The second day of the mission and the crew is really pulling together
as a cohesive unit. Today we exhausted the variety of choices
available in the 7-day freeze-dried food packs as everyone has now
tried both the Scrambled Eggs & Bacon and the Granola with Blueberries
with the latter being the general favourite. "The Don" arrived shortly
after breakfast to complete our handover training. Upon his departure
the Engineers continued to familiarize themselves with the systems
while the Scientists prepared their equipment.

Several small tasks were completed to bring some systems back to normal
function including (1) securing the skirt around the Hab to prevent the
recurring problem of the board blowing over, (2) restarting the
aerators in the GreenHab tanks to assist the aquatic plants, and (3)
draining the trench beside the GreenHab to promote drainage and detect
further seepage. These are also reported in the Engineering report.
Kerry (geologist) has assembled his sampling equipment and is ready to
field test it on tomorrow's EVA. Cheryl is still awaiting the arrival
(potentially Wednesday) of her Daphnia so that she can begin her
project. Arthur has selected the items he will use in his logistics
module and has completed testing the hardware so he is ready to begin
Tuesday. Mic has trained all crew members on the safe and proper use
of the ATVs.

After a filling lunch of Rice and Chicken, the crew spent the afternoon
on a field trip to gain some biology and geology field experience and
learn how to use GPS. The site of this EVA was a few miles west down
Highway 24 at the same location used by ExBeta and ExGamma. This site
provides a fascinating example of an unconformity and easily
interpreted paleoenvironments. The cross-training activities were
successful with hands-on learning activities led by Cheryl, Kerry and
myself.

The return to the Hab was followed shortly by a dinner of Mac & Cheese,
and we have learned our lesson that even though there are enough dinner
packages marked "serves 2" to have one for each person we can't ingest
that much food even when we make it into a competition and so we cut
back to making 6 packages instead of 8. That was just the right amount
with our fresh salad and 4 corn packages as side dishes.

Tonight's planned activities include report writing and a lively game
of charades. Tomorrow we plan on beginning our official simulation.
This includes self-imposed strict rules about communication with
"Earth" and leaving the Hab. We hope to complete two EVAs tomorrow,
one to test Kerry's field equipment and a second one using the ATVs for
a longer-range exploratory EVA.