Sol 12 – Bad weather, good times
Author: Nicolas Wattelle
The weather is definitely not kind to us, it pushes us to take some forced rest. Outside, the wind strongly blows, the rain and hail fall, and snow is to come during the night…
On one hand, technically speaking, it means taking the LOAC (aerosol meter) back in the Hab, because it might not survive under the snow, do maintenance on our HF antenna which is put to trouble by the wind, and hope the batteries are empty until tomorrow morning…
On the other hand, today’s experiments needed an outside intervention (geology, Augmented Reality, HF propagation…), more than just doing maintenance around the Hab, so we were stuck on these points.
So, we decided yesterday’s evening to “advance” our rest day, because of this, also because we did not want to lose efficiency in our upcoming work, we try thus to avoid tiredness: after the maintenance EVA, our afternoon would be declared empty, a time to breath, a time to relax.
We are finishing our second week on Mars, and even if some of the last days were not that intense, we lately feel more frequently tired. Maybe the weight of the simulation, maybe the repetitiveness of actions during the days, maybe the accumulation of little frustrations that are taken individually means almost nothing but when added it gets revealed to day light… Maybe a mix of all of that.
Even if we do not know exactly why, one of our strengths is to know how to overcome it: relax! And guess what, we are particularly good at it!
Our afternoon was thus focused on making us having a great time, cooking, chatting, living good! Some of us played games, others drew and painted, listened to music.
This looked like last Sunday, even if outside the bad weather strikes, inside the Hab it is bright and sunny!