Albury 2023, December 31

I woke in the morning with a sore right foot, like most days a new minor problem.

I drove in to Wodonga to park near the beginning on the High Country rail trail. It was a good quiet track heading towards Talangatta again, I didn't want to run too long so only did about 16 kilometres in total.

I got some lunch before heading back to the hotel to watch BBC Match Of The Day from overnight.

Back to Albury again in the afternoon, a quick visit to the Murray Art Museum Albury. It was alright but there wasn't that much too see, and no magnets for sale in the shop.

I walked around the rest of city I hadn't been to the day before, dealing with some very tired legs and still a bit of foot soreness, and ended up back at the hotel by late afternoon.

I tried to find out online if there was any new years eve celebrations or fireworks, but all I came up with was that it was cancelled in Wodonga this year due to costs, and nothing about Albury. Even staying in Kerang last year they had fireworks, and that was a much smaller town.

At midnight I could heard some fireworks going for a few minutes, but couldn't see anything from the hotel window.

Albury 2023, December 29-30

Drove to Albury on Friday afternoon from 1pm to 5pm with a quick stop at about 4pm.

The Hume Freeway was good with the 110 km/h speed limit almost all the way, except so many cars just stay forever in the overtaking lane, many times I would get blocked in the slow lane because someone is driving about one kilometre faster in the other lane.

Went straight to the hotel to check-in, had an incredibly slow lift that only goes up two floors, was faster to take the stairs.

One of the benefits to a smaller town is it's so much easier to drive around without heaps of traffic, I was able to do a quick lap to Coles and Mad Mex for dinner in just a few minutes.

Watched some TV episodes and BBL cricket while planning for the early morning drive.

Had to get up at 6:30am to drive to Talangatta Station for the morning parkrun. I could have just done two events in the nearby Albury-Wodonga area but I thought I'd drive to one a bit further away - in case I might ever manage to visit every parkrun in Victoria.

It was about 40 minutes to Talangatta, empty roads but lots of hills and turns so usually couldn't go at the 100km/h speed limit.

I went for a five kilometre warm up on the rail trail in the opposite direction to parkrun for some variety, no idea how long the trail runs in total but definitely over fifty kilometres since it starts back in Wodonga. The surface was alright, loose stones on top of a fairly flat bitumen layer.

At the briefing there was about 40 people turn up, a bit more than the usual 20 to 30. I started a bit slow in third but realised the others weren't going any faster than 3:50/km so went ahead. I didn't want to run at max effort with another parkrun on Monday and all of the extra leg fatigue from driving and walking around during the weekend.

I finished around 18:30 which was good enough, the next finisher was close to four minutes behind. I had another short run afterwards to finish, then drove back to hotel.

I walked a bit over a kilometre each way to the farmers market, but it was very small and didn't find anything to buy. I drove a short distance into the city centre instead to reduce the amount of walking for the day.

Spent a bit of time exploring a couple of the main city streets then ended up at the Myer centre to buy some lunch. I completed a lap and got back to the hotel to have lunch and rest my legs for a while.

After feeling a bit more refreshed I drive over to Monument Hill, a small war memorial with a view of city. The monument looks better upwards from the city, as much of the view is blocked by trees.

It was very hot and dry outside, which seems to be common for regional towns in summer. I got back in the car to go a bit further west to Yindyamarra scultpure walk. There was a few good pieces along the path but it was just too far in between each, over five kilometres for the complete loop, I didn't go all the way around the last lake so it was closer to four kilometres.

I had some tired legs by the end of that visit, the car was extremely hot from being parked in the sun so I had another stop on the way back at the small city botanical gardens.

I decided to visit Wodonga instead for some more food and dinner, since it's only about five kilometres to the companion city centre.

November Review

 A very delayed review this month.

Straight into running, had a slow month of parkruns while training for a half marathon in early December. I'm still crossing off new event numbers from the list - 115, 125, 128, and 165 slowly filling in the rest of the gaps under 200.

The shares aren't doing much lately, and are probably one track for a small gain for this year, but still way below the peak from two years ago. After the end of year reporting many companies decided to do capital raising which causes the share price to plummet - one raised at a 30% discount so the existing share price sank almost as much. Since it was a small company only raising a few million dollars or less, surely they'd be better off taking out a loan if they're going to be cash flow positive any time soon. On that topic, I don't know how these companies can be on the exchange for over 10 years and still not make a profit.

Nothing much happening in professional sports but I have been to a few weeks of local gridiron at Ashwood and Croydon, both have good grounds and are a similar distance away.

A bit more on the to do list:

• New computer
• Ordered a new system during the Cyber Monday weekend
• Probably just need to add another internal drive
• Going to take a while to transfer all apps and files from the old computer
• Parkrun special events
• Have a short list of locations for the new year weekend, just have to book one

A slow end to work for the year although keeping busy with the December advent of code challenges again.

That's it for this month.

• Books
• None
• Movies
• None
• Music
• None
• TV
• Harlan Coben's Shelter
• Too many twists and no ending at all
• 5 out of 10
• Video Games
• Nintendo Switch
• Super Mario RPG
• Expected a good RPG so was really disappointed
• Linear gameplay and very short
• 2 out of 10
• Xbox 360
• Mass Effect 3
• Another good game to finish the series
• Had to spend too much time walking around and going through dialogue
• 7 out of 10