Happy Birthday, Dave! (Want a Band-Aid with that chocolate cake?)

Happy Birthday to my One and Only...

Relaxing at The Vintage Bean in McLaren Vale, contemplating a Very Large Cappuccino and a slice of the most amazing chocolate cake, into which our hosts put a birthday candle in honor of the occasion --

Chocolate on top of chocolate today. Before we headed out to the Bean, we'd swung by the local Cheesecake Shop (not to be confused with Cheesecake Factory. At the Shop, they bake and sell cheesecakes and gateaux; it's not a restaurant) and picked up Dave's actual birthday cake...

...which appears here still in the box. Yee-ouch. He'll be about a week eating this! This is their Enchanted Forest cake, the most outrageous cake in the store. Then it was over to the Vintage Bean for coffee --

-- portrait of the photographer, looking a trifle less gargoyle-like than usual. Gak. I hate pictures of myself, which is why you seldom see them. And then, back home...

...Zolie checked out Dave's birthday card. Tried to get a shot of her with her nose inside it, but she wouldn't stay put long enough for me to get a good one, so ... here, she's captivated by a bird outside the window. Good enough.

Full marks to Dave for making the best of a birthday that started under a bit of a cloud. He hit the deck yesterday during a bike ride in treacherous terrain, and will be healing up for the week while he works on all that chocolate. He swears up and down that the wounds aren't as bad as they look, and the backache is worse...

Hmm. That can happen, when you land on your lumbar, on the curb. In fact, he's starting to recover already, which is nothing short of astonishing. If it were me falling off the bike, I'd be in a full body cast for at least six months, and then in physio and chiropractic for a year. Dave ought to be up and at 'em by the end of the week, and then ... well, back on the bike. Fingers crossed. Fortunately, in all the many years he's been riding downunder, this is only the third time he's hit the deck, and if he stays on the average, he's not due to for the next chute sans gravity (that's one thing I learned from Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin...) till around 2022.

Here's hoping. And praying.

Happy Birthday, Dave!