He grunts. I move.

I round the corner where Egypt Nightclub once stood, its long windows now papered with decaying Philadelphia Inquirers and New York Times. They're dated March 21 through March 25, 2003. Scattered amid ads for Strawbridge's and Movado are an obit for the ex-mayor of Rochester and an FBI-issued global alert for suspected terrorist Adnan El Shukrijumah (still at large, still considered armed and dangerous). Egypt is under construction. The floor is a mess of snaking wires and extra-wide janitor's brooms. Little remains of its tacky gold heyday, save a half-plastered wall mural depicting a pageantry of Egyptian gods and goddesses. Isis? Nephthys? The Bangles?

Farther up the block, a wet paperback is splayed open. Our Daily Bread , August 17, Thursday, Ephesians 3:1-9. The quote at the bottom of the page, attributed to Willet, reads: "Afflictions may test me,/ They cannot destroy;/ One glimpse of Thy Love/ Turns them all into joy." I tear the page out and keep walking.

It's 86 degrees. I've walked 200 feet and I'm sweating. My hair is slicked to the back of my neck and my jeans are chafing. I do a double take when I see four massive, evenly spaced piles of snow in the bowels of an open-ended warehouse.

Convinced this must be a salt dump or recycling plant or — fuck, it's hot out — a mirage, I thrust my hand in deep. It's definitely snow.

I notice a man in khakis moving toward me. He looks angry. No Trespassing signs hang everywhere. I hightail it out.

Back on Delaware, limousines and ambulances streak by in flashes of white and red, and Ruff Ryders zoom past on their arcade-toy motorcycles, fat-bottomed girlfriends clinging to their backs like baby chimps on The Discovery Channel.

Dead ahead: A full Duck (the riding kind) is waiting patiently at the intersection of Columbus and Race. I envision it gathering speed, crashing through the gates and plunging its 15 or so passengers hard into the Delaware. Instead, it teeters cautiously on the ramp while the driver spends five minutes showing the duckload of quacker-faced tourists how to put on a life vest. A man as round as a Russian nesting doll hands me a Ride the Duck flier. "Check us out sometime!" he says.

I'm up to Municipal Pier No. 9 and the Comfort Inn. The blocks melt together from this vantage point, sloping hills giving way to ivy growing like paintings up concrete dividers. Tourists in flower-print capris chatter past; a woman scorned sits outside La Veranda Ristorante, a small blue gift bag on her lap, her mascara running.

Not 100 yards away, I spot an art sculpture outside Pier 3 housing. Six tar-black heads with nightmarish eyes push through holes in a terra-cotta facade, their faces forever frozen in anguished screams. They have buck teeth, curled lips and sunken cheekbones. Some are missing noses.

Mildly disturbed, I verge onto the path more traveled and head down to Penn's Landing, where I pass a man standing in a parka and having a conversation with no one. He gestures emphatically, and I wonder who he was before he was this. A preacher? A politician? So animated, so much promise. I wonder the same about the man sitting at the edge of Pier 3, sickly in a wheelchair, the tops of his tall beige socks met by an afghan. I glance back at the man in the parka, who is now sitting against a tree, examining his face in a ladies' compact.

The Gazela tall ship is docked ahead. The rest of Penn's Landing is blocked at the Seaport Museum, so I return to the dead space that is Columbus, trudge past the Hyatt Regency, past the Society Hill Towers, which rise like three giant phalluses over the cobblestone of Dock Street, and pause when I reach the Christopher Columbus Cinquecento Anniversary statue. An inscription at the bottom pays tribute to the families that "braved the journey" to America. Families with last names like Fumo and Sorgenti, Milani, Marone, DiLullo, DiCicco and Rossi.

A few paces down rests a series of stone relief carvings on granite pedestals. The little silver sign dates them 12th c.-13th c. A.D., Java, Indonesia. The lintel, which looks not unlike the square-toothed dog/lions that guard Chinese buffets, depicts Kala, a "ferocious but protective" sort that, according to the sign, sits above doorways and symbolizes rebirth. Whenever a visitor passes through the gate, he is "devoured and then immediately reborn."

A woman with large breasts and Pantene hair, wearing a dress I recognize from the Victoria's Secret clearance catalog, paces back and forth between the Moshulu and the Spirit of Philadelphia. Men in navy shirts crack Mariano jokes and talk about summer houses in Jersey. The air smells of fried fish.

On the left, more future sites of marina condos, 24/7 concierges and 10-year tax abatements. On the right, brick homes with houseplants and windowsill statues of the Virgin Mary. On the left, the sort of hulking, abandoned warehouses where men get their ears sliced off with pocket knives. On the right, a strip mall full of signs for hot bagels and Hollywood tans. It is here that I drop $10.25 on an eight-year-old Ashton Cabinet at Light'N Up Cigars.

Reed to Dickinson to Dilworth to McKean is a blur. There's a parking lot that smells like buttered popcorn at the UA Riverview and a misspelling in the Burger King marquee. There's Magee Rehabilitation, which arguably saved my father's life, and obese people standing outside the Wawa wearing ankle socks and Adidas sandals. There's Girls! Girls! Girls! at the Show and Tel, and a guy slumped over a "Homeless, Please Help" sign at the Wal-Mart intersection. The sun is sinking in the west, the impoundment lot is straight ahead, and the license plates outside Club Risque read Jersey, Jersey, PA, Jersey.

And then, I see it. In yellow and blue block lettering, the beacon of consumer culture, Mecca in the form of flat-packed particle board and Swedish meatballs, my finish line: IKEA.

I'm feeling rejuvenated and blow past the decorative boulders at Famous Dave's, past a pregnant lady waddling into Linens 'n Things, past Best Buy and Lowe's and Chick-fil-A and IHOP.

At the end of my walk, now only 20 feet away, bakes my victory dinner: a $2 panzarotti and $1 lingonberry soda from the IKEA cafe.

It's 7:17 p.m.

(ashlea.halpern@citypaper.net)