A uniformed policeman went by on a bicycle as I exited the Pacific Café after lunch. I'm still not quite used to such a sight, so I watched him turn the corner. What struck me the most was that his baskets were rusty. In fact, most of the bikes here sport rust to a greater or lesser extent. Even at the tender age of two months my bike, the mighty blue TRMM 079, has rust. The problem, of course, is that bikes tend to stand out in the weather and salt air pretty much all the time. Everything else exposed to the outside air fights the same battle. The airplanes area extremely sensitive, and require regular wash-downs to stave off corrosion. The tethersonde (a little like a weather balloon, but anchored with a cable) has instruments that must be cleaned routinely to achieve accurate readings. And some mornings I realize that the fuzz in front of my eyes is salt haze on my glasses.

Today's bright sunshine after yesterday's grey, drippy weather put everryone in a better mood, I think. At the morning planning meeting we set up aircraft flights because there was a TRMM overpass at 1:30 p.m., but without any great hope of "interesting" weather. Sure enough, the weather was sufficiently boring that the flights were cancelled. This gave the Convair team a chance to check out their right engine. It appeared that the high amount of liquid water (cloud and rain) that it flew through yesterday had affected the engine. I noticed the Convair testing the right engine in the late afternoon, so we can hope that it's back to operational. I also called off three of the five weather balloon launches that were intended to complement the flights. My crews appreciated the break because they'd been pretty busy for the last three days.

The other happy news today was that five pallets of shipping came in. It will be a day or so before the crates and cartons get checked in, but we're hoping for a whole pile of them at KWAJEX. One sign of a new shipment was a fresh supply of bananas for sale at the Ten-Ten.

I had actually gone to Ten-Ten to buy laundry detergent. Yep, it's been long enough that my clean clothes were running out. The laundry facility is very nice and free; you just need to buy detergent. My wife will be relieved to know that I separated my clothes into white and not-white loads! The other motivation for doing laundry is that all the KWAJEXers lucky enough to be housed in Bld. 704 have to move to the Pacific Bachelor's Quarters (PBQ). I didn't want to pack up dirty clothes for the move. Even though we were told before we came that this might happen, it's still a downer to move from modern two-person rooms with bath and kitchenette to tired four-to-seven-person rooms that share restroom facilities between two such rooms. It's amazing how quickly people set up routines and develop "their" space. For example, students and church members and families almost always settle on habitual seats, frequently on the first visit to a new place. Of course, I've already surveyed the seven beds in my new room and staked out "my" space!

As I left the PBQ in the twilight I saw the first sliver of the new crescent moon. It was just at last quarter when I started this trip!

George Huffman