I had a really strange experience Monday-Tuesday -- I was out in the wildest, roughest most inhospitable mountainous rock-strewn flea-bitten, water-deprived, sand-blasted, dust infested, heat-drenched parched unforgiving and sheerly brutal desert ever dreamed up by a malevolent Creator., bouncing around in theback seat of ahuge, squat, ugly Hummvee driven by a spawn of Beezlebub thinly disguised as an enthusiastic Marine. For about six hours we ran up and down the sides of mountains, out onto promontories that would have made a mountain goat think it over, over waadis and gullies, slamming like so many marbles in a tornado. Dressed up in a flak jacket and a USMC battle helmet, I looked like a leftover from Rumsfeld's Follies, I tell ya. On more than one occasion I would have split my skull open on the roof-truss of the damn Hummer had it not been for the battle helmet. Woof, woof. HooRAH and all that...

Anyway, we were testing a bunch of radio and computer comms and had antenna and boards all lashed up along the back of this godforsaken machine with duct tape and straps and so on, and it was quite a day. I am glad to say I survived, and the equipment worked better than expected, especially considering what we put it through physically.

At one point, trying to find a surveyed benchmark to calibrate a GPS unit against, I had to scramble up to the top of a rubble- and scree-strewn hill. By the time I got up there I was breathing hard enough to qualify for a year of intense aerobics in one hour. My heart sounded like a Christopher Brubeck practice session in 13/9.

We're going back in June or July for a full demonstration of the technology. We're designing new mounts for everything, hard-learned lessons, and so on. But if it hadn't been for not smoking I am pretty sure I would still be lying there being eaten by coyotes and snakes in the moonlight.

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