Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Highest Birthday Ever


My birthday weekend was over-the-top fabulous. Spending three days with one of my best friends and my fiancé in beautiful Vancouver with perfect weather was as good as it sounds. Highlights included a visit to the Richmond Summer Night Market, Saturday afternoon on top of Grouse Mountain and dinner at Mirchi Cuisine of India.

Grouse Mountain was especially important to me in the birthday department. Several times in the past I've marked my birthday by going someplace very high up and very beautiful to encourage myself to take an overview of my life and where it's going. Taking the gondola ride up the side of the mountain was very frightening for me and facing that fear supported by Lingoman and LCDSeattle was really awesome. One of the mountaintop activities on offer was a tandem paraglide back down. All three of us wanted to do it, but didn't think we could afford the multi-hundred dollar fee. We also later learned that we're too ahem heavy. We're going to do it next summer, though! Save up a special fund and lose our non-aerodynamic poundage.

So the take-away lesson for me was that I need to face my fears and put myself in scary situations. I'm not getting any younger, and there are things I want to do. One of the most valuable things I learned from the High Priestess who trained me was that if you need more power than you have, you can get it by doing something that scares you. I'll leave you all to ponder the deeper implications of that, but I can tell you that it is 100% true.

More Information

1 comment:

lcdseattle said...

Thankfully it wasn't my birthday, I'm still VERY young and full of life. Even though it wasn't my birthday weekend I must confirm for everyone that it was a FANTASTIC time. Vancouver is a great city only topped by the company I got to spend the weekend with.

Happy birthday old man.