Journalist's Report
February 25, 2008
Guy de Carufel

The crew reluctantly woke up this morning, fearing the dreaded
freeze-dried eggs with bacon. An attempt was made (my genius idea) to
turn this lead to gold. That is, frying the eggs in a pan, adding some
onions and some spices, and serving with forks instead of spoons as a
final touch of trickery. Result, they forget how horrible it was
suppose to be!
Muahaha!

Wisky (Randall), Googly (Aravind) and Kim (me) went on a pleasant EVA
ATV ride to find and map new trails. Low and Behold! a long trail was
found connecting Lowell Hwy from near Candor Chasma all the way to "The
Martian" - way south, and as a bonus it even had other trails branching
out of it for further exploration. The new road was arbitrarily
baptised "Epsilon Road". Using GPS, the newfound road was mapped.

While we were having a blast spinning our wheels in uncharted
territory, we missed out on the cleaning of the hab. Everything is now
squeaky clean. However, To our dismay the cleaning schedule for the
next few days leaves some for everyone.

For lunch we made bread. Fam (Cass) and Biobabe (Heather) managed to
maintain its structural integrity as opposed to the (although tasty)
bread moosh from yesterday.

Blondie (Philip), Biobabe and Fam also went for an ATV spin. They went
to Candor Chasma to take some soil and rock samples for a biology
experiment. More precisely, they say brain-like rocks which are in
fact huge gypsum nodules. Fam wrestled with tumbleweed, Phil got his
glove on fire and they analyzed two different types of Martian
excrements. Those Martian Cows produce amazing amounts of
"fertilizer".

On the engineering side, Lox (Chris) and Googly discovered that the
magic solution of the day is: open it, ponder its problem, reconnect it
and ponder some more why the problem is gone. This solution was
stringently applied to a leaky faucet that is now leak free, the water
heater fuse is now working properly, and a very mysterious water pump
which shows sings of life by spitting bubbles from a good shake. Lox
also did a makeover for his wife (Wendy the generator) by replacing the
previous diesel-supply pipe which appeared to be quite the eye soar for
the engineering support team. Wendy is all pretty now.

The plan for the evening, Firefly episode 4 maybe?... we shall see.
Lets pray for the bread gods to deliver us some cube shape wheat
goodness in the near future.