Tijuana 2024: San Diego, Camp Scrawl, Pack Notes.

~ johnbrandall

What follows is an account of my recent trip into Tijuana, Mexico with a group of 36 other people mostly associated with BurlPres, a church in the Bay Area. While in Tijuana, we were camped out east of town for five nights. Together we built a basic but sturdy house for a family in need. The second half of the post comprises my Pack Notes, which functions as an alternative way of recounting the trip as I unpack all of what I brought back with me... Read the full travelogue here...

Alimentary Manifesto 15

~ johnbrandall

  1. Forget food
  2. I renounce food and all its treason
  3. Food is not my commander
  4. I refuse to schedule my day around food
  5. I'm really not that hungry
  6. Thanks, I ate once already
  7. I had watermelon and loved it
  8. Heat that up on the dashboard
  9. Make the same thing over and over
  10. Order triple and hunker down
  11. Less food is more life
  12. I could eat more if I drank less
  13. But I don't want to drink less
  14. Fine, I'll eat whatever
  15. But only if it's perfectly cooked!

The Madness of Mowing

~ johnbrandall

Yes, it is all going to be cut. But it doesn't all need to be, it shouldn't all be cut at once.

Divide a plot of grass, whether it be a yard, a lawn, a property, a park, a field into three pieces. Cut one-third of it every week such that every blade of grass is cut every three weeks. In the meantime, two parts rest, regenerate, fill in, save the pollinators, waft gently in the breeze, retain rain or dew that might otherwise more easily run or burn away.

Make lanes. Use these paths as ways to get into, alongside what might have gotten too long. Shoot the clippings onto the parts that were cut a week or two before; there's room for them there, the mower will always be able to breathe...


An account of two trips to Farm, late summer 2023...

Tijuana Pack Notes 2023

~ johnbrandall

Since 2018, I have taken an annual trip to Tijuana, Mexico by way of San Diego to help build a small house for a family in need of a place to call their own.   I say annual but of course the trip did not occur in 2020 or in 2021.  In San Diego I meet up with a group from the San Francisco area who are mostly all members of the same church.  The church has been doing the trip for a few decades.  My wife’s sister was married to a pastor at the church, which is how I found my way to the trip.

After meeting in San Diego, we rent vans and make our way across the border at Otay Mesa.  We proceed from there to a campground run by a not-for-profit called Amor that hosts groups like ours.  The campground is on the eastern outskirts of Tijuana, on the road toward Tecate.  We set up tents at the campground; we hire a local team of cooks to provide food for us for the five nights we are there.  

I have written an account of the trip each of the four times I’ve done it.  After the trip, I take account of my packing.  Did I bring what I needed?  What did I bring that I didn’t use?  It’s a challenging trip to pack for because everyone working on the house is supposed to bring a few basic tools.  After including clothes, tools, and some camping gear, my pack gets pretty heavy.  Which is why I take a close look at what I choose to lug around with me as I make the trip from St. Louis to San Diego and then to Tijuana and back.  These are my pack notes, with each item getting its own bullet-point breakdown.

/\\.

Tonic water bottle (10 oz, plastic).  I used it extensively, initially as a water bottle in the airport.  I brought it empty in my carry-on as I went through security.  I filled it from water fountains or water stations in the airports.  The Elkay brand bottle-filling stations have become close to ubiquitous in airports nowadays: Lambert, DFW, San Diego...


Unpack the full pack list here...

Making Minerals

~ johnbrandall

Four walls
of the finest material
quarry the
neverending attention
of river rock along the
thousand edge 
of the road

The weight of the land
is that of a bird
a wing among clouds
a path in the valley
between the large, red eggs

When we graduated 
from the mining of gold
into ownership of the best flints
there was eventually a battle

Not listed, a battle.
Don’t say, a battle.

It was a sweet death
in that stone beloved,
uniformed with the kiss
of a clean shadow

Like how a tooth
together with
another tooth
becomes the jaw
of the land

***This poem initially appeared in the second issue of Horned Things Journal, which you can find here.


The Road to Tucson (2020)

~ johnbrandall

We’re in a La Quinta Inn near a place called the Wichita Sports Forum, a sports complex, the parking lot of which is full, patrons coming and going, collapsable chairs in hand.  The clientele here at the hotel seems to be made up largely of Sports Forum patrons.  

My wife went out to pick up pizza.  I’ve done several trips to and from the car.  Otherwise, we’re going to hunker down in our room.  B said she walked into the lobby wearing her mask and attracted all sorts of weird looks; no one else had a mask on.  The clerk behind the desk wasn’t wearing one.  We had a reservation.  He said the place is totally booked.

I watched the Belmont Stakes.  There’s a golf tourney on from Hilton Head, in which I have a very mild interest.  I’ve also had the news channels on, curious to see footage from Tulsa, where the President is holding a rally, set to begin in less than two hours.

What we see here leaves us with the impression that perhaps this state, this city, was never under any level of coronavirus restriction.  I’d wager there are a couple hundred people in that Sports Forum.  Climbing, basketball, gymnastics, volleyball, maybe some soccer.  The Dave and Buster’s is open.  The pizzeria was doing good business.  It’s all sorts of people coming and going from this hotel.  Young and old.  Black and white.  

It’s June 2020.  In a place the virus has yet to touch, my wife and I reach the same instinctive conclusion:  it’s only a matter of time.  It would not be a surprise to hear that Wichita, KS, was the next new hotspot for a virus very alive, very capable, and, like us, on the move...


The full post is here...

Writing for Advanced Leisure

~ johnbrandall

I recently had a couple of articles published to the Advanced Leisure website. It's run by a couple friends of mine. It's a cool site, in its infancy. I'll include below links to the two pieces I have written for the site, so far. Both are bird-related, and one has sketches of herons by both me and my wife.

Gray Heron
https://www.advancedleisure.com/lifestyleanddesignarticles/grayheron

A Tidbit on Pipits
https://www.advancedleisure.com/lifestyleanddesignarticles/pipits



Fluffy Stucco: Tijuana 2023, Part Three

~ johnbrandall

We go out and build houses for families, the same house every time. You meet the family but who knows what happens when the house is done and you go back home. We get the family's bio and we are excited to talk about the family and the work we do; how much good our work is doing the family. No one asks me to do this, of course.

We're all in tents, more or less the same abode. There are daily water limits. Supposedly. There's a sign referring to a limit, but I've never seen it enforced. So much happens just by way of suggestion. If anything unusual occurs, it's a big deal. Like the guitar-playing security guard. Or the security guards in general. They don't seem like the most formidable security force. There is a fence around the Amor campground, but it's not an imposing obstacle. It's short; it sags; it could easily be sidled over. But no one ever tries to get in; and no one ever tries to get out because who would do that, it's not done.

We rent our vans from a place called Car Rental Help Center. Quintessential post-modern genericism. I'm dreading going back to that place, even now. We turn our camp keys in when we leave and then we head back across the border. And once we get back to San Diego we are "home." It's like we were never even gone.


My 2023 Tijuana travel blog continues with part three of four...

Tijuana 2023, Part Two

~ johnbrandall

We got the pad done today. We call it "the pad" but it's really the house's concrete foundation, a rectangle of cement, water, sand, and gravel measuring eleven by twenty-two feet. And we constructed all of the wall sections, seven of them in all. 

The family for whom we are building the house is really friendly. And happy. They are Ivan (age 26) and Enalit (24) and their two children, Keila (7) and Matias (3) . Ivan has a factory job in Tijuana making $85/week, so he wasn't around until later in the day but when he got there we were pretty close to being finished with the pad. He and his wife were standing at the foot of it taking photos. They moved to Tijuana from Chiapas (southern Mexico) in 2022...

This is part two of my 2023 Tijuana trip blog...