Caroline Bird Is Post’s Travel Tales Winner

Caroline Bird, a multi-talented native of England, has won this year’s Travel Tales contest, sponsored by the Palisadian-Post, and will receive a one-night stay at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel and Bungalows in Santa Monica and a dinner for two at Ray Garcia’s seasonal bistro FIG. The Palisades Highlands resident (whose article below competed against 17 other entries) is an athlete, mother and writer, and a volunteer phone counselor at a helpline for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning) youth in crisis. On Sunday, Bird completed 22 miles of the Los Angeles marathon as heavy training for the London marathon, which she will run on April 25. She also participates in triathlons. Growing up in Nottingham, Bird swam competitively until age 12, then decided she didn’t like early-morning practices. When her husband, Andy, was transferred from London to Los Angeles in 2004, he signed her up as the swimmer for a team competing in the Malibu triathlon. When she saw the waves off Zuma Beach, Bird remembers thinking, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ Nevertheless, she competed and then a month later tackled a complete triathlon. ‘It’s become addictive,’ says Bird, who has signed up to participate in a half Ironman in Kona, Hawaii in June (1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike and half-marathon run). ‘I’ve become an athlete geek.’ Bird, who speaks French, Italian and Spanish, loves Southern California and the Palisades. ‘I really feel that I have found ‘my people’ here’the athlete community, the writer community and the mums-who-think-like-me community,’ says Bird, who has taken numerous writing classes at UCLA Extension and bases her stories on life experiences. ‘I was a fat chubby kid and one of my essays was about my mother sending me to Weight Watchers. Another was about learning to pole dance from L.A. teacher Sheila Kelly.’ At 19, Bird attended the equivalent of a community college in England and earned a bilingual secretarial degree. While working as a researcher at The Power Station, an MTV-style music channel on British Satellite Broadcasting, she met her husband, who was the producer. She originally refused his offer of marriage, but one day received a fax from him saying he was trapped in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he had been sent on a humanitarian assignment. ‘There had been an explosion near the journalists’ hotel which resulted in Andy’s sound recordist being killed and his cameraman losing an arm,’ Bird recalls. ‘My boyfriend wasn’t entirely sure that he would make it back home. I decided if he got out alive, I was going to marry him.’ Bird admits that writing is tough to fit into her schedule at times because ‘life gets in the way and my days are spent overseeing the minutiae of my overscheduled husband [Andy is chairman of Walt Disney International] and children, Charlie [15] and Toby [13].’ ‘Once the kids are in college, that’s when I hope I can focus on writing,’ Bird says, noting that she may self-publish her essays in a collection called ‘Oh Crap, I Forgot to Go to College.’