I'll let the pictures do the talk... The best: share this special moment with Dax The worse: family and friends couldn't be here En el lugar adecuado, en el momento adecuado Una imagen vale mas que mil palabras... Lo mejor: Compartir este momento especial con Dax Lo peor: Familia y amigos no pudieron compartirlo con nosotros [View Full Entry]

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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]

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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]

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Kia Orana from Aranau 'Enua O Ru Ki Te Moana, meaning Ru in search of land over the sea but, to make things easier for those of us who don't speak maori, was changed to Aitutaki (a'i tutaki means to keep the fire going), being Ru the 1st settler of the island who, with his 4 wives, his 4 brothers and their wives, arrive here to decide to keep the island for himself and send his brothers away, and it's not surprising that he wanted the island just for him, because Aitutaki doesn't belong to this world: the moment you see [View Full Entry]

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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]

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As promised, here are some more pictures from the Cook Islands!!! [View Full Entry]

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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]

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Well the Cook Islands were GREAT!!! We had an excellent time, besides our little flight delay problem...but that was easily fixed by beautiful beaches and warm weather. As per the previous blog entry, we were delayed in LA for about 6 hours, and then had to be re-routed to Hawaii to pick up a new captain (not sure how we flew to Hawaii without a captain..hmm...) We arrived on the main island of Rarotonga at about 3pm, where they rushed us through customs and we got on the next flight to Aitutaki. Aitutaki is such a great place. We much prefer [View Full Entry]

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In L.A. things are done in style and the rental company we got the car from had its Head Quarters in the Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills; even though we felt like a fish out of the water, we wondered how it will be to spend a night in a place like that and we decided to do it some day... guess what... we spent that very same evening, not at the Hilton, but at the Sheraton, courtesy of Air New Zealand: 2 king size beds, huge TV and room service made our last night in L.A. a bit more comfortable... [View Full Entry]

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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]

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