Heads up!!! Here’s your massive holiday sports tech deals list! This includes the Garmin Epix for just $419, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 for just $699, the GoPro Hero 12 Black for $249, (or the brand new Hero 13 or $299!) and plenty more! Go check out the full list of 100+ deals here!
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I’m DC RAINMAKER…
Here’s how to save!
Wanna save some cash and support the site? These companies help support the site! With Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with either the coupon code DCRAINMAKER for first time users saving 15% on applicable products.
You can also pick-up tons of gear at REI via these links, which is a long-time supporter as well:
Alternatively, for everything else on the planet, simply buy your goods from Amazon via the link below and I get a tiny bit back as an Amazon Associate. No cost to you, easy as pie!
You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.
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Check out my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-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 Sports Gadget Recommendations.
Here’s my most recent GPS watch guide here, and cycling GPS computers here. Plus there are smart trainers here, all in these guides cover almost every category of sports gadgets out there. Looking for the equipment I use day-to-day? I also just put together my complete ‘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
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.
4
My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
5
The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2023 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
Congratulations to both of you! Wish you all the best in future years as well
Happy Anniversary, enjoy!
Congratulations!
…and how many combined cycling miles is that?
Thanks! I couldn’t begin to count.
congrats on the 10 year anniversary! here’s to many, many more!
thanks for all you do and for the amazing quarantine corner episodes!
Congratulations! Love the photo book idea! P2 looks like her Mom! All the best to you all!
I scrolled down to write exactly the same two things! funny!
Ray, which photobook service did you use? I have been not so happy with quality before…
Congrats on your anniversary!
Thanks!
I used Blurb. I haven’t used them before, but was pretty happy with it. I used their Bookwright desktop app, and that handled all the photos well in terms of not crashing or such despite the enormous volume of photos I loaded into it – performance was good.
Ease of use of templates and such was good, I started off with some of their templates and then quickly customized them.
You can apparently use Lightroom or Illustrator or such too, but that was a bigger rabbit hole that I wanted to deal with.
Quality is really good. Certainly, with over 1,000 photos in the book spanning a decade, some are of lower quality (my source file), but even those came out pretty well. Build quality is good too, I did the ‘layflat’ book, and the pages are pretty thick.
The only downside is that the lay flat books specifically ship from Seattle, as opposed to the normal EU printing office in the Netherlands. As such, I got dinged import fees, which was annoying because they were at the incorrect rate (as opposed to book rate), and because they already charged me import fees when I checked out. Thus, I’ve gotta untangle that.
But that annoyance aside, I’ll definitely use them again, especially for smaller/cheaper non-layflat books.
Hey Ray,
Curious how you got the cover to be made up of all the pictures – I don’t see that option inside of Bookwright.
Also – curious what size you went with? Trying to decide between the 13×11 or 10×8.
So typically when I do montages like that, I use the Lightroom proofs option to file option (as if I was printing out a proof set), with all the margins zero’d out. But, that doesn’t work for 1,000 photos.
Instead, I actually used the default Apple Photos app on my Mac. Stick all the photos into a folder in that app, and then on the right side window, shrink the thumbnail size to the smallest option. You can then play with the size of the overall window to roughly get the ratio you want. Take a screenshot of that as large as possible, and then from there, I cropped per perfectly along the lines in just a generic photo cropping app. Though realistically it get wrapped anyways, so doing any added cropping is kind pointless. The resolution is super high, and even opening up the screenshot is really clear (granted, I did this on my 5K iMac, so it’s a higher resolution screen).
I went with the 13×11, which is perfect. I’m glad I did the larger one, it’s a nice solid book. I also did the PDF export option too, merely to have on my phone as a photo-book. And obviously, Blurb has a million discount codes out there, so poke around a bit to save a boatload. Oh, and if doing something as crazy big as this, just keep in mind the 110-page limit when planning layouts.
Cheers!
Thanks- I appreciate you taking the time to respond ! Really nice “think outside the box” approach to creating the montage :)
Wishing many years of happiness! I can’t believe how time flies and watching your family grow through this blog has been a very wholesome experience over the years!
Thanks, Ray! I’ll definitely check Blurb!
Congrats on 10yrs!
I swear that I scoured that awesome drawing “Where’s Waldo?-style for like an hour looking for a hidden pizza oven, but just couldn’t find it.
Yeah, I see no power meters, heart rate straps, or head units! I will assume the drawing was made from a drone POV. :-)
Doesn’t look like it was taken from the bottom of a canal to me.
Congrats! Thanks for sharing the adventure with us!!
Thanks Todd, and all – appreciate it!
Congrats on your anniversary. My wife and I celebrated ours the day after yours, July 3rd.
Thanks! And Happy Anniversary to you as well!
Congrats to both of you and nice presents!
Any plans to be in Chamonix this summer?
I’ve tentatively got the timeframe around UTMB on the docket to be there. As part of a Eurobike road trip, though, who knows if that’ll happen (Eurobike). But no matter if that happens the road-trip still will in some form.
Looking forward to it!
UTMB timeframe can be interesting, if memory servers me well. And an amazing event.
That aside, I hope you will be able to enjoy a great trip this summer, whenever or where ever you go.
Happy 10th Anniversary to you both!
Wow, I can remember when the girl was introduced to us. Seems like a few short years ago, time flies.
Congratulations to all you, and for many many more years to come.
Congrats Ray!
happy anniversary!
Congratulations! Glad to see these peeks at your personal life. Thanks for all the useful reviews. Don’t know where you find the time for it all.
Congrats Ray and Bobbie, wishing you many happy years to come! Wonderful wedding photo.
Congrats to you both!
Long-time fan of your wonderfully detailed reviews. Congrats on your anniversary, and glad to hear of the near-normalcy. And sorry to hear how terribly the Netherlands has dealt with Covid and vaccinations. Leiden and The Hague are so dear to me, and I hate to see my peeps suffering. I look forward to getting on a plane and coming back as soon as it’s safe.
I thought it was Target bike. not walmart
Very valid point!