PM, and everyone is hungry and looking forward to a
sleep-in tomorrow morning after our first week on Mars. We managed to
fix a “boat anchor” ATV newly nicknamed 'the green monster', get not only
our power working reliably; but also back-up power, and become Japanese
movies stars! Yep, not bad for our first week. Now, if only we had hot
water…