Happy 30th birthday Julie. You are my best friend and I wanted to take this moment to tell you how happy I am to be spending my life with you. Whether it’s a bike trip, a hiking trail, a running path, or the career path, they’re all better because we are there together.
Since we had the rare storm that kept us in Santa Monica this week, we were not able to finish on Julie’s birthday as we originally planned. However, we have wonderful family and friends and are spending the evening with our cousin Chris in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, literally a few blocks off our coastal route a little ways north of San Diego. We had a fairly leisurely ride today of only 47 miles and I pulled the trailer the entire day to give Julie an easier time on her special day. We also did her favorite and stopped for coffee and pastries this morning after only a few miles in the town of San Clemente. Tonight, we’re going out for dinner with Chris at a super vegetarian friendly restaurant called the Lotus Café. Then tomorrow morning, we hop on the bikes, without the trailer this time, to ride the last 50 miles or so to the border before coming back up via train to stay with Chris another two nights.
I haven’t been too good about going out and shopping for a birthday gift (we spend nearly every moment of every day together) and Julie usually likes to bake her own cake. However, what Julie doesn’t know until she reads this entry is that we are going to have a luxury day when we’re in Mexico with some pampering, in particular, a couples massage session. She has been talking about this for probably a year or two now, looking at getting this for me at some point but actually doing so because she wanted to do it so much herself. So happy birthday Julie, we’re going to get pampered in Mexico next week in celebration of your first thirty years of enjoying life. I hope we have many more enjoyable years together too.
I love you Julie and am so glad to have you as a best friend. Happy birthday and cheers to the next great decade (I’m thinking the 30’s are going to be the best yet).