Burrito Bikers

Burrito Bikers is the name given to a variety of individual projects across the country. People  make breakfast burritos to give to the homeless on the weekends, often by biking around town (hence the name). In North Carolina, it first began in Charlotte and has since spread to other cities.

My friend Bryson heard about the Charlotte project and decided to do something similar for his confirmation project at church. He and Robert Payne, one of the youth leaders, went around town on bikes giving burritos to the homeless and hungry one Saturday in May during our freshman year of high school. I thought it sounded like a great idea, and Bryson, some of the other youth, and I proposed making Burrito Bikers the main outreach project of our youth group. We approached the youth leaders with the idea during the summer. Each different level of the youth group would have a separate time to make burritos, which would be frozen. Then, at least one Saturday a month, the Senior EYC (high schoolers) would distribute the burritos to the homeless. The youth leaders also liked the idea, especially since it would be a long-term project with the possibility of making a large impact.

By this time, other people in Greensboro had started to do Burrito Bikers, using Center City Park as a focus point. They began to coordinate their efforts, scheduling different groups on different Saturdays as well as organizing people to bring coffee and doughnuts as well. Bryson and I contacted them about including the Holy Trinity youth group. We soon had an arrangement to bring the burritos on the first Saturday of every month during the school year.

Our first Saturday was October 8, 2011. Since then, the program has become one of our largest, with high participation from the youth and it has been going on strong for almost three years now. Bryson, I, and everyone who else organized it project never dreamed it would be this successful.

One of the things I have loved the most about the experience is that it gives a face to homelessness and poverty. Coming from a middle class neighborhood and family, those are two things I was not always exposed to. Its hard to connect with something you have never seen before.Its easy to vilify or ignore the homeless if you have never met them. But with Burrito Bikers, we are out in Greensboro interacting with the homeless, giving them food and hearing their stories. Poverty becomes real to us. Some of the stories I have heard are quite tragic. One homeless man I met used to be a college professor until an unfortunate set of circumstances ruined his life. Some of them are mentally ill that have fallen through the cracks of a faulty social system. Some days when we have left over burritos, we take them to a homeless camp on the south side of downtown where we can see how they live. Very few are homeless because they are lazy or don't want to work, as many politicians claim; they are simply the victims of a harsh life. It is extremely meaningful for me to try to help. I want to try to do something in the future to create lasting change for the homeless and impoverished; I don't think our country does enough to help. We are all connected to each other after all, living in a giant global family, and there is no higher purpose than working to make the world a better place.

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Making burritos

March 2014

March 2013

Our first Saturday

NCHSAA 2014 State Championships

This year's state swimming championships was bittersweet for me. It was my last meet swimming for Grimsley, which has always been one of my favorite things about high school. The team is really close and supportive of each other and has a better environment than my club swim team. It is something I'll miss the most next year.

We had already had a pretty good season leading up to the state meet. Both the boys and girls won the conference. The girls won Regionals and the boys placed third. Several records, including the 400 Free Relay for the men, had already been broken. I knew we had a chance to do great things, but that just made me even more nervous than usual before a meet.

Overall, the meet was a big success for the team. The boys 200 Medley Relay (on which I swam the freestyle leg in 21.70) won the bronze medal, setting a new school record. Our 200 free relay and 400 free relay also placed in the top eight. I wasn't as pleased with my individual event (I didn't make it back to finals) but all my other swims were very good. The girls team did well too, with two relays medaling. The girls had their best team finish in years and the boys improved our place from last year.

All in all, it was a great capstone to my senior year of swimming!

With our medals!

Me and my twin

Food Assistance Warehouse

On the first day of winter break, I volunteered with TAGS at Food Assistance Warehouse. The organization collects donations of food and distributes it to elderly people in the community for whom it may be difficult stay fully supplied and nourished. I organized the pallets of food and helped back the bags for the January distribution.

Overall, although the work was a little dull, I thought it was significant to be helping the elderly. That is a demographic that is often overlooked when it comes to outreach and a fairly large percentage of elderly live below the poverty line. Sometimes I think that we as a society can become so focused on a single problem that we forget the other ones that may exist.

The warehouse

Christmas Tree Sales, 2013

Like in 2012, the youth group at my church sold Christmas trees to raise money. This year, the money is not just going to our outreach efforts at Glory Ridge; it's also funding a trip to Spain in June, helping defray the cost so more people will be able to go. Also like last year, the sales consisted of manning a table outside of the church on Sunday mornings and then loading the trees onto cars two weekends in December.

We didn't sell very many trees the first few weeks despite our best efforts, causing the youth leaders to reconsider our strategy somewhat. I suggested moving the table to a more prominent spot, which we did. Things seemed to pick up after that, perhaps because we moved the table, or perhaps due to the efforts of Meredith Scott, one of the youth leaders who single-handedly sold something like fifteen trees one morning.The distribution days were the same ordered chaos, although by now we had become quite experts at lashing trees to cars.

We raised a total of $4,000, considerably more than the previous year. That was especially good news given that the money was going to more than one thing. Another successful fundraiser to make all of the youth group's outreach programs possible!

Unwrapping the trees for trimming

Glory Ridge Freeze Out

As a fall retreat, the senior and junior high youth groups at my church went to Glory Ridge, the same place we go to for our mission trip each summer, at the beginning of November. I had never been before; the Glory Ridge week in the summer has always coincided, unfortunately, with the YMCA national championships.

Glory Ridge is a camp that many church youth groups go to during the summer in order to work on service projects for the local community, one of the most impoverished region in the state. Instead of working for the community, however, our group instead worked on preparing the camp for winter and contributing to on-site construction projects: clearing undergrowth, building a set of stairs into the slope, working on a new staff cabin, and chopping wood. The new cabin was particularly important, as it would help the camp expand its mission.

We spent all of Saturday working. I mainly worked on the cabin, sealing cracks in the wood with caulk, painting, and constructing steps for the porch. I had never applied caulk before and soon discovered how messy it could be; even when I released the trigger on the caulk gun, it still oozed out of the tip.Needless to say, there were some pretty messy places on the interior walls.

By the end of the day, we had painted almost the entire exterior of the cabin and finished the porch and staircase. Since I may never get a chance to go to Glory Ridge in the summer, I am glad I was able to do this weekend; I was still able to contribute to Glory Ridge's outreach efforts and the efforts of my church to alleviate poverty and human suffering. I had always been a little apprehensive about going to Glory Ridge, but now I know what it's like. Maybe I will be able to go next summer, my last chance before college.

Glory Ridge really is an incredible place and ministry; it has done so much for the people of Madison County and I'm glad to be able to say I participated in it.

Building a new staff cabin

View from the ridge

Marching Band Camp

The marching band has a week-long camp every year in August, usually within two weeks of the start of classes. It's the time where we introduce new members to the basics of marching as well as learn the new drill and music for the halftime show.

This year, we are playing a selection of songs by Santana, a group I have never listen to before. Not knowing the music makes it more difficult to learn; just last year we had done the Beatles which wasn't hard for me to master because I already knew most of those songs by heart. The drill Dr. Stuber wrote is also quite complex, more so than usual. It was going to take a lot of effort to master.

Doing anything outdoors in Greensboro during August is a grueling task in and of itself, and learning the drill was no exception. Our outdoors sessions were complemented by intensive musical rehearsal inside the band room, which would quickly grow hot and stuffy as well. This was coupled already with my general distaste for marching band. It did not make for a particularly enjoyable week.

By the end of the week, we had pretty much mastered the music and had learned the drill to one of the tunes, though not without considerable effort. I was feeling overall pretty good about the show, especially since I had learned marching techniques that would have previously been unfathomable and mastered difficult music; even if you dislike something, it's hard not to feel proud after you have put a lot of work into something. Hopefully the student body will like it.

Given that this is my last marching band camp, I could not help but reflect on my overall experience. It has not always been enjoyable, and I don't think it's something I'll miss. But you'll have to do many things in life you don't want to, and marching band has taught that if you put in effort, you can at least be proud of what you did, even if the doing wasn't so pleasant or enjoyable.

YMCA Long Course National Championships

The YMCA Long Course National Championships was the culmination of my swimming training for the year. Held at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center (site of the 1996 Olympics), the meet features some of the fastest swimmers in the country. This was my third time at the meet, having previously qualified when I was 15 and 16. I had qualified to swim the 100 and 200 back in the meet and I had signed up to do the 200 IM, 100 freestyle, and 50 freestyle as time trial events (as I did not have the actual qualifying times). The entire team went down to Atlanta as a group because for the first time we had enough qualifiers to justify traveling as a group.

As it was the meet I had been in a sense preparing for all year, I was quite anxious in the weeks leading up to it. I wanted to do well and drop time, but I was also worried about psyching myself out. Sometimes if you stress about a meet too much, you'll end up not doing so well.

Things started out well enough. I felt strong and fast in the water during warm-ups the first days, which put me at ease for a while. But I started to get nervous as the 100 back approached. I ended up dropping some time in the event, but not nearly as much as I wanted too - such a small amount that it was practically insignificant. Although disappointed, I tried to keep myself from being discouraged for the rest of the meet.

Overall, the meet turned out to be a mixed bag. Although I dropped time in several events, it was never very much, less than I was hoping. A high point was the 200 free relay, on the last day of competition. Our team placed in the top 16, a major improvement on our entry time and we got a ribbon (and the y-nats ribbons are pretty fancy). Although I was disappointed with my performance, I realize that I can't expect to perform phenomenally at every single meet. Going through periods of little or no improvement is just part of being an athlete, and I still have a year of training left to put in some more hard work.

The Georgia Tech Aquatic Center