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I’m DC RAINMAKER…
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Ray Elsewhere
Did you know I write a weekly column over on Slowtwitch?
Check out my Product/Electronics posts in Ray’s Sports Electronics Mailbag - they are packed full of gadget goodness.
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5 Easy Steps To The Site
1
In Depth Product Reviews
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
2
Read My GPS Recommendations.
Here’s my most recent gadget recommendations guide (2012) – covering almost every category of sports gadgets out there. Looking for the equipment I use day to day? I also just put together my complete 2012 ‘Gear I Use’ equipment list, from swim to bike to run and everything in between (plus a few extra things). And to compliment that, here’s The Girl’s (my wife’s) list. Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!
3
Understand technology and sport in the How-To Guides.
I enjoy explaining new things to folks – especially showing people how to get the most from their gadgets. Here’s an ongoing list of “How to” guides.
4
Read my Top 25 most useful posts.
It turns our I’ve written a fair bit of stuff over the past few years – and after it disappears from my front page, a lot of it never really sees the light of day again without Google’ing skillz. Or a photographic memory…which I don’t have. I’ve taken a look back and found stuff that…continues to find a trickle of readers via web searches or forum links.
5
Have some fun in the travel section.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
Asia & Pacific Ocean
Swimming in the Beijing Olympic Water Cube
After hearing that Beijing was on my work trip itinerary I immediately did a bunch of research to figure out if you could actually swim in the famous Water Cube from the 2008 Beijing Olympics (officially called the National Aquatics … Read More Here
The Xi’an China Runaround
It’s funny to think that prior to booking my airline ticket to this city, I’d never heard of it. In fact, I can’t think of the last time I booked any travel to a place I didn’t know existed. I’ve … Read More Here
A Wellington (New Zealand) Runaround
Yesterday I spent just a touch over 24 hours in Wellington, New Zealand. After landing into Auckland at 4:45AM from Perth (a miserable time for a redeye flight by the way), I then had a quick connection down to Wellington … Read More Here
A Rottnest Island Runaround (Western Australia)
I arrived here in Perth, Australia nearly a week ago – and things have been a wee bit busy since then. As I noted what seems like ages ago, I’m in the midst of a two-week trip down here to … Read More Here
Singapore Brooks Run Happy 9K Race Report
Back a few months ago when we first realized we’d be going to Singapore (actually, for all the cities we’d be visiting), I looked up the race calendar for this past weekend. Turns out, there were a number of races … Read More Here
A Kochi, India Runaround
Welcome to India, the land of a billion people, nearly as many bikes, and countless interesting places to run. Despite having flown over India more times than I can remember in the past two years, it’s been almost exactly two … Read More Here
The Seoul Runaround
It’s roughly midnight, and I’ve been asleep for two hours. Well, was asleep. For reasons unclear to me, my body thinks it’s time to to wakeup. Clearly, it’s confused. Nonetheless, traffic continues to bustle outside – a never ending surge … Read More Here
An Auckland Runaround
(I wrote this up last month during our trip to the South Pacific, but the posting got busy with CES immediately following – so it never quite made it to the light of day. I figured it’d be a fun … Read More Here
Bora Bora Part II: Sharks, Rays (the Manta kind), Paddle Boarding…and lots of rain.
(If you’re just joining me, start back at the first part of the two-part series) While Bora Bora is certainly about sun and sand, we did spend a fair bit of time doing lots of non-beach chair items. Sometimes for … Read More Here
Bora Bora Part I: Getting here, sun, swim and run!
After our New Zealand trip it was time to head somewhere warm(er). And no better place to do that than Tahiti. Like the more familiar Hawaii, Tahiti is made up of a number of islands – though far more than … Read More Here
Friday Photo of the Day (or trip, as it may be)
I started writing a post for the first part of our Bora Bora trip, but then decided that I was tired. After all, all this relaxing has made me…somehow more tired. Maybe just lazy. Well, not quite sure. Either way, … Read More Here
New Zealand Part III: Open cockpit vintage biplane flights, and canyoning (it’s like rappelling)
For our last couple of days in New Zealand we kept it busy, exploring the areas nearby Queenstown and Wanaka (both on the South Island). On our last full day though, we really packed in it. Of note were two … Read More Here
New Zealand Part II: Glaciers, peaks, long hikes…and a lot more sheep.
We continue our exploration of New Zealand roughly in the same southerly region that we left off at, departing from Queenstown. From there we drove a couple hours deeper into the mountains towards the Milford Sound region, staying in Te … Read More Here
New Zealand Part I: Caves, cows, sheep and mountain biking
Most conventional itineraries to New Zealand from the United States usually fly across the Pacific from either LA or San Francisco, with a relatively short 11-13 hour flight straight to Auckland. But, as you’ve probably guessed by now, I usually … Read More Here
The India Runaround
With my work completed yesterday (Thursday), I had the morning in Delhi to do as I saw fit before my flight later this afternoon. I initially thought I might go do some touristy stuff, but after it was found out … Read More Here
India Part II: Crouching Tiger
(Quick note: You can see the first half of my brief trip to India here in Part I) As a general rule of thumb, when you want to go see unique things in the wild, it takes a bit of … Read More Here
India Part I: “For some things, there are no explanations”
We arrived into Delhi, India – the country of 1.2 billion people – quite late Tuesday night…errr, rather Wednesday morning I guess. We were supposed to be there Tuesday night – but because the coffee pot on the airplane wouldn’t … Read More Here
A very short stay in Bangkok
I can’t say I was able to spend much time really seeing much of Bangkok during my short stay in Thailand. While I was initially scheduled to be there some 5 days, in the end, I’d only end up staying … Read More Here
A weekend in Vietnam
When I started this multi-week international work trip through Asia early last week, there was no plan to spend any time in Vietnam. It simply wasn’t on my itinerary. I was to work until Friday in Seoul, and then head … Read More Here
A moving bit of Seoul Food
I arrived into Seoul in a general state of confusion. Usually I have a much better handle on travel logistics for cities I’m arriving in, but somehow things got busy and I didn’t quite have the time to ensure I … Read More Here
A weekend in Saipan
Over the last 8 weeks or so I’ve been jetting in and out of countries all over the place, mostly in Central America. In the vast majority of the cases, I was there working for only 24 hours, sometimes up … Read More Here
Days 14…and 14 – Three countries, one 30+ hour day
On Friday it was time to depart the Maldives and begin our journey home. So we packed up our little villa and then headed out to catch the seaplane. But before leaving, The Girl lined up her complete collection of … Read More Here
A day with the Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme
Back a few months ago while following the Underwater Thrills blog, I saw a story about a Whale Shark research program in the Maldives. After a bit of poking around, it turned out the program is partially supported by the … Read More Here
Days 11-13 – Maldivian water games, a night and day difference
Given the Maldives are a collection of tiny islands in a vast ocean, you spend the majority of your time in or around the water. The good news is…I like the water. The bad news is that there isn’t enough … Read More Here
Days 9-10 – Welcome to the Maldives
After a short hop through Singapore (again), and then a longer four hour hop, we arrived at a very small slim parcel of land in the Indian ocean where the Male Airport sits. Of course, since I’m pretty sure only … Read More Here
Days 4-6 – A prelude to a Bali Triathlon
After arriving on the island of Bali from Singapore, we sought out our pre-booked rental car place at the airport. However, despite booking with a major international car rental company via a major travel service (Travelocity), no car rental humans … Read More Here
Day 3 – The Singapore Sleepover
After a 6 hour flight from Beijing, China our Boeing 777 landed in Singapore, Singapore (the city with the same name as the country, sorta like New York, New York). By time we cleared immigration, customs and everything else it … Read More Here
Day 2 – (A very cold) Beijing and some really big wall
For reasons only the time zone gods can explain, after just 5ish hours of sleep, we were both wide awake and ready to go. As soon as the hotel’s breakfast place opened up we headed on down to check it … Read More Here
Day 1 – The Tokyo shuffle and beyond
The first flight, on the first day. Our trip started in Seattle just after noon where we jumped on a very empty United 777 headed nonstop to Tokyo. After departure we climbed out over Puget Sound under clear and sunny … Read More Here
Palau Travel Information and Logistics
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post – I wanted to do a roundup of travel related information for Palau. Information on travel to Palau is fairly sparse as I found out – so I figured anything I can add to … Read More Here
Palau: From the Air
After we had completed enough kayaking through Palau, we decided to take to the air. Our intent was to get to the island of Peleliu, which was where a large World War II battle occurred – the Battle of Peleliu. … Read More Here
Kayaking Day 3: Jellyfish Lake
After coming back a day ahead of schedule (we were cruisin’!) from our kayak camping trip, we got persuaded into going back out in the kayaks for another day (although after a good nights sleep in a real bed). It’s … Read More Here
Kayaking Day 2: Here comes the sun!
(If you’re just joining me, check out day one first) We got an early start due to being up before sunrise. We tooled around our beach area a bit, basically just wasting time. After a breakfast consisting of Pop Tarts, … Read More Here
Kayaking Day 1: For the love of all raindrops holy, please stop raining!
That’s it – I’m changing my blog name, blogger ID and everything else associated with ‘rainmaker’. Clearly it was omen. But…let’s back up a second first. So we set out this morning (well, three days ago – but you’re going … Read More Here
One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish
One of the major advantages of traveling in a westerly direction is that you body naturally wakes up earlier. Yesterday I was up at 6AM, right now it’s 5:30AM. After getting up at six yesterday, it was off to the … Read More Here
The Tour de Guam
We arrived into Guam last night late enough that it was dark out. I was looking forward to getting out and exploring things in the daylight, and in particular looking forward to going for an open water swim. Daylight struck … Read More Here
