Celebrations

For adfamiliares's birthday, we biked about 8 miles upstream along the Charles, along woodsy trails and boardwalks, to a kayak rental place. The river there is completely different from the river in Allston — thick with islands and lily-choked inlets, sylvan rather than urban along the banks. We saw no turtles, but a fine assortment of waterfowl was on display: a great blue heron, an egret, ducks, cardinals, a cormorant, geese, swans, red-winged blackbirds dive-bombing the water for bugs.

Then K. said, from a little distance ahead, "I am approaching something atypical." I stared, and said, "You mean the buffalo?"

There was a life-size statue of a buffalo on the sloping bank of a forested peninsula, beside an Indian with an American eagle on his shoulder. Then we saw the crocodile pictured above, followed in quick succession by several deer, a Galapagos tortoise, a bear, and a big iguana lounging on a branch over the water. Whoever owns that property has turned that stretch of the Charles into the Jungle Cruise at Disney World. Startling, and very cool! They also, apparently, sometimes provide free water bottles to boaters, to judge by the empty bin with ENJOY WATER! painted on it. Who lives at 1 Edgewater Drive in Waltham?

After heading home to shower and change, we biked to Harvard Square for an excellent fancy dinner at Rialto: bluefish with bacony grilled razor clams for K., striped sea bass with fried bass puffs and caponata for me. Rialto is the restaurant of Jody Adams, as seen on Top Chef: Masters. As we got up to leave, we saw her standing behind us, and both immediately began wondering why she would come out to greet us. It turned out that she was on her way to greet the much more important person at the table next to ours, but we didn't realize that until we'd already exchanged pleasantries about the food. Slightly awkward, but mostly fine, and we got to meet Jody Adams.

At home, we had presents and the peach pie I'd made with the ginger ice cream K. had made, and it was all quite splendid, and now I am stuffed and exhausted. Happy birthday, love!