~9 miles @ ~12 min/mi)

I've survived my morning dental appointment with only a mild scolding ("Yes sir, I promise to floss more!"), and it's time to reward myself with a run. I go upstream from Adelphi Manor Park (milepost 4.5 on Northwest Branch Trail) treading carefully on icy patches and across shallow tributary streams to the end of the pavement near mile 7. Then I turn right onto the gravel access road, which I've never tried before. It climbs steeply for a quarter mile and ends at Oakview Drive, just inside the Beltway.

I trot east along Oakview, cross New Hampshire at the light, and continue through the spaghetti mess of apartment-complex parking lots until I get to a dead end. Guided by the rough map on my little GPS screen I cut through a back yard and continue east along Lackawanna St. to Riggs Road. Here I make a small mistake and zig where I should zag. Muskogee St. leads me into a maze of twisty mini-mansion lanes, near the fenced-off interchange and truck scales where I-95 leaves the Beltway for Baltimore. I nervously cut through another unfenced back yard (nobody seems to be home at mid-day in this universe) and navigate south to Buck Lodge Community Park, where a nice bike path takes me under the high-tension power lines and into College Park Woods.

I'm tempted to climb the fence and trespass on what may be a UM experimental farm field, but I refrain and follow the streets. Behind another dead-end I leap across a little creek to reach a UM research complex, from which a driveway takes me to the intersection of Metzerott Rd. and University Blvd. The temperature is still in the low 30's as I return to my car. Thankfully the battery, though weak, starts the engine; I keep it running as I pick up Son Robin at school, take him home, then drop the car off at the garage.