I had no intention of taking a big walk this morning, but that’s what I ended up doing, thanks to my wife, the lovely Danusia.

The original plan was to do the laundry. Tuesday is laundry day and I usually get there around 8 A.M. and it takes about 2 hours, during which I go shopping for mineral water at the Food Bazaar on Manhattan Ave, eat breakfast, fold the laundry, than come home to write my Tuesday blog post.

Sunday Danusia left her iPad charger at a friend’s house and was trying to figure out ways of getting it back. I volunteered to go pick it up, but since the friend’s boyfriend has a business in our neighborhood, it was decided that he would bring the charger to work with him and I would pick it up. Danusia also had an early date today so everything would happen sooner rather than later.

That was OK with me because I wanted to be home in time to get the daily prompt for today’s Daily Post challenge at 10 A.M. I was at the laundry at 7.

I put the clothes in the washer, took my cart across the street to the Food Bazaar, one of those giant stores where poor people push shopping carts overflowing with brightly colored fructose drinks and steroid-enhanced meat.

I got my 6 two-liter bottles of GÜTTIG mineral water, an 8-pack of Scott’s toilet tissue and two avocadoes. I carried all this up the four flights of stairs to our apartment before going back to the laundry just in time to put the wash in the dryer. I always put everything in one dryer and put an hour’s worth of time on it.

Then I set off to my friend’s “Store” on the corner of Johnson and Morgan Avenues.

Danusia said yesterday “I didn’t know Ezra had a store.” (That’s what Ezra calls his wholesale outlet.)

            “It’s a store for stores, honey.”

If I could walk in a straight line to the store for stores it would be about a half mile. Unfortunately The Bushwick Houses and dozens of factories and warehouses block the way, and the only way to get there is either going up Graham Ave. to Johnson and then across to Morgan, or up Flushing to Morgan and across. It’s a giant three-mile square, since either way is a mile and a half.

Waiting for the bus on Graham Ave.

I had hopes of catching a bus and making quick work of it, and luckily a B-43 bus came right on schedule (8:50 A.M.) and took me the 7 blocks to Montrose where I could catch the B-60 to Morgan Ave. But I just missed the B-60. I checked the schedule on the bus post and it was 16 minutes to the next bus. I started walking the eight very long blocks to Morgan Ave., a walk I’ve done before years ago when I would walk from Williamsburg to Bushwick in search of controlled substances. Back then there was literally nothing there, at least at night. There were packs of wild dogs.

Somewhere on Johnson Ave.

Now I passed a big tile distributer, a concrete factory (or something like that) and myriad meat warehouses. When I got to Ezra’s store the B-60 bus was arriving, so it had been at least a 16-minute walk.

I got the charger and my plan was to keep going on Morgan to Flushing Ave. and turn south to home, completing the three-mile square. I figured I could stop by Carrera’s, my favorite Mexican food and products store on Flushing Ave. for molé and fresh tortillas. They had the molé but today’s tortillas were not ready yet. I just got the molé.

Carrera’s on Flushing Ave.

I walked the rest of the way home, I did check to see when the next B-57 bus would be coming down Flushing but since it only runs every half hour and Flushing Ave. was bumper to bumper with commercial traffic I would beat the bus to Broadway by twenty minutes.

I ran upstairs to deposit my mole in the fridge and went back to the laundry on Whipple Street, just past the McDonalds on Broadway. The clothes were dry and still warm to the touch. I did all of this wearing my white Havainas flip-flops.