Unfortunately we didn't have anyone to take pictures this year (no one sat out!) so we have no racing photos! However, here are some post race photos. We got 1st place, Gorging Dragons got 2nd. Our "Go Kai Ikaika" Gorging girl blow up doll named Gigi was a huge sucess. Big thanks to our FCRCC Canadian friends for helping us fill the boat and to Gorging for the great party!!! I'll be seeing a few of the Canadians in Australia for IDBF worlds next month - will put my pics on my personal blog at www.travelblog.org/bloggers/blegs ET [View Full Entry]

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We went out on a boat to see killer whales. Super fun. We went with Prince of Tides; Mark was our driver and he was GREAT! Pictures, not words... [View Full Entry]

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YAY! We won the Victoria DB festival. There were 100 teams, but our main competition was Gorging Dragons from Victoria. It was really fun. More pics on www.kaiikaika.org ! [View Full Entry]

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HI. More pictures of racing are posted under "media gallery" on our website at www.kaiikaika.org. Thank you to Courtney and Brian for taking and uploading all of those! Thank you again to our sponsors, Kona Brewing and Bamboo Grove, and to the many friends and family who helped out with our trip. Tomorrow we are off to Victoria for everyone's favorite race of the year. erin [View Full Entry]

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Saturday was another big day of racing. We ended up 10th in the 500m race, which was of course not the same as first, but whatever. We had a good race and felt good about it. The 2000m race was scheduled originally for Thursday, but they moved it to Sunday night at the last minute and a few members of our team were flying out on Sunday morning, so they let us race with the men on Saturday. We weren't expecting much but we ended up getting EIGTH out of all the mens crews!! It was awesome. We had a great [View Full Entry]

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On Friday night we went out to Alice Fazooli's in Toronto for a big Italian dinner. All 32 paddlers, managers, coaches, supporters, and family members attended, including my parents who had just arrived from ND! [View Full Entry]

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First day of racing results: We got 9th in the 200meter. Not exactly what we were hoping for but we did everything we could do and raced our race. Our friends to the north, False Creek of Vancouver BC WON the 200m, which was very exciting. The times were all within 1-2 seconds, so the races were really close. The teams that finished ahead of us were mostly Canadian plus a few German and Australian. The good news is that we beat the other US teams here - Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, and Iowa . Tomorrow we will race the [View Full Entry]

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These are some pictures of the opening ceremonies. It amounted to 80% standing around, 3% parading, 7% starving and 10% sorta listening. Our uniforms were definately the BEST of all the teams, so we were popular with the press! We found out today that The Oregonian mentioned us in the SPORTS section. YAY! [View Full Entry]

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Toronto is cool! Walking around the city almost makes us forget we are here to RACE. Almost, but not quite. We practiced on Wednesday and today for about an hour. The race course and venue are really nice. They built the course just this year for this race. It's a 500m course and has 5 lanes. We saw teams from China, Australia, Germany and Canada. The Chinese men's team paddles with a rate TWICE as high as ours! Other than practice, we have been eating really good food and doing general sightseeing around the City. The opening ceremonies are tonight and [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Toronto this morning. The flight was only 4.5 hours from Vancouver BC and the trip was fun. We will practice today at 3pm on the race course. Toronto is nice, the hotel is great and they let us check in at 7AM! [View Full Entry]

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