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Hey Hey!

This is The Girl, writing to you for the DC Rainmaker weekly newsletter. “Weekly” still being the optimistic word there, but I’m not willing to change it (yet) to “Monthly Newsletter”.

As some of you might already know, I am once again writing to you from another temporary DC Rainmaker headquarters. I am currently hanging out in San Diego with Ray and the Peanut; we loved the weather and good California vibes so much we have extended our stay a few extra days! I have never been to San Diego before this trip, but I have been wanting to come here for years! More specifically since the debut of the Hollywood blockbuster “Anchorman”. Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone, you made my 2004 memorable! Of course we haven’t spent our entire trip here in San Diego, we originally started up north in San Francisco and have slowly moseyed our way south. More on that as the post goes on.

I should insert here that there is a major power meter and bike trainer sale happening. Here’s the link to all the goodness. Go shop ‘til you drop and then come back here!

Then if you still have time to bumble around, don’t forget to scroll to the bottom where you will find the ever entertaining “In Depth Thoughts of The Girl section”. As always, first, a review of what’s been happening around the wonderful world of DC Rainmaker.  

We first landed in California 3 weeks ago, and time was initially spent in San Francisco. Ray had a few important meet ups on the schedule, first being his Podcast interview with Recode. Ray was chatting with Lauren Goode from “Too Embarrassed to Ask”, and you can get caught up on how it went in the most recent Week in Review post. Also while we were in San Francisco Ray met up with the cool cats from Specialized. These guys continue to let Ray drop in and fire up their wind tunnel, known as “Win Tunnel”. This time while in the Win Tunnel, Ray was channeling his inner Mythbusters enthusiasm and putting Wahoo’s latest claims to having the most aerodynamic bike computer to the test. Click here to see what he discovered.

As we made our way south to Monterey, the focus shifted to Sea Otter. Ray posted about ALLLLL of the power meters, and the Tidbits of Sea Otter, but more interestingly he was also able to take advantage of getting some nighttime trail riding done. Thanks to a couple of guys at TrainerRoad (Jonathan and Ian) who volunteered to go riding with Ray, he had my permission to go off for a night and bomb around the mountain side in the dark to test out the new Garmin smart bike lights. Some of you might have scoffed at my comment that Ray had my “permission”, but please let me remind you of the time I found out via a DCR Facebook post that Ray literally flip-crashed his bike while he was: helmetless, out in bear country, at sundown, completely alone and having not told anyone he was going out for the ride. As I watched the video from the opposite side of the Atlantic, holding our sleeping new born, I decided the man needed his a$$ handed to him, and thus he lost solo-riding privileges. Indefinitely. Insert Grumpy Cat meme here.

After we spent our days up north we started the migration south to eventually L.A., specifically Marina de Rey. We were meeting up with my bestie from college and her family of two boys and her husband. Let me tell you, 2 boys 5-6 equally one very rambunctious household! There was much time spent at the beach and walking the beach promenades! Somehow amongst all of the action Ray still managed to hammer out the Quarq DZero power meter review. I think he did most of the work when the house was napping between beach outings!

Finally we have made it down here to the great San Diego area, where tacos have not disappointed! We’ve been poking around at about everything you can imagine. Fake house hunting, USS Midway explorations, beach escapades, you name it. Of course Ray still doesn’t know the meaning of a vacation week and is still sneaking off to get work done at night. You will notice pictured below he enjoyed a nice campfire evening while knocking out the new Hammerhead Bike computer.

If you haven’t read enough gab from me yet, remember to keep scrolling down to the best part of the newsletter, “In Depth Thoughts from The Girl”.

When it comes to companies making marketing claims about all sorts of devices, most shy away from specifics.  They’ll use terms like ‘better than’ or ‘faster than’ – without numerical…

It’s been a few years since startup Hammerhead announced their H1 navigational bike accessory.  It was sorta like a fish finder for navigation while on a bike. Rather than be…

If something happens twice a year…one might say it’s semi-annual.  Thus, one could posit that this sale, which happens almost precisely 6 months since the last time it occurred might…

My great Californian adventure continues, as we’re now down in Southern California, with the weekend starting in LA (after having spent a week there), before moving onto San Diego. Here’s…

The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I…

Today, Garmin introduced their latest generation front bike light – the UT800.  This light builds upon the connected concepts from their first generation lights, such as integration with their head…

In Depth Thoughts from The Girl

Hey hey, thanks for meandering down to my neck of the woods. This week I’m keeping The Girl reminiscing to a minimum. The last newsletter was a total throw back! So this time I’m looking ahead to this summer, as Ray and I will be taking a bike trip with The Peanut (and Lucy of course)! We have already purchased the little one’s noggin’ protector, we went with a child’s helmet by Nutcase. Now I am trying to decide on a good baby bike seat. I spent a lot of my time at Sea Otter poking around the different booths that had kid like options, and my favorite so far was the Yepp. The biggest decision will be a bike seat or simply a bike trailer? So any opinions or experiences you might have there is greatly appreciated!

Finally you are probably wondering, “where are they going cycling”. Well if you know me at all, you’ll know that I despise cycling (or running for that matter) on hills! I appreciate the flats. And we don’t want to go too far from home. So that puts us on a train to the Netherlands! I’ve spied a great area north east of Amsterdam called “Waterland” and seems to be a beautiful tri-village area, and then we can keep wandering north along the shore from there. This is meant to be a super super leisurely cycling experience as I haven’t been on the bike much, and we have no idea if The Peanut will love or hate the bike. So again, if you have any experience cycling in the Netherlands – family style cycling- and you have any suggestions or experiences you want to share, I’m all ears! Frankly my eyeballs are burnt out from late night googling the interwebs for ideas, so now I call on you!  

As always, thanks for all the emails and comments you send our way. If you want to get in touch, the newsletter email is below!

~The Girl

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