Albany, Georgia is home to the Pretoria Fields Brewery. The Pretoria Fields Collective partners with farmers and suppliers all over the state of Georgia, keeping it local and making a great product.

Over the past few years I have developed a taste for Sours and Goses, and Pretoria Fields did not disappoint.



They have large indoor and outdoor seating areas and the building is in a nice historic brick building by the river.





Dog Friendly and delicious beers. Everything we tried was delicious.

If you are passing near Albany, GA, it is worth the visit.

Pretoria Fields makes some of their beers available for take-home in bottles or cans.

I photographed this street sign in the town of Talladega, Alabama.

After Christmas I spent some time in Alabama with my two best buddies, Cathy and Kip. We did hiking on Pinhoti Trail in Talladega National Forest and in Cheaha State Park, the highest point in Alabama.





We also did some gravel cycling.

The Lloyd Clarke Sports Race Series is a grand prix of three races:

Turkey Trot 10k 1018
Newnans Lake 15k 2019
Trail of Payne 10k 2019

This is one of the few years where I was actually able to run all three races. This post will be a combo post for the series. Trail of Payne 2019 was the final race and I am pleased with where I am on my comeback to fitness after a pretty tough year.


For the Turkey Trot I decided to wear a turkey costume and have a good time. I finished in 43:41 (avg. 7:02 per mile).



For the Newnans Lake 15k I have no pictures! But I finished in 1:04:15 (avg. 6:54 per mile).

Trail of Payne 10k was enjoyable on a nice cool morning. Finish time was 40:59 (avg. 6:45 per mile) which was good enough to win the overall Master division.


Photo by Cathy Bester


Photo by Cathy Bester

One of the neater trophies I have received:



Race series finishers received a nice pint glass:

2019 was another enjoyable GATE River Run 15k experience.

I rode the Florida Track Club bus to Jacksonville on the morning of the race. This required an early wakeup, but it was nice not having to worry about parking. The bus takes us inside the event grounds, very close to the registration area and post-race festivities. It is nice to just hop on the bus after drinking some free beers. :)

Finish time was 1:03:17 (avg 6:49 min/mi). I earned a Top-10% finisher hat.

Just after Thanksgiving I started my new job as a Senior Site Reliability Engineer for SharpSpring which is located here in Gainesville, Florida.

On my first day they put me at a desk next to the window and I received a nice t-shirt (swag!).



The company just moved to a brand-new office building located in the mixed-use development known as Celebration Pointe.



As a long-time "Linux on the desktop" user, one of my initial challenges has been getting used to MacOS.



I am excited to have plenty of great things to learn. Besides on-the-job training, I am currently working thru a list of Linux Academy training courses. I finished up Docker Deep Dive this past week.