Tucson, AZ Airport
7.19.2025
Saturday morning, 6 am
This begins with me finding a pair of JBL over-the-ear headphones. Left behind, it appears, by someone boarding an earlier flight. I can charge them with the cords I brought, though they appear to be fully charged. I have other headphones with me. An older, wired pair of noise-canceling Bose earbuds, which I also found, walking one morning. The Bose headphones are on their last leg. Their sound is excellent but they connect by way of an aux plug, which is nearly obsolete anymore. I have a workaround whereby I plug the aux jack into a Bluetooth device and stream the music from my phone but now I don’t even need to bother with that. I also have a pair of AirPods, which were my plan B if the Bose failed. At home (outside St. Louis, MO) I have a pair of over-the-ear headphones. They are probably nicer than these JBL but they’re also bulkier, like a big clunky pair of earmuffs, which is why I didn’t bring them. These JBL pack up easier; there is just enough room in my fanny pack for them so I will keep them. And I will wear them on the one hour and twenty minute flight to San Diego.
You realize how much of a desert this place is. I see, next, a neck pillow someone from that flight to Denver (also) left behind. It’s not my style, and I probably wouldn’t use a random neck pillow. It’s pink with some kind of pattern on it. Not far from the neck pillow (which is on the ground under a row of seats) was something that could have been a pill. I moved over for a closer look. It’s a Cheerio. 6:22.
A United flight to Houston has boarded. The door will be closing in one minute. Other than that, the flight to San Diego seems to be the only one on tap. It felt busy down here at the A gates when I first walked down. But after one flight to Denver and another to Houston, this place is as quiet as a library.
Way over there, on the other side of
If there is another side
If there is only one other side
Why spend your life thinking about
Because I have no greater wonder
The world
This world
This world is full of wonder, or I am, for it
But I am in it
And on it
So that takes some of the mystery away
Away
I plan one more trip to the bathroom before boarding. Not at the bar no not at the bar. I’m fussy, white wine, sunset, three dogs, gravel drive, lights of the city below glittering in the dark.
I had seen them from behind but not their faces. More and more people beginning to arrive for our collective departure. 6:33
It’s that moment before boarding when I’m weighing making my last trip to the bathroom before a bunch more people arrive for the flight, people who will almost certainly also go to the bathroom at the last minute. I want to avoid that rush but I also don’t want to leave too much time before boarding such that I have not minimized the amount of time I will have to go without peeing. Then I am also aware that merely thinking about this in this way must heighten my anxiety to the extent that I will feel like I have to pee even though I might not really have to. So the whole thing is moot. 6:36. Boarding does not begin until seven. I’m conveniently A60 on this Southwest flight, right at the end of the A group, which takes some of the pain out of lining up in the ridiculous boarding queue.
Maybe bifocals were the play. I walked down to the far bathroom (four minute walk) with my reading glasses still on but perched low on the bridge of my nose, Ben Franklin style. I get the bifocal effect when I wear glasses that way, two views, just slide my eyes. I have at home two pairs of bifocals, one I like better than the other but I don’t really like either. I’ve never worn either pair that much, never taken to them. I don’t consider either a primary pair of reading glasses and I’ve never traveled with them but right now I can see a utility. Or as a passenger in a car, where I am sometimes journaling and sometimes looking at my phone. I’m not sure they would be of much use once I get on the airplane, unless I had a window seat with a view, such as flying from St. Louis to Las Vegas or to Southern California, where views of the southwest and specifically the Grand Canyon are worth watching out the window.
A bunch of younger people have arrived in the last quarter-hour. It’s no longer a library.
I haven’t read over the house plans yet. Four of the five other times I’ve made this trip I had looked over the house plans by this point. Plans for the house we are going to build. I am meeting up in San Diego with a group from a church located in Burlingame, CA, where my erstwhile brother-in-law is lead pastor. The group will rendezvous in San Diego on Sunday morning, rent some vehicles, then drive into Tijuana, Mexico to build a small stucco house without the benefit of power tools. This year we will be building a house for a couple living in the El Refugio neighborhood of Tijuana, south/southeast of the city. Southwest of Ojo de Agua, a neighborhood closer to camp that we worked in two years ago.
I’ll stay in San Diego tonight, a major perk of the trip. I could begin to look over the plans when killing time along Point Loma harbor, while I wait for a room to open at the Best Western Yacht Harbor. That’s what I did last year. Walked back and forth along the waterfront, sat and read, went to Mitch’s Seafood. Had a nice day. 6:55.
There’s one guy talking loudly on his phone. You hear everything he says. I try to tune him out. A child is also talking, welcome interference. Another guy is talking lower on his phone. He’s only ten feet away, so I understand why I am hearing what he says, and for this reason he is easier to tune out. Passengers 31-60 stand in the lefthand column. But Extra Time boarders go first, then A Select, then Business Select. Business Select costs $320. This is the only plane trip I plan to take this year.
Boarding group A invited to line up!
San Diego
Fear not, San Diego, for I have arrived for thee anew, a new, another, one more year. El año de palabras, en Julio.
It’s 9:59. My bag was on the carousel within minutes of me walking off the plane. But the Southwest Airlines “terminal” here in San Diego continues to be one of the worst spots of any airport you could visit in this country. It is Lambert-esque. It’s so busy and so cramped—why do they jam so many flights into, through, out of such a tiny faux-terminal mini-hub?
I get my pack and set out on foot. I walk from Terminal 1 into and through Terminal 2. I don’t find any water-bottle filling stations (*there is one at the far/west end of Terminal 2 but I did not discover it until I returned to the airport at the end of the week). I find only lousy water fountains where the water is warm and poorly pressurized such that you can tell when someone nearby is flushing a toilet, which is almost always. Much of the San Diego airport is not a good place to fill a water bottle.
Big pack on my back and fanny pack at my belly, I walked out of the airport and down McCain Drive to Harbor Drive, the long drag along which many hotels lie, eventually including mine. Hotels on one side, the water and the Navy barracks and training facility on the other. Not far west of the hotel the water makes an inlet heading north, and a bridge takes traffic over the water. Then you’re crossing Laning Drive,then Nimitz Boulevard, and then the wharf/landing/harbor comes into view on the southern side of Harbor Drive, then a Holiday Inn and the Best Western on the north side of the street. A big parking lot between these last two hotels.
I step into the Best Western, no rooms ready, check back. It’s just past ten o’clock so I wasn’t expecting a room. They don’t even offer early check-in until 11 am, and that’s only for Rewards Members, of which I’m proud to say I’m one. Heck, I’ve stayed in Best Westerns from one corner of this country across the other, and back again. Not really, but B and I have tended to stay in Best Westerns in recent years, as we repeat a drive from St. Louis to Tucson and back, Tucson being the home of her parents, my in-laws. I once accrued enough points to pay for an entire night’s stay in Ruidoso Downs, NM, last year, before the fires raged, before the hills were stripped bare, before the rain fell, before the Rio Ruidoso rose, before the whole town flooded, before it all closed down, first last year and then this year, just before we would have stayed at the BW Pine Springs in Ruidoso Downs, the heavy rains returned, for a second July in a row, and washed the town out again. Please don’t come, they called to tell me, twice. So we rerouted to Albuquerque and stayed at the Drury.
At a little table outside the entrance to the hotel, I sit and write. I am left to my devices, which are none. I am born again, having only pen and paper, this bit of travel, San Diego, the loud clanking close of a gate as hotel residents exit from the pool area.
It’s cloudy. I should’ve side-packed my humidistat. I’ll get you the San Diego vitals later. My bag is checked so to speak, left with the front desk so I can walk about freely. Weather app says it’s 68 degrees, the humidity in the seventies. This is how I left off from here, from the hotel, exactly one year ago without thinking about sunscreen or even my sun hat before walking across Harbor Drive to the harbor, where Mitch’s Seafood is conveniently located. It was cloudy and humid just like it is now, I wasn’t thinking about the moment when the sun would have triumphed its way through the marine layer, baking me vulnerable below. Today I have my side-pack prepped and ready to go. Hat, sunscreen, water.
It’s 10:13. I’ll go over to Mitch’s pretty soon. It’s not far.
If the moon were made out of cheese, would you eat it? I have ordered food. Half a dozen raw oysters and a fried seafood basket, which includes fish, shrimp, calamari, and a crab cake. For libation, I have 24 ounces of Garston Gold IPA, which is cold, tasty, and served in an aluminum cup.
I am sitting outside on the wraparound balcony/deck. Order number 93. The meal offering switches from breakfast to lunch at 10:30. They open at eight. Mitch’s Seafood, fresh fish daily, open seven days a week. There were actual tuna from the ocean lying along the sidewalk out front, just recently hosed down. As my Dad might say, “You gotta love it!”
Names of boats I can see in the harbor from where I sit: Pegasus, Condor, El Capitan, Nomad, Relentless, Seastar, Mad ____, and Send It ____. I can’t read the full names of the last two.
I’m ahead of last year’s schedule by about an hour. After I left my bag at the front desk last year, I went first to Ralph’s supermarket, only a short walk north/northwest of the hotel. I was going to buy some items for my Secret Pal bag and also some items I thought I was going to want in Tijuana. But once I started thinking about having to lug around my Ralph’s purchases for hours while I bummed around Point Loma, all I ended up buying was one big bottle of water, which I very much needed but which, once empty, I accidentally knocked off an embankment ledge and into the freaking harbor. I felt like an idiot. I was killing time, reading my field guide to clouds, trying to identify some of the clouds I was seeing over the harbor, out into the bay, over the city as I was looking back east. By then the marine layer had been singed away and I was taking on sun. Today our plane dropped down through the clouds, and so far the clouds remain.
A sea lion is bawling, howling, yelping, bellowing not far from here, on a little beachy area along the harbor walkway. If someone had not asked someone else—”Did you see the sea lion?” “Where?” “Right down there on the beach.”—I would not have known what was making the sound. Now someone is suggesting the sea lion is injured. “It’s got, like, a bunch of bite marks.”
Some food comes out, not mine. A wahoo sandwich, which I would eat were it put in front of me! Any time, any day I would eat this food. I wouldn’t get everything fried every day, but a couple of times a week, sure. It’s kind of quiet here, slightly subdued. Maybe it’s just a little earlier than when I am used to being here— My food has arrived, time to eat, put that pen and paper to the side….
11:40. The sun is finding its way through. You feel it before you see it. That warm slight bit of pressure against your skin, at the back of the neck.
I wrapped up my leftovers—the entire piece of fish and the huge crab cake—and left Mitch’s. The place was filling up. People and their big dogs. Sign says no dogs, service animals only. People don’t care, and I guess Mitch’s doesn’t really care either. These days, just about anything goes. I am seated south along the wharf/boardwalk. People are waiting to get onto boats and out onto the water for their day of sun and fun.
I’ll probably still go to Tunaville later. That’s the fish stand run by the same folks that own Mitch’s Seafood. I wanted to get another taste of some of their multifarious ceviches. But I don’t know if I really need more food. And once I get into my room, I probably won’t want to leave it. Not when I have a balcony, a TV, cold drinks, and a view of San Diego.
I got into a room right around 14:00. The GM was working the desk, Christopher R. I was encouraged with the service. I asked this morning how I might go about finding out when a room was available. They don’t text. That would be a nice perk, for a hotel to offer. Here’s a text saying your room is now available. Even if it cost me $25 or $50 to follow up, I’d rather pay extra to get into my room early than to board the plane first, especially if the flight were short. Instead, he handed me his card and said I’d just have to call, or check back. By 13:45 I was pretty much done bumming around the harbor so I decided to hang out in the lobby. There wasn’t anyone else doing the same. Not much later, he gave me the nod.
Horse racing on the television. The racing season at Saratoga. I’ve got it on, balcony open, fresh off a tasty smoke. 58% relative humidity, 75 degrees. It’s humid, compared to Tucson. The sky never really cleared. The sun tried but was rebuffed. Score one for the marine layer.
This hotel is the same, Mitch’s was the same, the harbor felt the same. But one thing has changed. The liquor store just down the street and around the second corner had been redone. They did not have the Racer 5 IPA, a beer I once was able to get in Missouri, which I remember drinking with Ray after Brook and I moved back to St. Louis from Austin. I was looking forward to picking up a sixer, as I have done here a few years running. I got something else, but I will miss the Racer 5.
My thoughts turn to Tijuana. The forecast for the part of Tijuana in which we camp—on the eastern outskirts of the city, just past the neighborhood of El Niño, somewhat in the vicinity of Valle Redondo—is looking on the cool side. El Refugio, the neighborhood in which we will be building the house, also calls for temperatures maxing out in the upper eighties, pretty hospitable. Only once in the five times I’ve done this trip has the temperature ever felt cool. That was the first year, 2018, when I shared a tent with Graham, my one-time brother-in-law. The weather a couple of other years would best be described as hot.
We’ll be a little warmer than El Niño where we camp, but these highs and lows for El Niño have me wondering why I didn’t just pack my sleeping bag after all: Sunday, 77/59; Monday, 76/59; Tuesday, 78/55; Wednesday, 81/55; Thursday, 83/54; Friday, 78/54. If those temperatures come through, it will be the best weather I will have encountered all year. I’ll believe it when I feel it.
Red Sox @ Cubs now, Saturday afternoon baseball. Saturday evening baseball in St. Louis. Imanaga for Chicago. 16:18.
I’m one of the silent partners
Every word every item every article
makes a difference
what we carry around
what we live with!
57% / 73° 17:29 7.19.25 Point Loma Yacht Harbor Driscoll’s Landing Fisherman’s Wharf San Diego California United States of America Planet Earth Milky Way Galaxy The Universe .com
the lamp that worked
that plugged itself in
Slept awhile. Woke up again. Stepped out and burned the second of two I had. Strong flavor. Cedar mint? Not at all the burnt earthy flavor of the first one. Heavy to the face. It’s late. I’ve got a long day, a long week ahead. Music from the phone. 1-800-MUSIC. Charged the phone earlier. Charging now are my new headphones. They are along for the ride. They charge via USB-C, which seems to be becoming the standard.
07.20.25, The Hound
Shrieking dog, all night. I am not exaggerating. Howling, crying, bleating. Awful. Ear plugs, music. Beagle howling, baying, yipping. Worse and worse. 04:58.
7:43. I was fixin to leave around eight. I’m determined to hike back to the airport. The dog is still howling, hollering, yellering like that, worse than that sea lion yesterday. Shrieking howls. For at least the last seven hours. We have given our spaces and our soundscapes over to lawnmowers and pets.
Moving on. I’m packed, again. Got ice in my hydro, heavy water in my canteen, a little bit more in an Evian bottle. Music from my phone, which I am leaving on charge. 95%. I guess I’ll just bum around the airport. I am always a little nervous and hesitant to jump into the fray; there are folks on this trip arriving in forty-five minutes or so. But it’s possible the rental vehicle drivers—me, Jason, Greg—can get our rentals signed up for before the final flight comes in.
And I gotta get away from this awful dog.
8:45. Hiked back to the airport. Slowly. Not quite a trudge. The pack is heavy; the strain on my shoulders is unpleasant but I have flown into San Diego, gotten to my hotel, walked up and down half of Point Loma, now gotten myself back to the airport—all without needing to get into a car. My exercise for the day is done. Now it’s time for logistics. Getting the two vans. Looking for Frank to drive us over to the Car Rental Help Center (that is the name of the business we rent from, not a reference to the airport’s car rental system/shuttles, which we don’t use except to get from the Car Rental Help Center back to the airport).
I’m assuming Frank will be in a blue Ford pickup. RIP Big Blue, a casualty of the wildfires in the Altadena area and elsewhere early this year that burned down many homes, including Frank’s. Frank would drive Big Blue down, the bed full of tools: nice wheelbarrows, rakes, hoes, trowels, miscellaneous tools, a hammer I used a couple of years. I’m curious what all he’ll have in the back of the new truck, what amongst any of that gear survived. He would pre-cut and bring down fire blocks and bird blocks, saving us some time cutting them on site.
Several of the group are here but I’m holding fast to the last of the me time. That damned dog bombed my balcony morning. I really like the Best Western Yacht Harbor, so my move next year, or whenever I’m back—could be sooner—is to get a “pool view” room, south facing. The dog is on the north end. This is not the first time that dog has taken over an early morning when I’ve stayed at that hotel, so it must happen often. It seems like the pool-view rooms could have a nice view, the higher up they are. Otherwise you are just looking at the street, or down at the pool. City view, south end, high up is what you want. That’s what I had last year. Fantastic room, 535. This year was 406.
It’s a little breezy here in San Diego, overcast, not quite cool. Short sleeves, shorts, I’m fine. 8:53
I’ll walk over there at nine or so. At 9:01 another contingent has landed. I am sitting on a bench outside the San Diego airport, writing a few last words about the weather. 9:02
For lunch I have a banana and a sausage biscuit sandwich from the hotel. Plus the mixed bag of bars and other snacks, including one very beat-up oatmeal cookie. Maybe I’ll buy a little milk at Von’s when we stop just north of the border to rendezvous with our reps from Amor, the not-for-profit outfit that operates these trips; that hosts us at their camp outside Tijuana.
17:56. We are at Amor Hacienda camp. It’s warm but not hot. There is a persistent breeze, gusting. It’s windy, and dusty. There was a big dust devil, a dirty dervish.
I have that sort of sick to my stomach feeling, a bereftness. I’m thinking about why I’m here. What am I doing here? I came for the sky, for the country. But I have left a lot behind. A lot has left me behind. Reaching back into a moment, trying to hold it in place and failing, always failing.
There’s the dinner bell. I can’t keep up.
I’m missing my wife, somehow missing my dog Hugo, kind of wishing I were still in Tucson. Knowing I had to trade away some time there to do this trip. And missing people who have done this trip every time I’ve done it (Dan, Caroline), and missing my co-pilot from last year, Cynthia, who would have had the music going in the van today where otherwise there was none.
Things I’d write about if I had more time. Having to take most of our gear out of the box truck as we crossed into Mexico. Jim sweating as he kept going back into the truck to grab an item to hand down to one of us, all of our gear out on the sidewalk while Mexican customs barely even opened a lid to look inside this or that container, all a show. The sausage biscuit and banana I had for lunch, looking for a small bag of pretzels for my secret pal in Von’s, checking to see what tools I could buy at Walmart, which were none because they were all locked up, filling up the van with gas while others were eating, short on time in Home Depot where I bought a saw and some gloves before hurrying back out to meet the Amor reps to do the drivers’ meeting. Having Dan’s tent, Jim’s cot, and Randy’s mat, my thanks again to Cheryl and to Jim for hooking me up with the camping gear I am lucky to have for another year. A full Mayer contingent, Mike with a son, a daughter, a son-in-law, and four grandchildren, pretty special. Getting a decent vehicle from the Car Rental Help Center. Our van is nice. I’m driving the seven-passenger Toyota Sienna. Jason is driving a 15-passenger Transit that isn’t in great shape. Reportedly, it does not put out much A/C. Gotta go eat. 18:06.
Dinner was shredded beef tacos, solid. It’s the same arrangement for meals this year. We hired Baja Cooks, Eugenio and Sara’i. They deliver.
There is a George on the trip this year but it’s not the same George who was on the trip a few years back. This George was talking about fasting. He works with a company that works on treatments for Type II diabetes. I was pretty interested in what George had to say.
This tent, full of breeze.
21:05. 58% relative humidity, 70°. Not dissimilar to San Diego although it felt cooler out there earlier, this evening when the sun fell below that little mountain to our west.
I am wishing I had packed a pair of light pants, my linen pants. There are a couple years I brought those pants but never wore them. I knew I was taking a risk. Had I been at home when the forecast trended cooler I would have packed another pair of pants, or the poncho I bought here two years ago, or both. But Brook and I were already in Tucson, and all I had was what we left Missouri with.
Oh well, I’ll be OK. Lightning in the distance, east/northeast. My cell connection is poor or else I’d check the radar. Or are those just headlamp flashes? Hard to tell in a camp such as this.
Our group is 29 persons strong. Jim and Tom in the box truck. Frank driving Big Blue’s replacement, which Mike dubbed Baby Blue but which Frank calls Big Blue 2. I must say, Frank loses his wife (to memory), he loses his house (to fire), he loses his truck (to fire), he’s currently without a home, rooming with his old college roommates, but here he is, life goes on, Frank Kelly.
Mike is riding shotgun in New Blue, with Griffin, Christopher, and Cooper in the back of the cab. Then a full fifteen packed into what has also been described as a dirty, barebones Transit in which not only is the A/C weak but apparently the windows don’t roll down. Yikes. Although I am the only driver of my van, I am glad I am not driving the 15-passenger sweater.
7.21.25: Early morning in Mexico
4:41. Rooster going. But that started half an hour ago. 60%, 70°. Reports of heavy rain back home in St. Louis. Rain rain rain. Nice here, though—not as smoky as most mornings of recent years
5:10. Trying to figure out the rainfall totals from overnight, back east in the Midwest. It’s still dark. Eugenio is already getting breakfast, coffee, and the lunch spread underway in the big tent.
I was getting precious ice yesterday early evening when some fellas from another group found their way over to the Baja Cooks mess tent. They wanted water, ice, lemonade, tea, whatever was available.
“Oh, so y’all hired Baja Cooks for the week as well?” I asked them.
Quizzical look on their faces.
“Yeah, I think so,” one of them said.
“Yeah, Baja Cooks is great,” I said, not believing them.
“We hired someone to cook for us,” someone else said, “I’m not sure exactly who.”
Uh-huh. I kept my mouth shut. There was one year here when we did share the mess tent with another group that had in fact also hired Baja Cooks for the week. But I was pretty sure these guys had no idea who Baja Cooks were. There was a welcome sign up, welcoming our group from BurlPres but that was the only designation listed.
Last night there was a third member of Baja Cooks, a guy named Troy. Maybe I’d seen him before but I couldn’t recollect. I don’t know if he is extra help or possibly even a manager, or a partner. He might have been there on special invite because Jason had written a song for Baja Cooks, which we sang for them in our campfire/worship circle after dinner. You could tell they appreciated it. Eugenio was moved. Troy was headed back across the border to see the wife and kids.
I have never been involved with the details but, as I understand it, our group pays good money to hire Baja Cooks for the week, which Jason reiterated to this other group that was horning in on our ice. I don’t think we will see them again this week.
Changes. Less smoke this morning, no doubt. I wonder if that is happenstance or if it’s due to some other change, more people sending their garbage to a dump? Less demand for the brick kilns just west of here in the Antorcha neighborhood? Some other incentive not to burn garbage? A change in the wind pattern? Who knows.
The cross into Mexico was the most involved yet. There was the one year where all of us had to grab a bag and come into the customs facility, placing our bag on an x-ray machine, or some type of conveyor belt. This year only the drivers had to show their passports and FMME forms. Mexican Customs also wanted to see the registration for each vehicle, which Jason made sure we had gotten from the Car Rental place. There are some years when I don’t think we had a printout of the registration. That could have been a problem this year had we not had them in hand. Mexican Customs also took photos of the VIN numbers of all of the vehicles.
Aduanas, that was the name they had on their uniforms. Aduanas. They weren’t going to let us skate through. Out of the back of the truck came six wheelbarrows, the band’s instruments, and a lot of those yellow-topped black bins from Home Depot that our group packs their gear into up in Burlingame before Jim and Tom drive the truck south to San Diego. Jim was not happy but he remained cordial as he sweated in the heat of the back of the box truck, handing down bin after bin.
It was all for show. They were putting us through our paces, tit for tat. When the world’s largest military is threatening invasion from the other side, I suppose you could say we asked for a heightened screening as we sought to make our way into Mexico. I’m not sure who is smuggling what into Mexico from the U.S. but that was beside the point. I maintain low expectations for Friday, when we will cross back into the United States. Supposedly Mexico has their National Guard checking on travelers and their goods as they are leaving Mexico as well. And we used to be such good friends.
5:26. A little light in the sky now. I fell asleep pretty quick last night, and I slept fine. There were some night noises, in and out. There was a dog, a howler, but not on the same shrieking level as the demon dog outside the Best Western in San Diego. This dog was farther off, but the echo was there. And there was music, that Mexican polka sound, like an accordion breathing in, breathing out, ad infinitum. I must not have minded it because I never reached for my ear plugs, never put my headphones on. The Amor security truck starts up. Someone had been in there after all. I wondered as I walked by, a bottle full of night-water in hand as I shuffled off to the baños.
It’s nice to get up early. Diamonds in the dark.
Changes. This area of Tijuana is growing. There are large new power towers, meant to carry heavy duty lines, just north/northeast of here. They were not here a year ago. I wonder, though, if they are in fact on the Mexican side of the border. It’s hard to say. They are in the same direction as that wildfire that was burning near here a couple of years ago, and I remember thinking that those fires were straddling the border of the two countries. Hemmed in on one side by the ocean, and on another by the border, Tijuana doesn’t have many directions in which to grow so it is expanding east, in the direction of this camp, toward Villa del Campo, toward Tecate.
There is the usual traffic now along the main road, what I call the Tecate Road. On the phone app map it’s called Camino a Valle Redondo or Boulevard Ferrocarril. We will take it west from here to get to the work site. On Friday, we’ll take it east through Villa del Campo and on through Tecate when we cross back into the States.
The traffic along the road now is not heavy, the sounds are gentle. There’s no sign anyone else is up but I’m hankering for some coffee so I’ll go see what’s shakin’. 5:31.
7.22.25, Recapping the First Work Day
It’s pretty typical for the first work day to knock me out. I guess that’s what happened because I wrote nothing last night except this choppy, sometimes illegible poem:
In all directions
there is music in the distance
and what you do
when the ration’s run
Water left behind
where did they get it?
Dogs, pups early today we
picked up a double
The night gets brighter
they’re living in a car there
You rest I’ll rock
separate rock from boulder
5:22. In the blue light of morning. Crickets, motorcycles, dogs, and roosters. The wind is light. Cricket light, rooster light, canned coffee light. Eugenio and Sara’i scraping the griddle, changing out yesterday’s coffee. Which I was going to get some of but other priorities intervened. First, I wanted water in my cup, and after that I went to the baño to dump two overnight receptacles. Then I brushed my teeth and grabbed this notebook, a pen, and my reading glasses. By then, yesterday’s coffee was gone, and today’s was still being made so I grabbed one of two cans of coffee I brought from America.
Last night’s programming ran long. Depending on the length of the work day, we need to pick two or three: (1) singing, (2) large group/message/sermon, (3) small groups, (4) campfire activity (which last night was a Rock Paper Scissors tournament, which I kept messing up because I was crashing by that point). There was an indication that we would not start burning the campfire until large group was over. Unfortunately that did not play out. I was, as usual, one of the last people to join the large group circle, couldn’t even find my chair, so I grabbed a basic folding chair and sat in the empty spot of the circle, which is where the smoke plume flows through.
It’s one of the rubs of this trip, and I have to accept it because that is how it is going to be. There was mention of the usual night programming running long in past years; there was a promise of more downtime at night, which I would use to write, read a little, sleep. It did not come to fruition last night, but maybe the rest of the week will be different. 5:28.
The drive to the site yesterday was memorable. Through El Niño and Ojo de Agua, where we saw two houses we built, one last year and one the year before that. Bustling, this city. The Ojo de Agua road heads south and eventually makes an intersection with Highway 2. Busy intersection. There is a traffic light but the light seemed only to heighten the chaos. I was making a right on a green. A semi coming through from across the freeway must have had a green yield for its left-hand turn but this truck was bound and determined to make its left, oncoming traffic be darned. It was a free-for-all. We headed west/southwest on the highway for perhaps ten miles before preparing to take a left against/across the traffic coming the other way on what, at that spot, was a three-lane highway, with some cars traveling at about 50 mph. As is custom in Tijuana, some of the cars coming the opposite way see that traffic needs to turn and they stop so the turning traffic can get across the road. Two out of three oncoming lanes had vehicles pausing to let me turn, but one lane was still thrumming through at full speed. So the cars that wait out of courtesy get a hat tip from me but unless all of the traffic is going to wait, the partial courtesy is pointless. I waited a bit until I knew I could make it across regardless of whether oncoming traffic was going to stop or not. I floored it across the three lanes only to have to stop pretty quickly because there were all kinds of semis and other trucks stacked up at the mouth of the road we were turning onto, the surface of which was dirt and rough. There are basically no rules for driving in Tijuana except one: don’t screw up. Luckily, I was not the only person uncomfortable with the idea of making this turn again, which we didn’t. Our Amor rep Davíd took us to the site by way of another route the rest of the week—a route which was longer but also new, to me, and quite picturesque in the way Tijuana can be, reminiscent of an old dusty town in Italy I might visit some day next decade.
The troubling left hand turn behind us, we took the dirt road into the neighborhood of El Refugio. Which is absolutely booming. Huge factories, one after another. Maquiladoras: factories in Mexico run by a company from another country which will export the product out of Mexico to the U.S. and beyond. We started to climb the dirt road first around and then up and behind a huge long metal-roofed plant run by a company called Watkins Wellness, which an internet search indicated was in the business of making hot tubs.
Past the hot tub factory and climbing through a network of dirt roads cut into a towering hillside replete with pockets of construction, it was like the early days terraforming the surface of Mars. Climbing, turning, twisting, dry dirt roads that were actually pretty smooth, scrubland all around us, not quite the desert, not quite Sonoran. We kicked up dust, the van wearing it like a sheen. But as we got up higher into the hillside the view turned panoramic, looking west, north, east, the city of Tijuana one big factory chugging along in the dusty sunlight. City to the north below us, a quarry underneath our feet. Earth moving machines, Caterpillars, bulldozers, backhoes, jackhammers, hulking water trucks. Houses being built all around us, not densely but here and there as far as you could see. Terraces, steps, plumes of dust, roads being dug out of the hills. Not mining in space but mining for space. The city must grow, it will go where it will, into the hills, carve out a new neighborhood. Groundbreaking, small crews at work on some of the nascent buildings, others project on hold without anyone around, abandoned, for now. Some of the houses you’d be happy to live in in America, others more basic, others only half-done with cinder block walls. No cookie-cutter houses here, not an America-style development but much more diverse, each lot according to its own budget, its own schedule.
More than anything the building site was unfettered; it was open. There was a vista, the sky was all around us, looking down at the lake-like metal roofs of the maquiladoras, the traffic quietly motoring along on Highway 2, Cats chewing into the rocky hills, a road where before there was none, road graders on standby parked on the road behind Watkins Wellness, the city or the state no doubt somehow involved—or who else? Who or what divvied this land up, sanctioned its development, the unseen hand, many empty lots around but many of them marked up, staked off, claimed, in abeyance, waiting for a crew to work them. If I had grandkids I would tell them, “Yes, I was in El Refugio, before it was anything. I went there with a group from San Francisco. We poured concrete. We raised walls. There was nothing else there, we put a jar upon the hill, the city filled in all around it.”
Yesterday’s work went well. We finished the pad—the concrete foundation, 11′ x 22’—around 15:30, cleaned up, left just after four. It was a long, slow drive home. We did not leave the way we came, not quite. We lowered our way down the hill, took a right onto the highway, but after only a couple miles we took an off ramp and I knew exactly where I was. It was a busy, thriving, store-lined street we traveled through both in 2018 and 2019, another part of this sprawling city, south-central Tijuana, busy and full. There was new construction activity everywhere. Utilities, mercados, ferreterias, cement shops, fruit stands, buses, pedestrians, dogs, density, whose turn is it at the soft stop signs, the altos? Yielding, allowing, going. Going too soon? Don’t second guess, don’t look back. If you are going to go, you have just got to go. 5:49.
After the off ramp into the old short mercado boulevard, we take a left onto the camp road, Ferrocarríl. I haven’t driven this stretch in years but I remember it. This is the other way in from the border, the way if we don’t take the toll road. But we have taken the toll road each of the last four years—it’s the best way to get into camp, nada pregunta. It’s quick and easy. Just over the border we take a few turns, pay less than ten dollars, and we are coasting along an interstate making our way into camp from the north. The only drawback is that we do see a lot less of Tijuana proper when we take the toll road. We see the rusty, ugly border wall but that’s about it.
Less than an hour to regroup, shower, dry off, change, rest, dinner bell, I’m too slow, I need repose, I’m the last at the dinner table. Spaghetti—except this year it’s linguine—with meat sauce, salad, and what I believe is sliced bolillo (a Mexican bread with a crunchy crust and a fluffy interior) along with a good amount of butter. It’s my favorite meal of the entire week.
I was seated across from Bill, my Secret Pal, except of course he does not know this, yet. But I know a few things about him from the sheet we fill out to cue the possible contents of the Secret Pal bag we will each give/get later in the week. I knew he played guitar and likes beer and writing songs, so I steered the conversation in the direction of writing; mentioned that I write, that I blog, that I have done a lot of writing about this very trip. He had unfortunately chosen a seat facing west, right into that stubborn evening sun that fights to stay above the mountain. Seeing him squint made my head hurt a little or maybe I was just dehydrated, a bit of the canteen in my veins, cold as ice.
I’m hurting a little bit this morning. Left my water and folder out near the campfire last night. I came back to the tent after crashing out following the Rock Paper Scissors tournament. I was dozing when Sarah brought both the Hydroflask and the green worship folder by; left it outside my tent. There was music again last night, from outside camp somewhere. Apparently Sunday night/Monday morning’s music kept a lot of my fellow campers awake. Someone describing it as “disco” music said it was going strong until 2:30. It was a Mexican holiday on Sunday, and the music was attributed to a small pink house across the road inhabited by La Policía. I am surprised I was able to sleep through it but I was extra sleepy after the howling beast in San Diego robbed me of half of the sleep I should have gotten there.
The music I heard last night was not live. Sunday’s night’s music, I am told, was from a live band. “I liked the music,” Mike said, “it was just too loud, and it went all night.” I was asleep last night before ten, woke up twice to pee, 1:00 and 2:30 or so. It was quiet. I used all of the bottle space I had, switching back and forth between the bedpan container I brought and an Evian bottle from San Diego. A funnel comes in handy. It’s nice not to have to get out of the tent. I always think I’m waking people up when I start unzipping the tent flap. It is kind of loud. And I get back to sleep easier if I don’t have to trudge off to the baño.
I was a little cold last night. I pined for my sleeping bag. The one year I don’t bring it. I longed for the linen pants, or any second pair of pants. I probably had enough room in my pack for another pair of pants, without having to remove any other item. Otherwise, I am not sure what I would have omitted from the pack to make space for the sleeping bag. The running shoes, perhaps. I haven’t worn them here yet. In San Diego, I wore a mix of my work boots, Crocs, and flip-flops so I haven’t worn the running shoes since I changed into the boots outside the San Diego airport before walking to the hotel. Even a pair of my thin long johns/leggings would have been a big help keeping me warm last night. The lows just never looked that low when I was packing it all up in Missouri. Oh well! A cow lows, a dog barks, someone flip-flops by.
I need more coffee, my slim can long since finished. Yesterday I worked with Bill on a rake wall, of which Frank eventually assumed command, mercifully. Bill and I got off to a slow start. The first nails we tried to drive into two boards making one of the bottom corners of the wall just would not go in. We looked at each other shaking our heads. Knots. In the ends of both boards. Nail after nail was bending. I can’t even remember what we did. Maybe Jason came over with his heavy hammer and got some nails in.
A rake wall is eight foot high on one end, sloping down to seven foot high on the other end. They make the short side of the house. So that is one nuance, compared to the basic wall sections that make the long sides of the house and aren’t sloped. The rake wall I was assigned was also going to contain a window, so that was another complication. I wasn’t quite up to the task of leading its construction. Eventually I would have gotten it done but we are on a timetable here and we don’t have all day. Later on in the day I was asked to put together one of the two roof panels, along with Tim and Wade. That was no problem; we banged that out like rote: no mistakes, working methodically, excellent roof panel. The roof panel is a square, pretty basic.
I did learn something watching Frank square the two bottom corners of the rake wall. Because the top of the rake wall is slanted, you cannot square a rake wall panel simply by measuring from one corner to another and knocking it into square with your hammers. Instead, you have to use geometry at the two bottom corners to ensure they make right angles. I was aware of this concept, and I was ready to try it last year or the year before when I was working on a rake wall with Tom but he said forget that just eyeball it and nail a brace on. Not Frank. He had us mark three feet on one side, four feet on the other, using his marker to make the marks (forget the pencils altogether). This demands a hypotenuse of five feet. Take a tape measure: put one end of the tape measure on the three foot mark, then pull out the tape and hold it against the four-foot mark on the bottom wall board. It needs to read five feet. You bang the stud with the three-foot mark in whatever direction it needs to move in order for the tape measure to read five feet at the four-foot mark. That gives you a 3-4-5 right triangle. Then you gingerly nail a 2 x 4 brace on that corner to hold it in square. I used to think the brace itself had to be cut to five feet but the length of the brace isn’t important, and it doesn’t have to go on the marks. It just has to hold the corner fast while you are adding the rest of the studs and fireblocks and the window to the rest of the wall. 6:09.
Well, that’s all the time I have to write just now. I need water and coffee and I want to get my lunch made. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an American orange, and a bag of chips. Maybe go for those Doritos today, flaming hot. 6:10.
I am having another wave of mental nausea. Once again I am wondering what the heck I’m doing here. I’m down and not feeling sociable. 7:18. Tuesday is this trip’s hump day. Tomorrow morning I’ll feel better.
I’m not sure when we are leaving for the work site. I guess this is some downtime but I’m ready to go. Less traffic now. Leaving the site early this afternoon would also mean less traffic later. 7:21. Maybe I don’t need to do the trip next year. I always say that at this point of the trip.
Radio blaring from the strange fortified plaster house set into the southwest corner of this campground, which is the corner I gravitate toward. This is the house with the manicured, tended-to garden that I have marveled at every time I’ve been here. There are some old prickly pear, there are a variety of squash and other vegetables growing. The music is coming from an outdoor speaker. I fell asleep to music from there last night, albeit softer music than right now.
I haven’t used any of the aloe yet. The sun hats are essential. Mineral sunscreen remains my go to, my appearance be darned. I haven’t read at all on this trip. 52% relative humidity, 73°.
I took the aux cord and Bluetooth dongle out of the van. I tried to play music in there—streaming from my phone to the Bluetooth dongle and then into the van’s audio system via the aux cord—yesterday morning but there was a problem with the speaker setup. It seemed that the balance or fade had all of the sound going to the back of the van, which I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t hear anything so I was turning up the volume. I had a playlist I started last year going, just a random mix of music I thought might work for the Tijuana commute. But it wasn’t going to fly. Greg asked me if I could turn down the volume “by, like, 80%.” I appreciate Greg’s directness. I just turned it off altogether. I wasn’t going to be able to drive and fiddle with the speaker balance so there was not any music this year at all. 7:27.
There are a bunch of mosquitoes in this tent with me. When they start to come in, they arrive as a party. I left the flap open when I left the tent early this morning at 5 am. I figured as long as I wasn’t in the tent, with my headlamp going, that they wouldn’t be interested in what was inside. But carbon dioxide also attracts mosquitoes, and I guess there was still plenty of my expirated CO2 in here, so they wandered in. I smashed some of them that were caught up in the tent window mesh but there are still too many to flail at so I’m just going to zip this tent up and get ready to go to work. The skeeters can bake in here while I’m gone.
Tuesday evening
It is close to 17:00. North Star Gas truck turning onto the road running along the SW border of this Amor Hacienda campground. The radio is going again but it’s a nice volume. I only hear it if I want to.
The sun is searing, remaking me, working on my largest organ, my shield, working its way in, what it does, when it can.
I moved a few feet to get out of the blaze. I was in a rotten mood this morning. Everything. Depressed, bereft, derailed. Just hangin on, just making it through.
Dirt, dry grass, and burrs. A rooster crows and I’m grateful. Will I come back? Will the Church continue to offer and support the trip? I’m aloof. I listen, I hear things, I don’t know what to think. I’m here to build a house. I’m here to drive a van. I’d love to have some photos of— and from—the roads, the neighborhoods, what we’ve seen while driving. The sea-scape roofs of the factories shimmering silver in the not so distance. Then we descend and we never really see this maquiladora, this behemoth surrounded by retaining walls reminiscent of moats or castle walls, scaped out, meant to last, headquartered in Georgia. The state, not the country. Tariff this, tariff that. This place will keep becoming. You cannot hold back what is bigger than you, best just to know it, to see it, to go there. What border has this guy been to? What factory in Tijuana? What development where development happens because it has to and not because there’s an opportunity to make a little more money?
I digress, I distress, I listless, nonetheless, less is more and more and more. You can’t want what you don’t know you don’t have.
Major gust, local dust, deck me, dock me, debride, debris, Chablis.
Tent was 20% relative humidity, 104° when we got back from work. Buy more Abbott. And the Mexico ETF, EWW. It’s very pleasant here right now, in the shade. Baked and emotional, emotionally baked. I crave a smoke, something danky and stanky. Hyundai collectivo passes by on Camino a Valle Redondo, aka the main road. A vehicle backfires. Some of these vehicles you see here. All they gotta do is get around town. They don’t need to roar along interstates, up and through mountains, they don’t need to go 80 mph, they don’t have to make it across the country. They are all they need to be, and who could ask for more?
I am watching the planes fly over, making descents. With the help of an app I can see where they have come from and where they are going. One of the plane routes is Puerto Vallarta to Tijuana. Another is Cabo San Lucas to San Diego. Water to swim in would be nice. Otherwise, there’s nowhere in Mexico I’d rather go than the dusty streets, hills, and outskirts of Tijuana.
Black vultures soar against the blue sky, circling.
Davíd is our Amor Rep for the third year running. Simpatico. He must like working with us because if he didn’t want to it’s unlikely he would have been assigned to our group three years in a row. There are at least two other groups here at camp with us but the spacing is pretty even so you really hardly notice that there are other big groups here. Davíd is incredibly even-keeled and he is highly skilled. He leads the convoy in a white pickup truck emblazoned with the Amor logos.
We did take a different route to work this morning. The neighborhood we drove through was new to me. It had the feeling of being a very old, dusty, mostly empty place. Something from the Old World. Italy or Spain. Hilly, sparse, bright in a black-and-white sort of way. Timeless. Pretty. Little businesses here and there, a panadería touting little cakes. The type of place I yearn for, which I am only seeing because I am on this trip.
Now through the sky comes a flight from Cancún….
Wednesday morning
7:00, 53%/77°
I slept later, longer, deeper this morning. Had an elaborate dream I cannot quite remember. There is only a sense of it; a knowing it occurred. What to do with it? Nothing. Can’t even lay a name.
Bird app: Black Phoebe. I heard a bird sound I didn’t quite recognize, something like a song sparrow, not exactly. I’m not sure it was a Black Phoebe either, though.
I’m charging my phone via battery pack for the first time this trip. I’ve been able to charge in the van during commutes, albeit slowly. Through a cigarette lighter-style charger. There are plenty of charging outlets in the van. The lowest battery life I’ve been at is 36%.
On tap for today are chicken wire, roofing materials, and a first coat of stucco. It’s Bewick’s Wren, yes. A Tucson bird, a Sonoran singer. I had a sense I knew the song I was hearing. And when writing of Bewick’s Wren previously, I did suggest its song was reminiscent of the Song Sparrow’s. So, not a new bird for the life list, but a pretty song from that little wren.
I just got a whiff of that dream. This filament, deep whisper of memory, extinguished by grasping. That light bulb my high school resident counselor Kurt Ewen taught me about. He said, It’s hanging out there, that light bulb, and you, you always want to reach for it, and grab it, but you can’t. You can’t reach for it. When you reach for it, that’s when poof, that’s when the light goes out. 7:14.
I’ll have to hit the baño and then get my butt in the driver’s seat. This chair I’m in, which I like, is from Timber Ridge. It was probably Dan’s chair on prior trips. I miss that guy, I think we all do. I will get this chair into the box truck. I’m just trying to keep my mind off of what I can’t keep it off of. Am I this undisciplined, or insane? Get out of the sun, drink plenty of fluids, eat a big lunch, go to sleep at a decent hour, time as much of everything out, or don’t. There is no easy way. 7:17.
Passing this week have been Ozzy Osbourne and Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Waiting for a third.
7.24.25, Thursday morning
9:13
Back at the site, final work day. I haven’t written anything from here this trip; haven’t written anything from a work site in years. Maybe not since the first year. The second round of stucco will commence imminently.
It was humid and smoky overnight. I was cold. To be without the blanket I need is an unfamiliar feeling. I didn’t sleep well. From one on I just tossed and turned, feeling chilly, with a dog barking, with a bit of a headache and eventually needing to make an urgent trip to el baño.
Then this muck, this morass, the stuff I’ve heard about, bits and pieces all week. Problems, a rift, bread crumbs. This might be the time but it is not the place. Quicksand, Scylla, Charybdis. How did Odysseus manage not to get pulled in, not to get wrecked?
I wasn’t up on the roof much yesterday. All along the roof edge, I nailed down the part of the shingle paper that overhangs the roof. But I did that from below, on a ladder. And I worked with George and Tom and Jason to measure, cut, and nail in all of the 1 x 4 trim that goes along the roof edge, holding that overhanging shingle paper in place. I was on the roof for some of that, when there was not room to do it on a ladder from below.
The rest of the group is working now and I am doing nothing. I’m stuck in my head, again! It’s like: I don’t know if I can do this trip again but I don’t know how I could not do this trip again. Frank had me as his Secret Pal and he wrote me such a heartwarming note. How do I walk away from that? And what the hell else do I have to do, really?
The politics and the drama. Churches, families, friends. People you know or don’t know. Let it go, or don’t take another step. Don’t ask any questions. Don’t even listen. Fade into the ether of the day. 9:23.
—Tucson/San Diego/Tijuana, July 2025
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