Tag: airplane

Admirals Club

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

Admirals Club.  Dad going through a USA Today.  Cup of coffee going lukewarm in front of me.  I just sped through a sudoku and it didn't blow up.  The chair I'm in is leather, comfortable.  Thoughts of the dog are stressing me; have been since before I left the house.  I'll feel much better when my wife returns to the house tonight, back from a trip of her own; lets me know everything is alright.  Also, rain today.  Gray day, Gray Davis.  Remember him?  Total recall.  The e-mail that never was.  Unknown sender, no subject, blank body, unsigned.  A friend is to let the dog out mid-day but problems with the front-door-knob plague me like a vice.  Is the roof keeping out the rain?  I rain onto paper, letting everything out.  Grip on my temples easing.  Hoping there aren't any leaks; nothing I can do about them now.  American Airlines, AMR.  Flying in the rain.  My father went to use the computer.  When he's back he'll tell me if the market's up or down.

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...

Baja Notes (2022 edition)

~ johnbrandall

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....


Continue reading my account of last year's trip to San Diego and Tijuana...

Trip to See My Siblings, Sept-Oct 2019

~ johnbrandall

Game via radio, Chicago feed. Pat Hughes, Ron Coomer, Zach Zaidman. The Cubs take the lead on an Ian Happ double. The regular season is almost over. Can you believe it? Like a wink. Wild pitch, Cubs add a run, it's 3-1.

We say it every year, and not just about baseball, but: where did the season go? Where did the time go? The months like water, like sand, like air. A temperature that will change and what can you do about it? No, nada.

As we drove north-northeast from Springfield today the skies were mixed. To the west, dark skies. Confused, malformed clouds. A blue darkness. We were along the flatness of Illinois. The sky extended as far as we could see in any direction...


North, to Chicago, go on...

Montanada

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

I wanted to get through the first section of this notebook on this trip.  The pages in this section are edged in blue.  I've got a ways to go, sorry to say.  I did not do enough describing of areas.  I was reluctant to write in the car and thereby pissed a lot of decent words down the drain.  I would have said more about how the plains looked once we were on the eastern side of the park, looking out toward the east.  It was what I called Custer's view.  East of the park, on the fat part of the divide, the land begins the process of flattening out and it's as though you can see for miles and miles and miles.  Maybe you can.  The colors were a range of maize yellows and sun-bleached wheat whites and dull greens and then of course the blue of the sky—that dumbstruck, blue-lipped blue.  The sky was free of clouds as we drove north to Canada on Wednesday but it was accentuated and supported by fairly high altostratus on the way back down.  It was mackerel sky in spots, probably my favorite day sky.

There was champagne—well, prosecco—in our room at the Belton yesterday.  It sat in a little ice bucket on a tray along with a card of congratulations and two up-ended champagne flutes.  B had told them it was our 10-year anniversary trip, which was true.  It was the same brand of prosecco as was waiting in the fridge at our cabin (Reclusive Moose), for Patrick and Anne-Marie in recognition of their tenth.  This was not coincidence.  One of the co-owners of the cabin is the general manager at the Belton.  The other co-owner was waiting tables at the restaurant there last night.  Small town in a small world, I guess.

Continue reading about this trip to Montana and Canada...

Iben Browning’s Blues

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

The sound an airplane makes
is what it means to cut the sky with a knife.
Contrails are not clouds but sutures—
scars left behind, eventually fading,
no soil in blue.

Sadly, I have no more visions.
I foresaw neither Connecticut
falling into the ocean nor
the tremulous sinkhole it bred
in my second-floor apartment.

Pelted again with
the stones of incorrectness,
I’ve had to evacuate the state.

Keep the borscht cool.

See you in November.

To narrow wins,
to fat ones,
to pretenders.
To the factory shut down
then sent away.  We
welcome you back
under different rules.

Everyone got drunk
when Congress worked together.
This time it’s different,
turn the page.