1
Airliner flight, somewhere over Oklahoma, hot air underneath. So-called overwing exit row. Stewardess looking out for me, solicitous of the tall. Offered me a first-row seat, first off the plane. I took it but then she nodded at my fanny pack, said it would have to go away when the plane takes off. She must have been able to see the second thought in my eyes, saying, “Or if you like we have an overwing seat, extra legroom.” That seat I took, sight unseen.
It turned out to be a middle seat in an exit row. On my left is a tallish guy in a Red Sox hat. On my right is a guy who looks surprisingly young for someone big enough to be an offensive lineman on a top-ranked Division I football team. Upper arms like hams. We’ve been rubbing a lot of shoulder. I’m sardined in. Luckily, he’s leaning against the window wall, craning a neck pillow. Otherwise his small baby of an arm would be sitting here on the armrest we share, which I need right now to write these words.
Music, songs on the plane. Before we took off, a male flight attendant gave us the most no-nonsense-this-is-actually-important and why aren’t you reading the card emergency exit pre-flight pep talk I’ve ever experienced. I was paying attention but I was also thinking: dude, do you want me to listen to you or read the card, I can’t do both at the same time.
2
I have seen a couple of women going barefoot here in what they call Sky Harbor, the Phoenix International Airport. I’m on a layover which looks to be extended about forty-five minutes longer, due to a delay.
A man whose name was called out over the speaker as a way to let him know the door to his flight would be closing in two minutes, just walked by.
“That’s him, he’s it, the last one, we are ready to go,” said the clerk behind the counter.
I could not wait to get off that plane. Rubbing arms with that beefy baby fat man, young Jabba, playing his damn video games on some mobile console with a freaking controller he pulled out from below the seat in front of him.
Then the guy on the other side of me, watching a movie on a tablet. I hadn’t seen the movie, but I knew of it. Bombshell. About a television network’s news division, the sexual harassment there. I had been drifting into sleep, and so it seemed had the guy next to me when a particularly arousing scene began to unfold in the movie. Which woke me up pretty good. Him, too, it seemed. He slammed shut the device in its holder, then unbuckled and went up toward the front of the plane to use the bathroom.
I was thinking, whoa, that was a bit risqué, that scene, to be playing out in the open, on a plane. Clearly this fellow seated to the left of me had fallen asleep and didn’t realize that scene had started, and, waking up to it playing, was embarrassed and that’s why he shut the player down and went to the bathroom to regroup.
No, not at all. Because when this guy came back from the bathroom he opened the screen, restarted the movie, took it back to the part just before the particularly arousing scene begins and played it all again. Where were the parachutes?
But now I’m free, in abeyance, with time to kill in Sky Harbor. I’ve read a little. I ate the last two of four pieces of pizza I brought, 1500 miles later. They weren’t bad at room temp and now I have a little more room in my fanny pack.
Sitting there in that middle seat, though, I couldn’t help but recall that the last person I rubbed arms with that way on an airplane was my dad. Probably on a flight to Hartford or Boston or back, on one of several trips we made over the years to the so-called “Contrary Opinion Forum” along the shore of Lake Champlain in Vergennes, Vermont. With a stop at Auntie Elsie’s and Randall’s Farm along the way. I love the setting but I never really enjoyed the Contrary Opinion Forum itself, not in the way my dad did. Of course, if I had the chance I’d go again.
3
I made it to San Diego. Was there ever any doubt? In eyes such as these?
The taxi driver I drew out of the queue was miffed that my destination was only five minutes from the airport. I heard him nonverbally signaling his disappointment. He was sighing, shrugging, and morse-code venting.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him, both of us in masks. He had put one on so I did as well.
“Three hours I wait for a five-minute ride.”
I wasn’t in the mood so I fired right back.
“So I’m supposed to feel bad For hiring you? It’s my fault?”
“No, no. Not you.”
I wasn’t done.
“The taxi drivers get mad when customers go to the ride-share services. Instead I hire you and you don’t want the business. You want me to get out?”
“No, no.”
I had considered walking. It would’ve been a thirty-five minute walk to the Best Western in Point Loma, but with a heavy pack on my back. The weather is delightful, surreal after the furnace of St. Louis. But after ten hours in airplanes and airports I thought taking a taxi would be easier.
The taxi driver throws at me the three hours he waited for a fare, I throw back at him the ten hours I’ve been traveling all day, the ridiculous Southwest Airlines cattle-call boarding experience. Being sardined into a seat between a big beefy man child and a guy who likes to play pocket pool. What I didn’t say to the taxi driver, what I didn’t point out or mention were all the other hotels we passed as we drove away from the airport on our way to where I was staying. The airport in San Diego is extremely centrally located. Downtown and all of its hotels are no more than ten minutes from the airport. Everything on the Point Loma/Yacht Harbor side of the city is within ten minutes of the airport. And I’m getting static for, what, staying too close to the airport? A lot of San Diego is really close to the airport.
It was a $12 fare. I was annoyed but I gave him a decent tip, maybe that’s what it was all about. All an act. Who knows. Next time I’ll call a Lyft.
4
I have a little balcony here off my third-floor hotel room. I’ve had the sliding door open for hours, all night. This San Diego weather is a fine gem! Just a touch cool as the outside air wafts in, a gentle air-conditioning effect.
There’s sporadic traffic along N. Harbor Road. It’s 2:30 in the morning, pacific time. If it were “my time,” I’d be close to having to call it a night and wake up for the day. All I really have to do is get myself and my luggage back to the airport in eight hours. From there I’ll have to get myself over to the rental car branch. Hopefully someone from the group will give me a ride.
It’s pretty quiet here. Through my earlier slumber I heard some partiers sloshing around, around 10:30 last night. Were they outside, in the hall, the next room, one floor away? Yo no sé. I went back to sleep almost immediately.
I hear seagulls mewling occasionally. Winging, wheeling, whistling. The water—the bay, the marina—is not far away. I can see the tops of several sailboats rocking gently in their slips.
I’ve got beer and I’m in the midst of a good essay from an old issue of Hobart. I’ll get through a few pages, this last can of Racer 5, and then I’ll get a little more sleep.
5
5:32. A surprising number of people starting their days. Looking out my balcony window here, I saw a guy running close to all-out from the Fisherman’s Landing area across the street into the big parking lot below me. I thought maybe he was running for exercise but he was really moving. Then he got into an off-red compact car and quickly drove away. Suspicious.
5:50. The in-room coffee maker does not work but a dog that I first thought was a coyote has finally stopped barking after going nonstop for an hour and. a half. There are a lot of people using this parking lot already.
Some have been out fishing at night. I see them coming back now in the soft marine light of morning. They carry rods and tackle. They keep coolers in the beds of their trucks for the fish they might have caught. Others are arriving fresh to catch what the first shift left behind.
It’s dawning on me how vibrant the fishing scene is here. A Toyota SUV parks below me. The trunk opens. Three large coolers in there. Maybe some beverages in one of the coolers, maybe some food. But mainly the coolers are in place for the fish that might be caught. A white van has come and gone, come and gone. It’s a group of guys I recognize from the hotel. They’re getting ready to go out fishing. I see folding chairs in the back of the van. For sitting on the boat?
A man makes his way into the parking lot from across the street. He is wearing a backpack that is designed to hold fishing poles. In his other hand he holds what looks like a heavy bag of ice. I know what he’s eating tonight.
A new pickup parks in the public lot. Three coolers in the back. I step out onto the balcony. I see another white van. So there was more than one. The guy in the pickup is removing items from out of his cab, setting them in the back of the truck. A sun hat, an orange five-gallon bucket. A backpack, which looks full and heavy. A banana. A small red suitcase that probably holds his rod and tackle. He leaves on foot, crossing N. Harbor at the light, over to the Landing, where people find their way to a boat leaving the marina.
As I sit on the balcony and look east/southeast, I can see a few of the tall buildings downtown. And I can see the masts of dozens and dozens of sailboats. No water is visible but it is implied. Seagulls huff and squeal.
Two guys, four rods between them. Getting ready to cross the street by foot, from the Landing side. One is wheeling a small suitcase. One carries an over-the-shoulder bag, the other has a backpack. Both sport galoshes. One is carrying a double-sack that looks heavy. Ice and fish.
I could write more about these fisherman but not today. Maybe I should have planned to stay right here again on the back-end of my excursion to Tijuana? I love this balcony. I could sit here all week. I don’t need to go downtown. I can get a good burrito and beer over here. Hashtag regret. Next time. Or on some future vacation. It’s expensive but when Comic-Con is in town, what’s not?
It’s a grey day but don’t they all start this way in San Diego? The temperature is perfect and it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be slapping on sunscreen, reaching for my hat. I’ve buried the lede, though. I’ve been so engrossed in the fishing traffic that I’ve failed to mention Dan C reaching out to me by text at 4:41. Dan is the leader of the trip I’m taking into Tijuana with Burlingame Presbyterian, my third such foray but the first in three years (COVID).
Dan was asking me about my flight, when it gets in. I said, “Yesterday!” To which he replied, “Great!” But all is not great. One of the flights scheduled to bring in some of our group from the San Francisco airport has been flat-out canceled. This will delay us for sure. How long, that’s the question. The plan was for everyone to meet at the San Diego airport at 10:30 when some of us, including me, would go get the rental vans before returning to the airport to pick up most of the rest of the group. We have 15 to 20 people this year. Once we get to Tijuana we will camp east of the city, with mountains in the distance. This week we will build a basic 11’ x 22’ house for a family of four in the Antorcha neighborhood of Tijuana. It is an act of charity, coordinated by a ministry called Amor.
6
And then we had a problem with the rental vans. The church had reserved two minivans. The reservation was for a week, running Saturday to Saturday. Only problem is, today, when we were planning to pick up the vans, is a Sunday, and that branch of Enterprise is no longer open on Sundays. Frank had picked three of us up at the airport and drove us over there. We could see what were likely our two vans behind a fence, but the place was closed.
Dan called the rental company as Frank, Jason, and I conversed casually out in front of the darkened branch. Planes roared overhead, landing and leaving. I had not met Jason before and I did not immediately identify his slight accent. It made sense when he said he hails from Ontario, Canada. As we pivoted back to the airport and the rental options there, he was telling us stories from his bare-bones budget roadtrip across the United States in the early nineties.
We were in luck back at the airport rental branch. A woman named Laura was able to get us a couple of vans, which she said someone else had reserved, but we weren’t complaining. She said she’d offer the other customers an upgrade to a Chevy Suburban (or similar), if necessary.
Next thing I know I’m driving out of San Diego in a Chrysler Pacifica. Down the 805 with Jason and a few others, headed toward the shopping complex where groups like ours meet up with reps from Amor Ministries. We had a little time to kill until the five team-members on the canceled flight would be able to join us. I put on sunscreen and hung out in the parking lot of a Von’s grocery store. I ate a crabcake leftover from last night, along with a chunk of fish. I also ate a few slices of turkey I’d gotten at a Ralph’s near the hotel in Point Loma this morning.
There’s a breeze. It’s tending toward warm. Everyone from my van is somewhere else so I’m putting pen to paper as I wait.
7
In Mexico, at camp, east of Tijuana. It’s hot. I looked at forecasts for Tijuana before I left St Louis but I realize now that those forecasts were misleading. It’s more like half Tijuana forecast, half Tecate forecast. Tijuana’s just off the ocean but Tecate is in the desert.
I’ve been wearing the same shirt for two days, but nobody else knows that. The winds go slack, the sun falls behind the mountains.
8
Barred owls and roosters, the sound of the Tijuana outskirts at 3:28 a.m. Dogs and coyotes. I’ve got a wretched headache.
At 5:55, I am throwing up. Rough morning….
But I rallied. Why did I puke? There’s an easy explanation so that’s probably the right one but it’s so hazy here, so smoky. The cumulative effect of travel. The headache pill I took on an empty stomach when I woke up for good.
I puked only a little at first. I hoped no one would hear me or see me. I don’t want people thinking I have COVID (which I don’t believe I have).
But then it all came up, all of whatever I had to offer. Water, lemonade, bile. I felt better. The pill must have come up as well. Then my headache went away a little while later. Jim C asked me if I was alright. He or Cheryl or both must have heard me retching, there was no hiding it.
I ate Cheerios with milk for breakfast. Drank plenty of milk. Had only a little coffee. Got myself ready in time. We left camp at 7:30. Mercifully short drive to the worksite in the Antorcha neighborhood east of Tijuana.
9
Duplex nails, for when you know they’re coming back out. California corners face the inside. Square using diagonals. Fireblocks, pre-cut by Frank in Tahoe. That baño at the site. A five-gallon bucket with a hole cut out at the bottom, leading somewhere below. Surprisingly not much of a stink.
The seven-foot wall section I worked on with Thomas, Rodrigo, and George. Getting rushed through it. Needing to be able to make mistakes. That’s how I learn. Making good measurements. Red pencil, speed square, decent saw.
Randy biting it on the foundation frame. Probably breaking at least one bone. Maybe tore a ligament in his right thumb. Shock, pain, disbelief.
Using the sifter to isolate the rocks, needing them more than the sand. Usually it’s the other way around. Mixing concrete in wheelbarrows with hoes. With a partner on the other side. Yin and yang. Dry mixing first. Sometimes having too much water added. Then what. Retrofit, mix and match. That’s how we get from one moment to another. Improvisation is survival.
10
I only used the baño at the worksite once today. I was sweating my liquids out, dehydrated from puking so much this morning.
My problem at the site was cramping. Mixing the concrete. My right hand kept gnarling into a twisted claw. I tried to hoe with my left hand, with my right hand barely on the handle. Having gloves on somehow helped. The gloves helped me from getting as tight a grip. I took a lot of short breaks. For water, for stretching, for shaking out my hands, my forearms. I was pounding water and lemonade. (The lemonade is really just lemon-lime flavored Gatorade.) The nut mix I brought was a savior. I needed the salt and whatever other electrolytes those nuts had to offer.
I mixed a lot of concrete. Fifteen wheelbarrows’ worth? Each time with a partner on the other side, but that was a lot of hoeing. I did barely any tamp and screed on the concrete pad. There was so very little room on one side of the pad. From the edge of the nascent foundation to the wall-fence of the property next door was no more than twenty inches. I don’t fit in that space. Whenever I tried, my back started barking in a hurry.
The second time I tried to screed along that side, Mike Mayer’s youngest grandson Cooper jumped in, said he’d take over; that I was “too tall” to do it. Cooper is a sharp little whipper-snapper. He looks like how Kieran Culkin looked in the original Home Alone. His grandfather was quizzing him on U.S. Naval Fleet facts. Name one of the three original aircraft carriers. Name the largest current aircraft carrier. He answered quickly and correctly. He says he’s going to be President one day.
22:36, still the first night, Monday. I imagine that I will sleep hard when I sleep. The temperature and overall weather right now is excellent. Maybe perfect. It must be 66° with a gentle breeze. Not quite bone dry with just a little suppleness in the breeze. There’s some smoke in the air but it’s Tijuana, that’s how it always is. That’s the haze. I could see a blaze, a day-glow orange lighting the night across the road, to the south, southwest. Coming from Pemex Storage Plant #2? I see that place on the map, it’s a marker for camp. All kinds of petroleum infrastructure are built into the land around this part of Tijuana. The smoke from the orange fire looked thick. But there was no emergency, nothing exploded. They were just burning off.
From the west now I hear that gaseous blow. Air flow mixed with a metal grinding, akin to power washing or a circular saw. There were trains active on the tracks to our south this evening when we returned from the worksite.
I’ve twice been asked, “So what do you do for work?” I dread this question. I’ve been saying, “These days, odd jobs.” I mention Farm as part of my work, my writing as another. I mention that my wife has a good job, with good benefits. It’s all true but I don’t know how much it really says. In no instance do I ask back, “What do you do?” It makes no difference to me; if I’m meant to know I’ll find out, I’ll let it become clear. If it doesn’t, it’s probably not relevant. It’s not the way I’m going to go about having a conversation. I need to be better about making conversation but talking about jobs is not an area I’m going to explore.
11
It’s still the first night here in Tijuana and, spoiler alert, this will prove to be the bulk of the writing I will have done before returning to San Diego.
I don’t know how or why I’m still awake. I drank some coffee, just a little, when we got back from today’s work. I was exhausted; had a better chance of going to sleep right then. Or after my shower. Or during the large group discussion. During small group discussion I regrettably had to excuse myself to go pee. All the day’s water and lemonade is coming out of me now, these last few hours.
My body realizes I’m at repose, not sweating, with a solid meal down the hatch. We had spaghetti tonight, with meat sauce. Which as in years’ past, and as Cheryl remarked, the meat sauce is quite tasty. It’s a good plate of spaghetti and the French bread is darn good, too. It might be my favorite meal here. Is the pasta sauce from a jar, from scratch? A mix of the two? I enjoyed the salad, too. Fresh: tomato, red onion, yellow bell pepper. Peppy, zesty Italian dressing….
Where was I? Why am I still awake. I had no plans to write this much tonight. I just went pee and I can feel the next one coming on. My body might not be a well-kept machine but my body watches every move I make and adjusts accordingly. Body of mine, I love you. I don’t treat you so well, not really, but I never want to have any body but you and I’m thankful for you, and I want to be together for a long, long time.
The initial reason I picked up this notebook tonight was to write down, to copy a paragraph from this essay I’ve been slowly reading. The essay is by Rolf Potts. It’s from an issue of Hobart from 2012. Hobart is a literary magazine. I didn’t know Potts but the essay has gripped me. It’s about the lyric essay, and it’s about Potts’s trip to Turkey where he was drugged and robbed. It’s a damn fine piece of writing.
Potts writes:
The simultaneous charm and risk of travel is it shakes up the paradigms and habits that help you simplify and interpret day-to-day life. Life on the road, for better or worse, vivifies a muted aspect of reality: it makes you realize than random factors influence your life just as much as planned ones…
/*\\
Coyotes in the distance. They got close in the morning, probably went past or through us at some hour. Because I heard them a little to the north. I assume it’s the same pack. A sharp, piercing cry from the head dog, then the melody, a shaking wheeling screeching that turns into howling yipping and screaming sawed off by a few snaps and snarls. I do love the sound of coyotes in the darkened light of morning.
And I want to revisit the possible coyotes I heard early in the morning in San Diego. I thought perhaps I had heard a coyote cry out from that parking lot beside the hotel. But once I went out walking that morning I realized that what I heard was a dog that must have been living at one of several small bungalows in the Point Loma neighborhood just north of the hotel, on the other side of a fence beyond the parking lot. Homes from the fifties or sixties, before any of the hotels along N Harbor Road would have gone up. Great spot, so far untouched by development, unscathed by eminent domain. Quaint, cozy, expensive I’m sure but functional and splendidly located. I’d live out the rest of my life in a little place like that, if Point Loma is part of the deal.
But one of those homeowners has a very loud, very vocal howler-of-a-dog that was outside wailing for an hour and a half starting at 2:30 Sunday morning. Tearing into the silence of the moment. Then the dog was back at it around nine, at which time I decided to throw in the towel and head to the airport to meet up with the group.
12
I fall asleep & like it
My toothbrush
is purple
Up on the hills is
where I write
my song
10:30
Quiet.
Jinx
Buy me
a Coke
That reminds me
there are bottles of
Coke here—
Mexican Coke,
gotta try some
tomorrow.
13
The worst part about camping here on the outskirts of Tijuana is the air. The smoke. The air would otherwise be so clean. Instead, the air smells dank, tastes acrid, as if there were some soil floating in the air. It’s like sticking your nose into the footing of a struggling plant and taking a big sniff. Particulate matter. Some of the smoke is coming from trash fires.
The common first-world practice of having our trash collected and hauled away to be disposed of somewhere else is an incredible luxury. I am assuming that cost prohibits a similar waste management system from flourishing here. A wise expenditure of the dollars being thrown at climate change and other environmental equity efforts would be to fund a trash hauling operation for a city like Tijuana. The space exists. The second year I was here we worked one day south of the city, southeast, way out along a road that supposedly led to a new landfill. So the landfill, or a landfill, is out there. It’s just a matter of getting the trash picked up and taken there. If the residents can’t pay for trash service, ultimately they are going to burn their trash because they need the space. Those would be dollars well spent.
They awoke to the smell of smoke
what kind of smoke
a man moving like a curtain
appeared to have some
kind of mask on…
But the smoke is not solely the result of trash burning. We are also downwind of the brick kilns, la ladrilleras. There is an area on the eastern edge of Tijuana known for producing bricks. We have passed by these kilns many times in my three trips to Tijuana. There is a neighborhood listed on the map as La Ladrillera. It’s right next to Antorcha. Our worksite is pretty much in La Ladrillera. You can see cinder block ovens, piles of kindling, heaps of red clay. I guess that comes from the ground around there. Our camp is to the east of these kilns, downwind.
Dan said that our Amor Rep Juan told him that the brickmakers fire the kilns at night to keep the haze at bay, while the sun’s away. Because there are already enough fires of this and that burning in the day.
Well, that’s it. Another day in Tijuana comes to an end. I have used up all of my magic water. There is nothing left. No, really. The jug is totally empty and there isn’t any other. Take this as an immediate sign of a dearth.
14
Next time bring:
dog treats
latex gloves (disposable)
another towel (for sitting on)
better pee bottle
Next time don’t bring/had too many:
books—I had four; bring two or three
do I really need the tool belt?
If Frank brings extra tools, consider omitting: cat’s paw, square, stakes, tape measure
I packed one or two extra shirts (otherwise clothes are tight, gonna use all my socks)
15
Dateline San Diego, 17:08 pacific time.
Everything must go. My dogs is pooped, Tom Joad. They’s-a pooped. No ice machine on this 15th floor of the why-am-I-even-styaing-here hotel in downtown San Diego. I’d much rather be at the Best Western in Point Loma. Of course I’d also like to go home and maybe I coulda been home, just about now if I knew we’d be taking the lighting quick border crossing at Tecate instead of the bone crush slog that is Otay Mesa.
We had a full day. A good day, tedious at times. But I drove roads I’ve never driven. I saw Villa del Campo, a place of happy people. I saw Tecate, but it did not strike me as a brewery town. We got to San Diego at like 9 a.m. That made us happy. Time, time. What becomes of those who value time so mightily?
I looked for signs of ice on the map behind the door, the map near the elevator. I called the concierge. I was on hold, on hold, on hold. Fine, I give up. Can’t even call the damn front desk anymore. There is no front desk. Use the app. What have we become?
*
Water from the tap. Simple but elegant. Never for granted. Saturday morning in San Diego. A little hungover. 3:45 am.
Yeah, I’m awake, somehow.
16
Glucosamine, glucosamine.
Let this be a lesson to you.
We have to be systematic about this.
So this guy comes in, he’s a wheeler-and-dealer type of a guy.
Well, that was a great vacation but I’m ready to go home.
Do you want anything? Poppyseed muffin. They only have blueberry. Figures.
*
Those were sounds from the cramped, stuffy, hectic Southwest Airlines mini-terminal at San Diego Airport. We are aloft and I’m grateful but I am telling myself two things. Try to fly with someone other than Southwest Airlines next time. And don’t stay downtown.
I made the mistake of paying $25 for SWA’s misnamed and misleading Early Bird Check-in service. I was going to be driving back from Tijuana twenty-four hours before this flight was going to depart. So I couldn’t check in at the vaunted 24-hour mark. The whole SWA check-in and boarding process has turned into a pathetic, broken mess.
On the way out here, I checked in for my flight within 45 seconds of the twenty-four hour mark and got boarding assignment B54. I was one of the last people to get on the plane.
With Early Bird, SWA checked me in, they said, 36 hours before this flight home. I thought for sure I was going to be in the A group. Nope. B16. Even with Early Bird, I was one of the last passengers to get on this plane. Southwest’s “Early Bird” is a scam. It’s fraud.
SWA has now carved so many tiers, levels, and special classes into its boarding procedure as to render the entire process a farce. Wanny fly Business Select? That gets you onto the plane sooner, I guess, for $50. Or how about A List Preferred? What is that? I guess that’s how you get an A seat. I don’t how much that costs.
But, hey, if you don’t want to fork over the money, consider identifying yourself as a constituent of one of a couple other preferred classes. After the A Group boars, SWA invites families to board. Two dozen parents then drag their kids onto the plane. If you aren’t with your family but you insist on getting on the plane before the B Group, declare yourself as somehow who “needs extra time.” Right this way. I’m not talking about people in wheelchairs or blind people, they board first, appropriately so. No, the “extra time” folks are brazen enough to find their way onto the plane without having to stand there with the rest of us B-group losers. From what I can tell, people who need extra time are just people who refuse to check their luggage.
I used to like flying SWA. Now I loathe this airline. It goes back to them scamming me when I bought the tickets. I thought I was buying two direct flights, one to San Diego, and one back from there. But just days after I booked the ticket, they changed both of my flights into connecting flights, one stop each way. If SWA hadn’t dangled the direct flight on my computer screen, I might have taken a closer look at what other airlines were offering. It was a classic bait-and-switch, and it’s illegal.
Then we get to today’s flight, which is a nonstop from San Diego to St. Louis. That’s right. This is the flight I originally booked, which SWA promptly kicked me off of. From the Mexican desert I paid those bastards another $60 to put me back on the flight I originally paid for. There’s a word for this, it’s racketeering.
Goodbye San Diego. Goodbye bay view. Goodbye sailboats and palm trees. Hello marine layer. Hello headphones. Hello eastern tack. St Louis, here I come.
17
I cannot put the tray table down. My knees are too high. It cannot lie flat. Best I can do is an angle of 20 degrees. So, no tray table for me. These planes keep shrinking.
I passed on the snack mix. I have a club sandwich in my fanny pack but I’m not certain I will eat it. I’m not very hungry. This morning at 3:30 I woke up and ate some caesar salad I bought last night at Krisp’s. I left it out all night. One of the first things I thought about when I woke up was: did I leave that salad out all night? Yes, yes I did.
At Krisp’s I also bought a six pack of Alesmith .394 ale. I had one on draft at a restaurant on Coronado Island with lunch. I sipped it slowly. It had a lot of flavor. The abv is 6%, which was all I needed knowing I had to drive a van back across the bridge and into San Diego. I had one beer in the restaurant; I was working on number five when I crashed last night. The one I didn’t open I left in the room. Along with about 20% of the little bottle of vodka I bought. At least I did not drink everything I had.
I also bought a glass bottle of ginger-lemon kombucha, most of which I slammed as I stood in the blinking dark morning outside the San Diego airport after being dropped off there by Jesús, my Lyft driver.
The guy who drove me from the Rental Car Center to my hotel in downtown San Diego yesterday was named Filmon. I hadn’t seen that name before. I knew Philemon, like the book in the New Testament but not Filmon, who, as it turns out, goes by the nickname Filly.
He welcomed me to San Diego when I got in the car but I told him I’d already been in San Diego for a little while and I was just bouncing from one place to another. He had a mask on, and all the windows down. I asked him if he wanted me to put a mask on.
“It’s up to you man, whatever you want to do.”
I looked for a mask in my fanny pack but I didn’t have one in there. I had a couple buried somewhere in my bloated backpack but there was no way I was going to dig them out. So I kept my focus on the open window. The temperature was low seventies, perfect. The clouds had all been burned off or swept away. It had been overcast when a handful of us braved the cool water and played in the ocean waves along Coronado earlier in the day.
Filmon and I were stopped at a light entering downtown when a car pulled up next to us.
“Hey, Filly, how you doin’ man?”
Filmon perked up. The guy calling to him was a fellow Lyft driver.
He continued calling to Philly through the open window, “Look who I got in my car, Filly? Isn’t she beautiful?”
I couldn’t see who it was with the other driver, sitting there in that front seat.
“How you been, Filly, you doin’ alright?”
“I’m still eating, man.”
I took that literally. It sounded grim. The light turned, the two Lyft drivers went their separate ways.
“That guy is the best,” Filly told me, making eye contact in the mirror.
“He’s really into grilling,” Filly said. “He’s a master. He stacks one piece of meat on top of the other. So the juices drip down. He’s got one of those round igloo things. He just gave me a whole bunch of food he made, for free. I didn’t even ask him. And we haven’t eaten it all yet. He’s the best. From Germany originally.”
—San Diego, CA / Tijuana, MX / July 2022
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