Run on Gilded Splinters

Yet another beautiful morning. Went to do a loop incorporating Tinicum, to do so today I headed northwest instead of southeast and moseyed my way through the backroads of Norwood, Folcroft (didn't know a place named that existed until today) and Darby before coming up to Hook Rd., an ugly suburban thoroughfare with no shoulder/sidewalks. Instead there was an improvised dirt path on the exceedingly narrow space by the side of the road that was almost paved in embedded glass shards which sparkled like gilded splinters in the morning sun.

This took me to the far end of Tinicum. Tinicum was as alive as I've ever seen it. Its most definitely wabbit season in there, and it is also gosling season, meaning the Canada geese are particularly nasty nowadays. I had a standoff with a gaggle of them, complete with some cute goslings (soon to be nasty adults themselves), whose parents were hissing and bobbing their necks at me as I tried to be as big and bad as I could so they wouldn't have a go at me. I did survive, but must say that, in all my years running in the depths of SW Philly, I've never felt my safety near as threatened as I did here this morning. As a reward for having negotiated that, I ran into, from what best I could tell, was an Eastern Mud Turtle laying her eggs in the loose dirt. She was easily 8 inches from head to tail.

Great morning to be out running. The loop as measured was 9.5 miles, it was easily ten this morning due to a couple of wrong turns. So I'll call it ten in 84:41.