CHAPTER 5
I love spending my birthday abroad. For some reason I feel that it has the power to substantiate the past year of my life- whether that was spent working, or traveling, no matter- as long as I am traveling on my birthday, I feel like the whole year was worthwhile. Along the same lines, it acts as some sort of lifestyle litmus test: if each year, every year, on the exact same day, I am living the life that I want, then that is a pretty good indication that I am, well, living the life that I want. Everything else in-between the two days of my periodic lifestyle exam might or might not have diverged from my lifestyle ideal, but as long as I can continue to bring it back and hit my mark on that yearly anniversary, I feel like I have a pretty good chance of hitting it the next year, and indefinitely into the future. So far I have been pretty lucky, in the fact that four out of my last five birthdays passed the test, one of which was my 29th in London…
The other reason I like celebrating my birthday while traveling is that you are usually given an unusually weighty say in the activities for the day (if your traveling companions are gracious, which mine always are). So, for my London Birthday, I convinced our small party to take to the streets and walk the celebrated Portobello Road, of Bed Knobs and Broom Sticks fame. I realize that it is probably famous in its own right, but to a wide eyed small boy the aforementioned classic Disney movie made a great impression on me in my youth. Predictably, it didn’t turn out to be quite the same as depicted on the silver screen, with sing troops of street performers battling it out between the stalls of antiques, but it was still really cool; and not being a wide eyed small boy anymore, I was happy to partake in a decidedly non-Disney pint of ale- which always goes a long way towards my impressions of a place, street performers be damned.
Well the other birthday activities for the weekend included a bike ride through Hyde Park, where we were literally slipping over millions of buckeyes on the trail, like so many marbles, which made us feel inordinately lucky (here is where I explain to you that Kacey and I happen to share an irrational affection for the bulbous brown seeds, and it was all we could do to stop at greedily hoarding only two zip-lock bags worth). After that fine adventure, we stopped at Harrod’s- always fun- and then Jake took me out to a cultural experience like none other: the local football match- where his team Fulham wiped the socks off of arch rival Manchester City (or at least that is how I remember it). The girls meanwhile, spent a relaxing afternoon at a traditional English tea.
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