Fortieth

Yesterday was my 40th birthday. I recommend to anyone who feels like they don't get enough birthday cheer that they sign up for Facebook and make sure their birthday is public knowledge. It was a good day. I skipped out of work to catch the 007 movie Quantum of Solace (I liked the last one better), eat free food, and hang with my brother and nephew who came over later in the day to drink beer and play Wii. Oliver (my nephew) bought me a special present, pictured below. A Star Wars battle droid and a card telling me happy birthday big guy. The battle droid has to sit down, because he has freakishly small feet compared to his torso. I think it's a sign that in the future it will be fashionable for the rich to own basically useless robots that mimic the Chinese practice of foot binding.



I think people feel sorry for you on your 40th, or else they're just happy you lived that long despite the stupid, life threatening details of your past, because I scored a few very nice presents. My entire family (sister's family, brother's family, in-laws, my family, and my parents) went in on buying me a complete set (everything but the two commemorative posters) of Cage Design MSP bike posters to hang on our extensive kitchen wall space. I only have the Stone Arch Bridge one at the house so far as the others are still being framed. They'll go nicely with my posters of the tour, poster from RAGBRAI, various bicycling statues, the "One Fucking Speed" triptych Pooteewheet created for me, and the wall art made out of old bike parts that a local artist is making for me.

And my parents also got me a Vista HCx handheld GPS to replace my old one. Now I can download queries of caches to install on my GPS and copy them onto the handheld with a USB cable instead of hand-entering the coordinates one at a time. It's also in color, uses many more satellites for better accuracy (and faster boot time - my old one took forever), and has road maps, so it's useful for finding your way around a big city if you're just on vacation. We tried it out on a few caches today.

Thank you to everyone for the well wishes and the gifts!