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About: Clay

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Hi, I'm Clay from Chattanooga, Tennessee and am a new junior at New River Academy. I started kayaking in the 9th grade at a boarding school in Asheville, North Carolina and immediately fell in love with it. I knew that kayaking was something I really wanted to pursue but I also wanted to get an education. I talked to a friend who went here and found that this was most certainly the right fit for me. Later I found out that not only do I get to have school and kayak, but I also get to travel around the world to do this. Now I know why it is called Huge Experiences!

Posts by Clay Whitaker:

Author Archive

Finally Sunny

Friday, February 12th, 2010

I woke up this morning for  workout and as I walked out I noticed beautiful clouds in the sky.  As workout continued the clouds slowly got darker and darker, looking as if it was going to rain.  I was kind of bummed about it raining again but as the day went on the clouds broke and the sun came out.  Now it is very sunny and really warm.  It actually feels like summer now!

Yesterday we ran the Rio Palguin which is my favorite run in Pucon.  It has about 5 main rapids.  There is the first rapid which is a double drop.  It has a 5 foot drop at the beginning and then right after that there is  an 8 footer.  This is my favorite of the rapids.  The others range from 5 foot waterfalls to 20 feet. All the parents who are down here not only got to see this amazing river but also got to see us paddle;  I bet it was a lot of fun for them.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Rio Fuy

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

The Rio Fuy has been one of my favorite destinations yet.  The Upper Fuy is a waterfall run with lots of fun moves.  The middle is a big water run that is extremely continuous.  The lower Fuy is a calm, very continuous class 3 run that is really fun too.   I got to do all the runs and had tons of fun on all of them.  School has been awesome too and am learning lots.

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Pucon

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Pucon has been one of my favorite places so far.  It is a big city kind of like a ski town.  It sits at the bottom of a towering volcano named Villarrica.  My second day in town I was walking down the street with Tino and this siren started going off like you would here in an old WWII movie during a bomb raid.  Tino looks at me with this scared look and said a dang that’s the volcano and started running.  I kind of was thinking while he was trotting along if there was even a point of running.  He then stopped and laughed at me and said he was kidding.  It was the alarm for 12 o’clock, got me Tino.

The rivers have been awesome!  It is awesome paddling in South America because it has so many different rivers to chose from.  School has been going very well too.  Spanish class is probably my favorite class, Tino being the teacher.  Going out and having scavenger hunts and talking with the locals and immersing yourself in the language has been extremely helpful to me.

We are staying at Dave’s base that lies right outside of Pucon.  He has built this massive outdoor Quincho.  It has a massive fireplace and is truly a work of art.  I love hanging out in there and building massive fires and talking with people.  That is about it from here.  See everyone in about 2 weeks!

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Achibueno Student Report

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Achibueno is possibly the coolest place we have been to in Chile yet.  We hopped in the car at the Rio Claro and drove about an hour in a rental van to a public bus station.  We got on a bus and drove for another hour or two where we met another rental van that drove us another hour or two on a dirt road.  We got to a point on the road that was too rough to take the van so we had to walk a kilometer or two.  We got here and saw where we were going to stay.  It looks like something out of the Appalachian mountains.  Tin roof with chickens walking around and a chopping block for “dinner” right outside the front door.

When I entered the house I was stunned.  There is a 4 sided fireplace with a giant hood over it that acts as the chimney.  I have never seen a fireplace like that and now I want one in my house.  Everything in the house is hand built by a gifted craftsman.

The river, the Rio Achibueno is truly amazing.  This class 4 river could possibly be the best class 5 whitewater training in the world.  There are tons of lines to choose and you can make it as hard as you want too.  The upper section is awesome.  We got the owner of where we are staying, Christian, to drive our boats upstream about 5 kilometers and paddled down to our camp.  On this section we got the experience of seeing Chilean farmers herd there goats and sheep to the other side of the river on a tiny little bridge.  Every once in awhile a goat or sheep would fall off the bridge into the water and we would try to save them, in our kayaks, before the went all the way downstream. If we could save them a herdsman was quick with the lasso.  It was truly an awesome experience.

The food is the best I have ever had.  We have people to cook our food for us which is extremely nice.  We have all sorts of meat and soups and rice.  I learned a new way of cooking rice which is extremely cool.  Instead of just steaming the rice like the back of the container says to do, fry the rice for 5 minutes in vegetable oil and then pour already boiled water over it.  Put the top on the pot and it is ready in about ten minutes.  I cannot wait to try it at home.  The Achibueno has been a great experience.  Next stop, Pucon.

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Tags: Achibueno, clay whitaker, Kayak School, new river academy
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Figurative Language In English Class

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

The Maipo River is like a spilling cup of coffee.

The color of the Maipo is like clay.

My brain on the river is like a cows mind before slaughter.

The foam on the river is like foam on a coke at high altitude.

My eyes on the river are like a worm, moving around to see everything possible.

The rocks on the river are elephants.

The Maipo river is a cobra waiting to strike.

My line through the rapid is a monkey swinging through the trees.

The waves on the maipo are mountaineers, climbing to the summit of everest.

My brain on the Maipo is a cow before slaughter.



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Kayak School| How To Add Transitions To Your Video

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

A transition is a really cool effect that will let you go in between two clips of footage without having a jumpy outcome.  To add transitions using Final Cut Pro is simple.

If I have two clips of video and I want to blend the two clips together I:

1.  Select the spot between the two clips on the timeline that I want to add the transition to

2.  Click command T

3.  If that doesn’t work click effects on the tool bar at the top of  the screen and select “default cross dissolve”

4.  There will be a gray line in between the two clips that you wanted to insert a transition.  The two video clips have now been faded together and are now considered one clip.

5.  You have successfully inserted a transition.

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Cutting My Finger

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Yesterday Stephen Forster was trying to make a dead fall trap for survival class.  Of course I wanted to help him but wasn’t so psyched about eating what we killed just in case it was something other than what the trap was intended to kill, a rabbit.  Stephen showed me how to arrange the sticks so that it would hold a big flat rock up so that when the rabbit munched on one of the peanut butter covered sticks, the rock would fall on the animal and we would call it dinner.  The only problem was that the stick wouldn’t hold up the rock because the rock was too flat.  I tried to make a dent in the big rock with another smaller rock but the smaller rock in my hands slipped and I slammed it down on the side of my middle finger.  I thought that I had just mashed my finger and that it wouldn’t be a big deal but as I looked up I noticed that the top of my finger had been peeled off.

I walked back up the trail to the house where I showed it to Andy.  He immediately got up and got out the hydrogen peroxide which I, very reluctantly, let him pour over my finger.  Nobody could decide if I needed to get stitches so they decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to just go ahead and take me to the emergency room.  We drove to Pembroke where Matt Smink and I waited for 2 hours to be seen.  Finally they took me back where the doctor plopped a needle right in the center of the cut to numb it.  They stitched it up in about 5 minutes and out I walked with 3 stitches.  Thanks Matt, Dave, and Andy for cleaning, waiting, and driving!

From the banks of the Ottawa River

- Clay

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Tags: clay whitaker, Kayak School, new river academy, Ottawa river
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

School At New River Academy

Friday, September 4th, 2009

School at New River, as you could imagine, is a lot different than school at a big school.  I came from a “small” school in Asheville, NC that had about 230 students where I was getting little to no one on one attention even if I did go for extra help.  I didn’t do very well at this school and my grades slipped, maybe because I had the freedom to just not turn in my hmoework.  At New River Academy it is an entire different school setting.  The biggest class in the school is physics and it has about 6 students.  Hard to learn at a table in a house you might as, no!  Andy, Matt, Dave, and Melina are all extremely good teachers.  Despite the fact that classes might be a little distracting, there are so little students that you are snapped back into attention so quick it’ll make your head spin, as Andy taught me today during first period physics.  Homework is a big part of this school.  Unlike World Class Kayaking Academy, our school’s rival, we actually have study hall.  This happens after a long day of school and paddling and is usually enough time to finish up most of your homework.  End all to end all, I am getting a better education here than any of the other schools I have been to.  I am having the most fun I have ever had during the school year.

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Tags: Chile, Kayak School, new river academy, Ottawa river
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First days in Ottawa

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Wow I’m finally here!  Before I knew about New River Academy I told myself that the Ottawa River was one of the places I had to kayak before I die and I’m already here!  Dang that feels good!  We had a very long drive from West Virginia but I had to drive up from Chattanooga, TN which took about 6 hours.  I showed up in WV and packed up and left at about 3:45 in the afternoon.  We drove until 4 in the morning and stopped on the side of the road and slept until seven.  We crossed the US Canadian border at about 11 in the morning with about another 2 hour drive to Keenerville, where we were staying.  The drivers Matt, Andy, and Dave, were all very tired so they decided to take a nap.  They woke up at about 4:30 and got suited up for a play session on corner wave.  This is exactly the place where I want to be!  Thanks mom and dad!!!



Dropping into Phils hole

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Tags: clay whitaker, Kayak School, new river academy, Ottawa river, whitewater
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