Well, it’s time to hit the road. I spent my three weeks on the east coast. I spent lots of time with my family. I got to see an old friend. I got to practice with the no-longer-new backpack. Now I’m back in the bay area having made all my final arrangements. Thanks are due to Samuel for throwing me a great going-away birthday party, to Art for the gift of some cool mesh bags with travel goodies inside, to Sandy and Robin for sharing their house and bandwidth with me, and to Eric for taking care of the boat. I probably left someone out, but it’s been very hectic so please don’t hold it against me. My last experience in America will be an early dinner with another old friend from Maryland during my 4.5 hour layover in LA.

I’ve made my hostel reservation for my first week in NZ - it’s the Auckland City YHA. Besides working on getting over the jet lag, it turns out that one of my first jobs upon arrival will be: LAUNDRY. There just wasn’t time to wash stuff before I left. I’m good for a few days, so it isn’t urgent, but it kinda feels like going home from college with a bag of dirty clothes. I’m already thinking about my first sidetrip - in between the quarter finals and the first repechage: Wellington. Or maybe Christchurch. Does anyone have a preference? Wellington is closer to Auckland, but I’ve got a delivery to make in Christchurch - birthday presents for the parents of a friend.

Thankfully, there have been a couple of days of extremely strong breeze down in Auckland. This means that the quarter finals of the LV Cup have been delayed. I was worried I’d miss some good racing while in transit, but it looks like I might not miss a single race at all.

In any event, these weblog entries should get more interesting now that I’ll have more exciting adventures to relate. It’s hard coming up with things to say about making trips to the storage unit, etc.