Heat The heat is getting to me. While many of you are entering winter we're entering the summer. It's normally up around the 30's (low 90's F) and there hasn't been much wind recently. Without the wind it's killer. It gets pretty hot in Mass summers, so I've always thought of myself as decent at taking the heat but this is getting to be too much. I can barely sleep at night laying on top of the covers with the fan on me and during the day I sweat doing nothing. If I was a permanent resident here, was self [View Full Entry]

---

---

Special for you So this is a special post that I'm not mentioning on my e-mail list and is special only for people who check the blog. But don't get too excited, it's not that special. At least at first it's not that special. You reading this now could lead to something special in the future, but there's a chance it doesn't. I promise I'll do my best to make something special happen but I get busy and sometimes it doesn't happen. So this entry has a no guarantees disclaimer associated with it. So after all that hype and suspense: If [View Full Entry]

---

---

Just Kidding! Ha! That whole thing about going to Tahiti! Just kidding. Actually only sorta just kidding. Here’s what happened. I got up this morning and was scrambling to get gone; as usual I was running late. I got all my stuff packed, did a final check of the house, threw away all the stuff that would go bad in the fridge, locked up the house, and got the hell outta Dodge. When I got to town I stopped by the canoe build to let Mike know of my one week plan, discussed in the previous post. He warned me [View Full Entry]

---

---

Places to stay in the Cooks This post is for the traveler in the Cooks. Basically my dad’s coming in a bit and asked me to look around. So the day before I leave for Tahiti I did a whirlwind tour and checked out 6 places in 90 minutes (keep in mind I spent about 40 of those minutes driving, that’s how quick this was). So, here’s what I found: Pacific Resort: I liked this one. It’s a pretty big one but it didn’t feel super crowded like some of the others. I checked out one of the rooms and [View Full Entry]

---

---

When it rains... …It pours. Or so the saying goes. Here’s my dilemma. I head to Tahiti tomorrow and I’m slotted to be there for 3.5 weeks. But Mike Tavioni just started building some traditional boats here in the Cooks. I’ve been trying to get to Tahiti for weeks and when I finally get everything arranged they finally start building boats here. So frustrating, I don’t know what to do. So the current plan, I think, is to only go to Tahiti for a week and then come back to the Cooks. That way I can make some contacts in [View Full Entry]

---

---

Chickens and Squirrels Don’t worry (or get upset) there are no squirrels in the Cook Islands (I know Ben Wu would be sad, he’s a big fan). We have chickens instead. Lots of chickens. Everywhere you look, chickens running around. Wild, rampant, domesticated chickens. The other day I decided to take a nap on the couch in the living room. There was a chicken and 3 chicks out side clucking away. I hear them getting progressively louder and open my eyes to find them standing there, inside the house, about 10 feet away. I tell them no chickens in the house [View Full Entry]

---

---

Customs in the Cook Islands So this post is for all the travelers out there who may be visiting the Cooks and want to know about the customs and such. For the most part, it’s pretty typical of any country. The main advice I have is don’t use an electronic ticket (you have to provide an exiting ticket when you arrive). When I got here this confused the heck out of them. I had to explain it 3 times, each time they just kept asking to see my departure ticket. They just aren’t used to it I guess. Eventually they [View Full Entry]

---

---

How Not To Do Things Alright, today sucked. Yesterday was frustrating and seemed like a waste of time but today was that and more. I got up early to go do what I came here for, to measure offsets. There’s a canoe that’s derigged so it will be easy to measure. I’m applying to graduate schools so I figure showing the results of my work could really explain what I’m doing so I’m convinced to measure it on the one day no one is there to paddle. So I get all my gear together and bike into town. I get [View Full Entry]

---

---

Two Seat and the Shortest Race Ever Two seat; I’m drawn to it. I gravitate towards it. Whenever I join a new club for crew there’s two things you can count on: the coach will somehow pick out I am the one bisweptual person on the team despite telling them the port side is the proper side of the boat for an oar to be on and that I will sit in two seat. Next thing I know Chris Walkley is going to abseil out of a helicopter in a Jack Bauer-ish move and say ‘Hey Krauss, guess what?! I’m [View Full Entry]

---

---

Street Fighting Man (sorta) So here it is. I told you I get creative sometimes and I got creative today. First, a brief backstory though. Back in the winter of 2007-08 there was a select group of individuals who spent more hours playing darts than most varsity athletes spend at practice. We considered applying for varsity status but since we had no girls (sad) we figured we'd run into problems with Title 9 so we accepted club status, although we never actually told anyone besides me. Anyways, I was the overzealous everything of the club and I set up a [View Full Entry]

---

---