New route to the Wal*Mart

Yesterday I had to take a second ride around town to collect some signatures and, as it put me close to the Delaware, I decided to ride down to Wal-Mart-by-the-Sea for a circular knitting needle.

The Powers That Be are working on a river trail for walking/biking. It makes use of an extended sidewalk through the park-like settings of Penn's Landing, but once it passes the Coast Guard station by Washington Avenue it veers back into parking lots and other things, becoming in some places a narrow ribbon of asphalt through vacant lots and post-industrial archaeology. It's only a half-mile long, and the landscape will be altered irrevocably if/when Foxwood actually builds its wretched casino on that big lot -- or when the Powers That Be get around to "improving" the trail, landscaping the grit right out of it as they did with the Schuylkill River Trail. Right now the water's edge is lined with a collection of invasives -- pawlonia, mulberry, pokeweed, phragmites.

It's a pleasant alternative to city streets, and it feels deliciously isolated, even though it isn't. Click through the Flickr photo to see more views.

UNRELATED: I will probably want to remember that yesterday I put the sprinkler on where it could hit the back door of our back house. Water seeped under the door and down the basement stairs, setting off the alarm. We couldn't turn it off, couldn't reach our alarm guy, the neighbors were scared out of their wits, and Roy finally cut the wires to the siren in desperation.