Mars Trek

Now that  Sage is in school, I have some mornings free and that means I can get back into shape (ok, I admit I never really was IN shape before).  So I have started an exercise program at my in-house gym (upstairs) and for once I am excited about this  (I never liked going to the gym).

Anyway, to keep up my incentive for my cardio portion I not only read books I like, but have made a plan to bike basically across Mars (or the rough equivalent of).  

Weird perhaps, but I have always been fascinated with traveling to another planet and Mars is the next one, for sure, so I thought I might as well get acquainted with the names and places. 

And the main point is that I have mapped out a route that takes me to most of the man-made (US, Russian and British) items that we have sent there from the 70's up to this past year.  There are more than 20 of them, but I am only 'going' to 13 of them, while I have 3 other stops on my Tour de Mars (2 craters that Sage 'wanted' and the largest mountain in the Solar System: Olympus Mons).

I spent about 2 weeks planning, printing and writing the info on this big map I had made and I am excited about it.  I learned a heck of a lot about Mars in the process, which is the main point...

  

Just put the finishing touches on the map.

This shows the topographical features where blue points are the lowest and white are the highest.

This is my start point: The Mars Polar Lander site.  From here I will 'bike' up to the first man made craft that sent back images (for 48 seconds), the Russian Mars 3 (Mars 1 and 2 failed to land and or transmit back to earth).  Then I will go to Spirit's landing site and then onto the most recent and still very active Curiosity's site.  Then I will head north to Viking 1 and then to the British Beagle 2.

 After the Beagle, I will head down to Buddy's Bump and then round Hellas Crater (a huge crater impact) onto the Mars 2 site (which crashed, but what the heck, might as well take a gander) and then I will head on up to Sage Crater (he picked it out and I am SURE no one has named that one yet.....)

 Here is a close up of both Sage Crater and Buddy Bump.

(please don't tell NASA....)

From Sage Crater I will mosey on over to Opportunity's landing site and then down to Mars 6 then I will trek to one of the biggest scars / canyon that is bigger than the continental US; the Valles Marineris (Marianis Trench). I will only look a bit at the end part, go into that til I reach Pathfinder and then head over to Viking 1.  From there I will make the long trek to Phoenix's landing site.

From Phoenix, I will attempt to summit the largest mountain in the Solar System: Olympus Mons.  

Thankfully this is all a 'simulation' and not a real bike hike since I have no idea how long this will take, nor if I could actually do this (maybe someone WILL do this one day...).  But this is just to keep my interest up which I peddle away to lose some weight.

Wish me Martian Luck!