2021- Here we come!
Happy New Year!
Hope you’ve all had a good break over the xmas period and are fully recharged ready for what no doubt will be an interesting year ahead.
The break for me ended up being well timed after what turned out to be quite a busy end of year with a lot of infrastructure provisioning! Down time to spend with family and relax after the chaos that can be xmas. For me that included two of my favorite pastimes….a little more running and some reading.
On the running front, the Old Ghost Ultra is fast approaching (February 20th) and I really should have done more given all the food consumed over the break! Anyhow, I did hit the trails on a few occasions to keep the legs turning over. One session in particular ended being an interesting day…. a longer session around the Mt Oxford area near (and on) parts of the Wharfedale track. The plan was to head from the View Hill carpark up to the Black Hill hut and back which seems quite straight forward in theory. Things got slightly complicated when I tried using the navigation features of my new Coros Apex watch for the first time. With this I can upload a GPX file and then run the course using breadcrumb navigation via the watch. This is GPS based so doesn’t rely on cell coverage (which was poor/almost nonexistent) and actually works quite well. Unfortunately, I somehow managed to miss a connecting track and ended up getting a little on the lost side ….. as I mentioned with no cell coverage and an almost dead battery on my iPhone, I made the decision to backtrack to a known point. That point happened to be back up the top of Black Hill to a junction in the track where I could head back down to the carpark. So, several hours later, some 44km and 2293m of elevation (assent and decent) later I trotted back to my car a little later than expected. If it’s not on Strava it didn’t happen so here it is Black Hill Track....I have to say we do have some phenomenal countryside in which we can explore!
Lessons learnt - take a headlight, and possibly even a PLB. Definitely make sure someone knows where you’re going and when you expect to be back.
Reading is not quite as physically demanding but definitely a good option when laying back and relaxing. I’m a bit of a Science Fiction fan (some might even say nerd) and enjoy authors like Peter F. Hamilton, Iain M. Banks and Pierce Brown. I recently discovered a new (to me) author and have been loving his work. Neal Asher is the author of numerous books based in his “Polity Universe”. I’ve jumped in rather late in the timeline with his Raise of the Jain trilogy but would highly recommend it even though I’m only partway through the second book – The Warship
As soon as I’ve finished this series I’ll be back to an old favorite with the final book in Peter F Hamilton’s stunning series The Salvation Sequence. This series is defiantly worth a look for anyone interested in the genre and I've been eagerly awaiting the final book - The Saints of Salvation
Looking ahead it seems like we'll be following on right we're we left off with more provisioning for the platform on the horizon already. I suppose with growth and hardware cycles thats going to be a constant. Exciting times ahead, with some interesting projects to look forward to with the awesome team at vBridge.