Engineering is weird. Sometimes, I am convinced, it is akin to black
magic voodoo (BMV); and all you can do is encircle the broken piece of
machinery, chant three times, and sprinkle dust down its length. Then
it will work. Why not? It’s just as likely that you spend three hours
on it only to have it mysteriously start working by no work of your
own…or breaking again after you ingeniously came up with a way to fix
it. Both are equally as likely – it makes no difference. Hence, I am
wearing a headlamp while writing this report since tonight it is the
generator that needs the Iroquois medicine man to bless it. Weird.
Luckily, I think Elisha (our Crew Engineer) minored in BMV, so normally
she works her magic and we are good to go. Think if she had majored in
it….

In any case, 19 March has been a day of days for Crew 69. So many
problems fixed, and so many more realized. Maybe this is what yin and
yang are supposed to be about? I don’t know; that’s not my area of
expertise.

Let’s see. Accomplishments. We are now prepared for getting into sim
tomorrow bright and early! This morning’s big accomplishment was
setting up a digipeater and voice repeater on Skyline Rim, which will
allow us to track our GPS devices and communicate with each other
anywhere in the feasible region during sim. This not only makes EVAs
safer, but more convenient as well. Secondly, our broken ATV has
started to work…more BMV. After finding a simple switch that needed to
be flipped, we witnessed a seemingly impossible scenario of gas coming
out of odd places and carburetors somehow overflowing. But whatever, it
works. A few minutes later, we mysteriously find our hot water working
after three days without. Only to notice that it has also nearly shut
down the HAB with the power it draws…mysteriously. But we noticed this
in time and fixed the problem. Yay! We saved the HAB! Our problems are
over! WRONG. Voltage starts fluctuating, lights start flickering, the
earth starts shaking (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you see what
I’m getting at). Just when we start to panic, it stops, levels off,
goes back to normal. Mysteriously…. For now, we think we are good and
hopefully dinner will go off without a hitch. But you never know. It is
black magic voodoo.

Crew 69 out!