It was a nice drive. Sunny - but not too warm, and not a lot of traffic. It was a bit windy - you could see the semi's struggling to stay in their lanes on occasion, and the occasional idiot doing 90mph being blown into other lanes where the road was near a coastal pass. but mostly OK.

I had a Clive Cussler tape, Deep Six, that I was going to listen to - but the tape was faulty with both tracks bleeding through. Sometimes that happens with stuff found on EBAY.

Instead I listened to tape 1 of a biograph of Lincoln, very interesting. Unlike the usual rags to riches tale of woe and failure that I remember the tape made him out to be a fairly successful man in his pre-presidential life.

I gave the Cussler tape to my Dad, but mentioned that it was bad. He just smiled, put it in his tape player, moved the balance all the way to one side and it played just fine. Apparently audio book makers sometimes take advantage of the two separate stereo channels by putting separate audio tracks (chapters) on each!

You learn something new every day.

None of the Louis L'amour tapes had arrived. Louis real name was apparently 'Jim Mayo' if the half.com listings are accurate. I guess if my last name sounded like a condiment I'd have a non de plume as well - though I'm not sure that I would use 'amour' as a name. On the other hand Louis - that is, Jim - boxed professionally. I imagine he was a pretty secure kind of guy...

In the evening we went over to Walmart and bought a copy of 'Master & Commander' on DVD to watch. Wow. I think I like it better on DVD, or perhaps it's just seeing it the second time around. Anyway, a good yarn. Some friends of mine went to see the 'Mary Rose' in San Diego. She's the ship used for many of the scenes in M&C. The story is a little unreal in that the Surprise defeats an American built frigate - very unlikely (and clearly the Mary Rose was used for shots of the Acheron as well - very unconvicingly to me). The U.S.S. Constitution, for instance, once took on two of these smaller british frigates simultaneously and defeated them both. On the other hand it makes for a good story.

Birds nest in the patio cover.

Somewhat later, in bad light, the parent(s) are back.

Brian Cooper, leader of JPL's squad of rover drivers for Spirit and Opportunity, said the initial view of the crater doesn't settle accessibility questions yet. "The slope right in front of us averages 18 to 20 degrees. Getting into the crater is no problem, but we have a lot more work to do to assess whether we could get back out. That depends on soil properties and slippage, as well as slope." The planned circuit around the rim will also require careful navigation. "If you don't go close enough to the lip, you can't look in, but if you go too far, you could fall in," he said. "We're going to have a very interesting few weeks."

I remember doing some surveying in school and being surprised that the sides of fairly steep appearing hills actually had fairly small angles, ten to twenty degrees, which is not un-navigatable, but it is something you do have to think about when wearing a pack (or a space suit.)