My commute home is the same as plenty of other people who live in the Northeast: the El, then one of the dozen or so buses that fan out across the area. For me, it's the 59, which loops around Oxford Circle then shoots up Castor Avenue. On a good day, it's a 15-minute ride. Castor Avenue is a blur of storefronts and row homes and grass poking out from sidewalk cracks and ... oh, look. I'm home. I don't think about Castor Avenue much.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

But three days ago, I stepped off the El and walked it. And along the way, I noticed the staggering variety of things you can do along Castor Avenue.

You can drink a Coors Light for $1.50. Order a steamed crab. Get your hair teased. Have yourself fitted in a suit by a guy named Guido. Rent an Indian movie. Shop for Brazilian fashions. Order the Halibut Don Antonio. Groove to Reggaeton. Bowl. Buy a vintage 1950s sled. Get a duplicate car registration. Pick up bread and milk. Buy a first holy communion dress. Have a will made up for $25. Order a birthday cake. Meditate in a Buddhist prayer center, then after you're finished, ask how much it would cost to have a deck installed on the back of your row house. (Both businesses use the same door.) Buy old-fashioned fuses — the kind you have to screw into the fuse box. Borrow a library book. Select a ceiling fan. Grab a bag of soft pretzels so warm they're still cooking inside. Have a tooth pulled. Buy a school shoe.

In exchange for an hour of my time — that's how long it took to walk home — everything in an overly familiar stretch of the city looked like I'd just been sprung from jail after 10 years. Up close, everything was new.

I wasn't the only one hitting the road. A few weeks ago, I asked our staff to take a walk somewhere and write about it. Sounds like the most obvious assignment in the world, doesn't it? Reporters are supposed to pound the pavement. But we rarely just wander around. Often, we're headed somewhere specific. We put our iPod buds in our ears, inner city blinders up, and we're off in pursuit of our daily targets.

Not this week. Brian Hickey meandered home to East Falls, in pursuit of stories and a big fat margarita. Tami Fertig decided to escape the summer heat and go underground. Ashlea Halpern wandered by the Delaware River. Mike Regan stepped out of his house and walked through a neighborhood most people try to avoid. Pat Rapa went with God. Trey Popp, who is clearly a masochist, decided to stroll, oh ... 28 friggin' miles from Chadds Ford to Philadelphia. On the following pages, they'll tell you all about the cool things they saw.

I use the word cool figuratively. For some reason, I decided that the best time to do this story would be in the dead of July, during the most brutal heat wave in recent memory.

OK, so maybe I'm a bit of a sadist, too.