Opportunity has been blasting along toward Victoria Crater and has stopped to do some trenching. I figure it's got to be a bathroom stop where little Martian gremlin hitchhikers were screaming "Are we there yet?". These little rest stops, although probably needed for housekeeping, are so frustrating after long drives towards a big prize. I just know that one of these times, they're going to take one of these pauses and the darned thing is going to give up the ghost just short of some incredible view and we'll be done.

I just hope that the stops are truly out of necessity and aren't cause some nerdy geologist didn't jump in and say "Now there's a blueberry that looks a little different than the hundreds of thousands of the ones we've already seen". Once you're past the primary mission and on borrowed time, it'd be my preference if we switched the focus from microgeology to macro.

Art