Well, it’s time to make things ‘Facebook Official’, minus, actually updating my Facebook page. As some of you have started to figure out, we’ve begun the process of relocating to a new adventure and a new country. After 6 years in the Netherlands, we’ll soon be calling Mallorca (a Spanish island), home. Though, I suppose technically, I’m already calling it home.
Last month in between a million different product launches, we moved the family down here, and then over the remainder of the fall I’ll be working to get the sprawling Amsterdam DC Rainmaker Cave packed up and relocated to Mallorca as well.
As we noted last year, the owner of our Amsterdam office space wishes to tear down the building and build high-rise apartments. As such, our lease ends in December, though, at the last minute they always keep offering slight extensions as their construction timetable gets delayed. Either way, that process started to get us thinking about new potential adventures for our family, and a more sunny locale quickly bubbled to the surface as a key requirement.
Certainly, we’ve absolutely loved the Netherlands (minus the weather) and its people, as we’ve raised our three daughters there (all very much native Dutch speakers). The bike infrastructure of the Netherlands continues to be unbeatable, but, at the same time, a place like Mallorca does offer more year-round testing ground opportunities for me that don’t require me to travel as much. Notably including mountains for hiking, road riding, mountain biking, gravel riding, and year-round (enjoyable) openwater swimming. I’ve been coming to Mallorca for probably a decade now to do all those things, and thus I’m pretty familiar with the island. After considering lots of places in Europe and well beyond, we ultimately decided it’s the perfect blend of both very outdoorsy, but also still easily accessible to the rest of Europe (and even seasonal non-stop flights to New York).
Thus back in September we moved into our new home in the southwestern edges of Mallorca, and the kids started school (and of course, already learning to speak both Spanish and Catalan). We’re strong believers that our kids will only really feel like they fit in long term with all their friend groups, if they speak the local languages natively. That was definitely true in the Netherlands, and since we expect this to be a (likely very) long-term stay, the same here as well.
As far as DC Rainmaker goes, we’ve almost got the contract signed/finalized for a new DCR Cave location in Mallorca. It’s in an awesome area a few blocks from stunning beaches with openwater swimming, directly on a popular road-riding route, and easy access to gravel routes too. It’s gonna be awesome. Thus, after the upcoming Amsterdam DCR Winter Open House 2024 in late November, we’ll move everything down to Mallorca by the end of the year. Typically speaking, the December timeframe is the quietest time of year for me product-wise, hence, best to deal with the ginormous task of packing, unpacking, and building out a new space.
Now, since we’ve moved here, we’ve been making the most of everything it has to offer, from a sports standpoint. Directly out our front door is awesome gravel riding, and trail running, plus openwater swims a 2-minute pedal away. And likewise, I went out on a 50KM trail run/hike a few weeks ago as well. Plus of course the road riding that the island is so famous for cycling-wise.
For daily adventures, I brought our Urban Arrow cargo bike from Amsterdam, and I’ve been attempting to make it work for school and town/activity runs. It’s a bit tricky in that our bike is a bit older now, and also one of the less powerful models (since there were no hills in Amsterdam when we bought it). Whereas here, the route home from school includes some 13-15% gradients, plus the bike loaded with three kids (+ me) simply, we can’t make it up. So, they have to get out and run about 30-50 meters for the steepest sections at the end, before they can load back up the clown-car-like situation that it is, and continue on.
Still, the kids absolutely love riding to/from school in it, and we get a gazillion looks from everyone else while using it. Hopefully I can find a solution that works long-term and doesn’t require them to evacuate ship each time. On the bright side, sans-kids, I got the bike up to some crazy 55KPH speeds on one of the descents! Coming from it’s Dutch life, this poor thing never knew it could go so fast!
That’s all I’ve got for now, and definitely make sure if you want to check out the DCR Cave in Amsterdam before it gets torn down, sign-up for the Open House – spots are going fast! But don’t worry, just as we did in Paris before Amsterdam, we’ll continue doing DCR Cave Open Houses in Mallorca. Just gotta get the thing built out first!
Thanks for following along and reading, and have a great weekend!
(Oh, and PS, we post a ton of daily sport/life/behind-the-scnes photos to our Instagram stories, both mine and my wife – enjoy!)
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