Running (Trail) 1:01:00 [3] 8.6 km (7:06 / km)
Drove to the north end of Albion to run the single track. The only plan was to run it all, no matter how steep the hills got - and there were lots of hills! I succeeded except for a brief stop just 3 minutes into the run when an Eastern Milk Snake blocked my progress by stretching all the way across a narrow trail.
'Bent and I have been watching "Austin Stevens" on Discovery HD lately. He's a photographer who specializes in dangerous animals, and even if he's looking for rhinos that day, he can't walk past a deadly snake without picking it up with his hands and snake handling stick, and shoving it into the lens of the TV camera. We always think of Shifty, our cameraman friend, and imagine how annoying it must be to film people who gleefully shove poisonous creatures at you in every episode. "Oooooh, look - that single drop of venom he just released would be enough to kill a human. And there's no antivenom for it. And oh my, it's an absolutely horrible way to die. OK now, let me show you his teeth more closely - they are quite remarkable."
I was afraid the poor snake would get squished by mountain bikers, so I gently tossed a few small pieces of wood a few inches in front of him. He didn't care - he wasn't leaving his nice warm patch of sunshine on the trail. I bushwhacked around him and kept my fingers crossed.
I could hear a couple of mountain bikers about 5 minutes behind me as I ran the northeast single track, so I kept my ears cocked the way BulletDog does when she's expecting 'Bent home from work. They hadn't seen me, and I didn't want to freak them out on a blind corner or be forced to leap into a patch of poison ivy - but it never happened. It's a little embarrassing for them that they couldn't catch me on bikes, given that I don't run like MrPither! Before heading to the northwest for a different loop, I made a detour to the start of the trail to see if there were snake parts strewn across the trail. Happily, it appears that my slimy little friend had slithered into the woods before the bikes arrived.