Ending 2023 - Looking to 2024




Here it is the 12th of January almost half of the first month of the new year is gone. I usually wrap up the prior year on New Year’s Day but I have been totally unmotivated to work on this blog. Pouring rain again today as it has off and on for the entire month. So I woke up this morning and decided that I needed to do this post. 




Certainly a highlight of 2023 was getting to complete my goal of racing in each of the lower 48 states. Tom and Stacie commemorated it with a tee shirt that I posted in earlier entries and Stacie finished it off sending me a really cool U.S. map Christmas ornament. I’m proud to have finished that quest against pretty difficult challenges..going forward it’s hard to even contemplate any race goals whether they be family runs, reunion runs or just races to keep going. I started working on my 2024 calendar and I actually wrote in potential events here in Eugene for the entire year. Writing them down doesn’t mean I’ll do them but I have to try to have some goals no matter how vague. 




My race totals for 2023 was pretty unimpressive but I did still manage to complete 13 races including the final 4 in New England and a Reunion Run in Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. The two back to back in Maine and Vermont were probably the two slowest 5k’s I’ve ever done but I got them done.

My reading total was pretty consistent with recent years. 72 total books, 57 fiction and 15 nonfiction. I wrote about several of them in previous posts.

We lost our last pig this year. He passed away in his sleep on New Years. He lived quite a bit longer than his brother and had a good life. 





Billy was supervising us prepping him for burial. It took five of us to get him prepared and sent off to his burial. 

One morning when I took Charlie out we had a visit from a hawk. It was cool. 






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