Turning 70: How a war turned a birthday week in the Maldives into three days in Tuscany

While you’re reading this, I should be at a five-star beach bungalow in the Maldive Islands thinking how great life is at 70. It was my birthday Sunday and I’d face the biggest decision I’d have all day: lie on the sugary white-sand beach inches from the turquoise, crystal-clear Indian Ocean in the mid-80s, or take my book to a lounge chair at the pool surrounded by palm trees.

Then a president decided to start a war he promised he’d never launch and sent the world all to hell.

That included my 70th birthday plans.

Yes, I turned the big 7-0 Sunday. Many people dread landmark birthdays but no one more than I. My birthdays don’t have landmarks. They have land mines. And they often blow up in my face. My life is dotted with some terrible birthdays, times when I wanted to take the growing number of candles off my cake and set myself aflame, like a Buddhist monk protesting a government.

Oh, how I can relate to that today.

When Pres. Trump started the Iran War on Feb. 28, one of the first places Iran bombed in retaliation was Doha’s airport. We were flying to and from the Maldives through Doha. The airport closed for three weeks. Thousands of flights were cancelled. Travelers were stranded in Doha, in the Maldives and all over Europe for those using Doha as a connection to Asia.

LastMinute.com, the Italian travel agency that organized our hotel-air package, said Qatar Airways would notify us 24-48 hours before our March 24 flight if our flight was cancelled.

We wanted to cancel immediately. Marina had big plans for my 70th and they did not include dodging ballistic missiles. I feared we could reach Doha and/or the Maldives and some Iranian warlord would wake up in a bad mood and carpet bomb Qatar, leaving us stranded, on my own dime.

Forget death, destruction and fear. I wanted my bungalow in the Maldives. (Attention, Republicans! Put down your guns! I’m kidding!)

As the war worsened and flights out of Doha backed up, LastMinute didn’t even wait for Qatar Airways’ cancellation. On March 19, the agency cancelled our whole trip. I’m getting a full refund, minus the insurance but including a €350 gift voucher. 

In its place, I reserved three nights in a spa in Tuscany. We’re at IConic Wellness Resort & Spa in the town of Arezzo. It has Jacuzzis, pools, massages and it’s in a zone surrounded by picturesque wineries making some of the best wine on the planet.

Unless the Iran Revolutionary Guard decides to turn its bombs on vineyards, I think I’ll survive.

But add flushing the Maldives down the toilet to my list of birthday disappointments. Since retiring to Rome in 2014 and meeting Marina, my birthdays have improved dramatically. How can you have a bad birthday in Europe? Defining a lousy day is an overpriced cappuccino.

I deserve good birthdays. I had some disasters back in the United States. To wit:

March 29, 1977

I turned 21. It’s the day in the U.S. when you become a man. At the end of the night, I wanted to become a trappist monk.

I was a junior at the University of Oregon and in Eugene in the ‘70s, some bars gave you a free pitcher of beer on your 21st birthday. What could go wrong?

I lived in the same frat at the time they filmed the 1978 hit film Animal House. While I never got my ass paddled and said, “Thank you, sir. May I have another,” our Phi Kappa Psi house did have members known for their colossal thirst.

Attracted by free beer and a first-hand study in alcohol poisoning, about a half dozen of them took me out drinking that night I turned 21. However, they wouldn’t let me leave until I drank a pitcher by myself. At the third bar, at the point when every time I peed it sounded like the Budweiser jingle, The Paddock bar featured what would become my undoing.

Ten Cent Hotdog Night.

My hotdog settled in my stomach like a stick of dynamite. When the fuse lit, I barely made it to the parking lot where I blew chow, a 15-minute technicolor yawn. I fell asleep in said parking lot, and to this day I don’t remember how I got home.

I just remembered the next day wondering what’s so great about turning 21. Then I asked my roommate if he had a Bible.

March 29, 1986

When I turned 30, I had worked in Las Vegas for six years. It was a wild period in my life. Vegas in the ‘80s was nasty and uninhibited. There was no pretense about family entertainment. You could do anything you wanted anytime you wanted. But as one particularly randy friend advised:

“Just be sure to wash afterward.”

I wasn’t dating anyone at the time I turned 30. That’s the age when you see your youth in the rearview mirror and start seeing the faint light of middle age ahead.   

I had no plans. I wanted a plan. My ex-girlfriend, who five years earlier infamously dumped my sorry ass in a bar in front of her friends, agreed to take me out for a birthday drink. Considering what she did and how she represented pure evil in the female species, I’d rather spend my 30th with a case of beer or a case of cholera.

But I was desperate. And desperation and Las Vegas are a very bad combination.

Then that night, three hours before she was to pick me up, she called and said a guy she’d been dying to go out with asked her out. She said yes. Sorry.

She was forever more known as the Barracuda.

I wound up eating dinner in a casino coffee shop, alone and lost $20 at a $2 blackjack table in about the time it took me to tie my shoe. At the table, I did meet three beautiful Mexican women on vacation but my lone female contact on that birthday was a limp good night handshake in the Caesars Palace parking lot.

Middle age, here I come.

March 29, 1996

I was deep into my career job at The Denver Post and covering the Denver Broncos. I was a workaholic with little time for dating, let alone a girlfriend. Come my 40th birthday, that sucked.

I went to see a famous Denver comedy act, Lewis and Floorwax. Alone. It’s why I love live comedy. Comics can make you laugh when you’re alone. 

I wound up getting a burger and a beer at a dive bar near my condo at midnight. Alone. Fuck you, forties.

March 29, 2006

This was the first milestone birthday that didn’t require therapy afterward. I was living with a woman I’d taken to Rome on my first stint in 2001-03. For my 50th birthday, we hosted a party in my 14th-floor condo.

Lots of good friends, colleagues, alcohol and food. I had a lot of laughs, some deep conversations with people I needed to know better and thought my later years would be my best – on one condition, which is what I wished when I blew out my candles.

That I would some day move back to Rome.

March 29, 2016

The wish came true. I retired to Rome in January 2014. A year later I would start dating Marina. A year after that we’d celebrate my 60th together in Sicily. We stayed at the same Grand Hotel Villa Politi in Syracuse that Winston Churchill stayed during World War II. We roamed the windy, narrow streets of the fascinating Ortigia neighborhood. We sipped wine and Spritz at waterfront cafes.

Suddenly, at 60, I felt younger than I ever had in my life. Italy does that to you.

Ever since then, we’ve celebrated our birthdays in exotic places. Never did I wake up alone and drunk in a bar’s parking lot. To wit:

2017, Favignana. We returned to Sicily. This time we went to Favignana, a little island off the west coast where the main mode of transport is the bicycle and where The Weather Channel ranked Cala Azzurra beach as the 13th Clearest, Bluest Water in the world. We cycled from beach to beach, ate fresh seafood on the water, watched old fishermen mending their nets at sunset.

2018, Lisbon. It’s a capital I’d never visited but wanted to after falling in love with Portuguese wine in Porto a few years earlier. We listened to fado, Portuguese blues, in cozy bars. We took a walking tour of the many historical sites. We shopped for azulejos, Portugal’s famous hand-painted tiles. And yes, I drank my share of Tawny Red, Portugal’s famous port wine.

2019, Beirut. Yes, Beirut. It sounds crazy now but seven years ago the war was over and Christians and Muslims lived in peace. They joined forces in their disgust with the national government. The Corniche was as romantic as it was when Beirut was considered “The Paris of the Middle East.” We smoked the narghile water pipe. We ate great Lebanese cuisine in a 19th century Ottoman house. We saw the remains of the Civil War. I love Beirut. I find myself toasting its health a lot this month.

2020, Covid. Rome was in deep lockdown and I didn’t leave my neighborhood for six weeks. My birthday was spent at home, alone, drinking a bottle of my beloved Barolo wine while chatting with Marina on a video call, our only form of communication at that time.

2021, Covid. Again, Italy enforced a strict lockdown over my birthday. You could only leave your neighborhood “for essential reasons.” Well, I felt drinking on my birthday constituted an essential reason. So I took a bottle of Barolo on a train to Marina’s. I had the required self-auto declaration form stating my contact information and reason for leaving home. We ordered lasagna and bufala mozzarella from a little take away joint near her flat. While millions were dying around the world, we saluted our health with “Salute!”

2022, Molise. Covid restrictions had just lifted and we went to the least-visited region in Italy, one of three Italian regions I hadn’t visited. Molise is on the Adriatic Coast and we stayed in the capital of Campobasso. We had a funky, artsy hotel in the old town. We drove to the surrounding villages, including the ancestral home of Robert De Niro. We hiked some of the ancient Tratturi trails. We visited an ancient bell factory. Molise’s tourism office is the size of a closet. We were the only tourists we saw.

2023, Istanbul. It’s the most underrated romantic city in the world. There is something majestic about walking by Islamic monuments lit up like Christmas tree ornaments while the muezzin’s prayer from 3,000 mosques fill the night air. We shopped until we dropped in the Grand Bazaar. We attended a Whirling Dirvish show. And nearly everywhere we went, there were stray cats to pet.

2024, Japan, Shanghai. Marina had never been to the Far East. I’d only spent one day in Tokyo. This trip was the lone birthday downer. I landed coughing up a lung and we spent our first full day prowling Tokyo for medicine. We spent a lovely birthday dinner eating sushi in Kyoto and walking under cherry blossoms at Buddhist temples. But we were there a ridiculously few five days then had a fast one-night layover in polluted but fascinating Shanghai before we headed home. We vowed to return.

2025, Oman. Notice Oman hasn’t been in the news during this war? That’s because everyone loves Oman. We did. It’s called “The Switzerland of the Middle East” for a reason. We stayed at a high-end Radisson Blu, a short taxi ride from Muscat’s spectacular waterfront. We spent two nights at a five-star desert resort. We swam in the refreshing wadi watering holes. We ate the traditional shuwa meat dish while overlooking the Gulf of Oman. It was my 20th Islamic country. It gave me reasons to keep returning. 

Some day I will. Let’s see if saner heads around the world ever prevail.