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Hey there Newsletter readers,
“Whadda y’at??” – a common Newfoundland greeting, similar to asking "What are you doing?" or "How is it going?". It can be used as a casual way to say hello and engage in conversation.
Can you guess where I am? Yep, I packed up the kiddos and made our annual migration back to the homeland of Newfoundland, Canada.
As usual, I had well laid plans to get a newsletter into your inbox by this past Monday, but we are just having too much fun here on the Rock, and time has evaporated! But that’s okay, it’s given me more time to collect fun stories for the “Girl’s Section” further down in the newsletter.
However, as always, first up is a quick recap of the happenings on the website lately, and then you can scroll on down to the good stuff!
Ray tries his best each year to get to several major cycling tours, but I’m proud to say that unless the family schedule has had just an absolute deal breaker for him, he has continued to get to the Tour de France Femmes cycling event annually. The growth this event has seen, especially over the past 2-3 years, has been insane to take in, and super exciting for women’s sport in general! Kuddos Tour de France Femmes! I hope I can make my way back to the event again in 2026 as well!
With so many questions after the release of the latest Garmin Venu X1 watch, it seemed a head-to-head…to head comparison of Garmin’s three top performance watch lines was in order. So if you’re interested in what all the similarities and differences are between Garmin’s Fenix 8, Forerunner 970, and the latest Venu X1, then check out what Ray had to say about the three converging watch series.
Recently Ray posted that Wahoo added Native Power Broadcasting to it’s KICKR ROLLR. You all know very well that it would be disingenuous for me to put any spin or comments on said post beyond quoting that title! First and foremost, you’ll likely never see me voluntarily up on a set of rollers (though, these are a bit different). Secondly, I read “native power broadcasting…” and my brain saw “Murmel Murmel Murmel”. Though I will say, Murmel Murmel Murmel was one of my favorite stories as a kid! Basically anything written by Robert Munsch in the 90’s was gonna be a great bedtime story!
Lastly, Apple had a snafu in 2024 with selling Apple watches in the USA with SpO2 (blood oxygen) feature. Thanks to a redesign, as of today, (cough, yesterday 14th August), USA based Apple watch users can now update their WatchOS and regain this Blood Oxygen feature on the Apple Watch 9 Series, 10 Series, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2. Congratulations I think? |
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In-Depth Thoughts of The Girl
Hey now, where ya to???
I can’t tell you how happy I am to be writing to you from my childhood home here in Newfoundland, Canada. As a lot of you already know, I pack up the kids each summer and head “home” for at least 2 weeks, and this summer we stretched it to almost 4 weeks.
While I absolutely adore Mallorca, the August heat is pretty infamous there, and the way family logistics worked out this summer, we all agreed that August in Canada wouldn’t be a bad thing! Full of cousin love, s'mores, and back yard shenanigans!
Adding to the Canadian excitment, while I’m home this year, Newfoundland is the host province to the Jeux de Canada Games 2025! Which to put in super layman’s terms, is akin to a mini Olympics for Canada. The Canada Games follows an every 4 years cycle for both summer and winter, and they try to incorporate a variety of the Olympic sports (within reason for that province/ host city to accommodate). And instead of countries, it's all of the Canadian provinces and territories that compete.
So I’ve been out to as many of the events in the past week as I could whilst hauling the 3 girls with me. Our favorite so far has been the road cycling events, as we got to talk with some of the women cyclist from Newfoundland after their individual time trial on Monday. We will head back out on Saturday morning to watch the final cycling event downtown for the crit style racing. Tomorrow morning we will also head out to a local lake that I often open water swim in myself, to watch the men’s and women’s long distance open water swim events.
The Canada Games has a lot of memories for myself and my family. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to two Canada Games for squash! Yep, bet I made you re-read that a few times. While I grew-up absolutely obsessed with soccer, squash was just as much a main event in my life growing up. Growing up on a mostly snow locked island for half the year, having a second (in-door) sport to round out your athletics was a major advantage for me.
However, putting all my Canada Games experiences to shame is my mom. She’s played and coached in an untold number of Canada Games, in a variety of sports, and one of those Canada Games experiences was an extra special one. I’m talking about almost 50 years ago when she coached the only Newfoundland women's team to ever win a medal at the games. That was the Women’s Newfoundland Field Hockey Team in 1977. And yes, you read that right too, the only women's Newfoundland team, summer or winter, in any team event ever represented by Newfoundland since the start of the games!
When I sit back and listen to the stories told by the athletes my mom coached, they very much parallel with some of my own childhood memories. If I wasn’t going to be the most technically gifted player at whatever sport I was currently into… my gawd she was going to push me to be the fittest! If I couldn’t beat them with skills, I was going to out-work them and force errors!
See, here in Newfoundland, while we are a very proud province, we aren’t exactly the most outfitted with facilities and national level coaches. We are a bit of the "Have-Not" province in Canada. I imagine as well, back in the 70’s, the women’s team also had minimal access to well… anything. One of the stories that I remember growing up is how their goalie hadn’t even ever trained with a regulation sized field hockey goal, she only had access to simple cones/pylons! But that didn’t stop them, if I know my mom well enough, those ladies she had on the field were fit and gritty, and with a huge hometown crowd behind them, they were (and still are) the Cinderella team of the past half century!
So as you can imagine, being here for this Canada games year, hosted here in my hometown, has had me hugely nostalgic. Lots of great energy here in the city, and I’m ecstatic to have my 3 girls coming to the events, cheering, talking to athletes, and of course, the biggest Canada Game’s tradition- trading pins!
I’ll do a better job at photos over the next week, and hopefully get them up on my Instagram. Though as you probably know, Ray is king of Insta-stories, so might be more in his wheelhouse.
Lastly, I do hope to drop another newsletter in your inbox before the end of August, where I’ll fill you in on my Newfoundland swim, bike, and run efforts to stay semi-fit over the summer. But since Ray only arrived today, I have zero photo proof that I’ve done any training over the past 2 weeks! Funny how that happens… stay tuned.
As always, thanks for being a DC Rainmaker Newsletter Subscriber. Until next time! Bobbie |
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