Yesterday I went on an expedition for groceries. I went to Aldi. When the weather’s nice I’ll walk there and take the bus home. Now because of COVID-19
I’d rather not take public transportation. I talked about this with Allison and she suggested that I wear a backpack, not the one shoulder model I usually wear, but a full backpack. I tried it, it worked. There’s no direct route to Aldi, there’s a reservoir in the way. He’s what the round trip looks like.
I don’t know why the last two blocks of the trip don’t show up on the map. I traveled counter-clockwise. The northern route is slightly longer but I know it. I need directions from Google to find my way home on the southern one. The trip there is 1.9 miles and the way home 1.7 plus those extra couple of blocks. Let’s call it 1.8 miles. That’s a nice walk and more difficult than is obvious. The Bronx was carved by the glaciers. It’s a very rough landscape with steep escarpments. You drive around them. but they put in stairways to help you walk them. One was made famous by the dance in The Joker. I believe that’s on the same escarpment I had to traverse, but further south. Walk to the store is downhill, the trip back, with the weight of groceries is up. These are what the stairs look like.
This spring I want to do a photo essay of all the Bronx stairs. I hope there’s a website that lists them all. I’ll go out with my real camera, not just my phone. The River Towns have stairs like this near the Hudson; do you know any other place that does? Does San Francisco?
Most people walking try to keep their distance. There were a few exceptions. There were three teens walking together, sometimes touching each other, walking abreast along the narrow sidewalk. They made no attempt to make way for people walking the other direction. I was behind them and saw the poor people trying to squeeze by. That’s just oblivious. The one person that I can’t explain at all was a woman I encountered walking in the opposite direction. I see her coming and move to the extreme right of the sidewalk. She sees me and veers left to move closer to me. When she was past me she moved back to her right.
The main things I went shopping for were eggs, half & half, potatoes, and hot dog rolls. They were out of eggs, half & half, potatoes, and hot dog rolls. I also wanted chicken breast filets and thighs. They were out of those too. I did manage to get some wings. I stopped at the Fine Fare right by my house and got the eggs. It was worth it for the exercise and I did buy plenty of food including country style ribs. I had no meat other than hot dogs and hamburgers at home.
There were three streaming concerts I wanted to watch but only caught the third, TAARKA. They had some tech issues but they are so good it was still worth it. Not many people know them in these parts, though they used to live here, it’s been a long time. You need to know them.
I missed once concert because I want to talk on the phone every day while I’m isolating. This works well with my other mission to reconnect with people. Yesterday’s human sacrifice was Marc. I haven’t spoken to him in a year. He’s the one that brought me into my fantasy baseball league, so of course we talked about that. Everything is up in the air now. We don’t even know if there will be a baseball season. Calling people is proving good for my mental health.
Today I’m getting a call, I have another interview to do about Social Distancing Streaming Concerts. This might have some legs. It’s certainly keeping me busy. It can keep you busy took. Look at our events calendar. We have many shows every day.
Wise Madness 