Because of the holidays hundreds of people had shown up, a record attendance. I made an effort to start fast to get across the bridge and on to the boardwalk near the front of the pack, to avoid any trouble. The boardwalk was quite tricky as they warned, I was lucky to not have to overtake anyone until after the halfway point, but regardless of that you still have to be very careful to watch out for other people walking in both directions to make sure you don't end up with a major collision - dogs and prams just add to the difficulty.
I was on the edge of the top ten which was a bit of a worry, but a few people dropped off on the way back and I ended up about 6th and just under 20 minutes. Back to the hotel to checkout already, and driving off towards Batemans Bay around 9:00am. That was until the traffic came to a complete stop in Moruya, a total disaster, it took about 30 minutes to get through a town only a couple of kilometres long. All of the roundabouts didn't help, but the real problem was the traffic lights at the end. They had about three sequences at the intersection and didn't seem to be giving any preference to the majority of cars trying to drive straight along the highway! Whoever designed these highways is an idiot for having them go straight through the middle of these small towns *and* installing traffic lights. It seems to be a lot more sensible in Victoria where there is a small detour off the highway to get to the towns usually.
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| We're on a road to nowhere. |
Finally made it to Batemans Bay a bit behind schedule, cars everywhere again. I'm not sure if they had a good beach, but it seemed a lot bigger and maybe better than Merimbula otherwise? So it took forever to find a parking spot since everyone had come to the city centre for lunch apparently, and it was about 1:00pm by the time lunch was done and ready to resume driving again.
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| Batemans Bay. |
In my notes I had the NBL starting in Sydney at 7:30pm, so still plenty of time, but then on the tickets it said 5:30pm instead and still about four hours of driving to go. Probably due to being in a hurry it seemed like I got stuck behind every slow driver, and every overtake lane was still available *only* at the beginning of the steepest possible hill around. So annoying because my car seemed to have even less power than usual going up the hills, so I'd be stuck behind these idiots but then barely have enough speed to get around one of them going up the hill.
Had another one of those towns where traffic came to a stop, somewhere near Jamberoo maybe, I forget the name. This time there was a pedestrian crossing with crossing attendants - what a system. Lucky in our direction it was only about a five minute delay, it looked a lot worse going back the other way.
Swapped out of the driver seat after Wollongong as I was pretty sore after two long days of driving. Jumping in a car soon after running is probably the biggest reason though. Made the NBL with a whole 20 minutes to spare, but had to skip any other stops I had planned on the way. The whole Olympic Park precint was dead empty besides the basketball, so great for parking right outside the arena. Amazingly the Sydney Kings were winning at half time, but fell off afterwards. Got some dinner at Oporto's aka NSW Nando's but was too tired for much else and just went to the hotel afterwards. The free wifi was running at an awesome 5kb/s.
Steps: 5000 + 7.5km running
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