I bring it up because I dined on a meal pack today. I had saved five packs for special occasions. I ate the first of them twenty-nine sols ago when I left for Schiaparelli, but I totally forgot to eat the second when I reached the halfway point a few sols ago. So I’m enjoying my belated halfway feast.

It’s probably more accurate to eat it today anyway. Who knows how long it’ll take me to go around this storm? And if I end up stuck in the storm and doomed to die, I’m totally eating the other earmarked meals.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 479

Have you ever taken the wrong freeway entrance? You just need to drive to the next exit to turn around, but you hate every inch of travel because you’re going away from your goal.

I felt like that all day. I’m now back where I started yesterday morning. Yuk.

Along the way, I picked up the power logger I’d left behind at the halfway point. Just now I brought in the one I’d left here yesterday.

Both loggers worked the way I’d hoped. I downloaded each of their video recordings to a laptop and advanced them to noon. Finally I had solar efficiency readings from three locations along an 80-kilometer line, all from the same time of day.

As of noon yesterday, the northernmost logger showed 12.3 percent efficiency loss, the middle one had a 9.5 percent loss, and the rover recorded a 6.4 percent loss at its southernmost location. It paints a pretty clear picture: The storm’s north of me. And I already worked out it’s traveling west.

So I should be able to avoid it by heading south a ways, letting it pass me to the north, then heading east again.

Finally, some good news! Southeast is what I wanted. I won’t lose much time.

Sigh… I have to drive the same god damned path a third time tomorrow.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 480

I think I’m getting ahead of the storm.

Having traveled along Mars Highway 1 all day, I’m back at my campsite from yesterday. Tomorrow, I’ll finally make real headway again. I was done driving and had the camp set up by noon. The efficiency loss here is 15.6 percent. Compared to the 17 percent loss at yesterday’s camp, this means I can outrun the storm as long as I keep heading south.

Hopefully.

The storm is probably circular. They usually are. But I could just be driving into an alcove. If that’s the case, I’m just fucking dead, okay? There’s only so much I can do.

I’ll know soon enough. If the storm is circular, I should get better and better efficiency every day until I’m back to 100 percent. Once I reach 100 percent, that means I’m completely south of the storm and I can start going east again. We’ll see.

If there were no storm, I’d be going directly southeast toward my goal. As it is, going only south, I’m not nearly as fast. I’m traveling 90 kilometers per day as usual, but I only get 37 kilometers closer to Schiaparelli because Pythagoras is a dick. I don’t know when I’ll finally clear the storm and be able to beeline to Schiaparelli again. But one thing’s for sure: My plan to arrive on Sol 494 is boned.