Bucket List

[Mother Dragon]

A bucket list is things we really want to do before we kick the bucket. What's on your bucket list? Tell first of things that are possible. Then some of the possible but improbable. And finally, things that aren't going to happen but are fun to think about.

I've crossed off a lot of things - riding in a helicopter, an airboat ride, riding a motorcycle, calmly handling a snake, eating rattlesnake, handling an alligator without getting bitten, attending several World's Fairs, handling a shark. There are a lot more, but for every one I scratch off, six more pop up. Here are samples:

Possible:
Winning the lottery
Driving my friend's Model A car
Visiting northwest Canada and Alaska
Driving a team of sled dogs
Traveling the whole length of the Mississippi on a paddlewheel riverboat

Possible but improbable
Driving a Lamborghini fast on a track
Visiting Norway and Peru
Winning a cooking contest
Writing a book
Glamping safari in Kenya

Not going to happen
Visiting the international space station
Circumnavigating the globe
Flying my own Gulfstream 650 jet
Having my tomato plants produce prolifically and not be eaten by bugs

Now it's your turn. What's on your list?

 

[Margret]

Possible:
Seeing the northern (or southern) lights for myself
Visiting Key West
Going to a World Con
Regaining full function in my left hand

Possible but improbable:
Getting a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in math
Seeing the Spectre of the Brocken (Brocken spectre - Wikipedia) with no airplane window in the way
Visiting Australia

Not gonna happen:
I'd like to start a honeymoon hotel on the moon (Hey, if I'm going to wish to go to space, why not go big? )

Margret

 

[Winchester]

Mother Dragon I'm completely serious about this.....when you plan to do the riverboat? Let us know. That's something we've been looking at for quite a while. We could do it together and I know we'd have a great time. We need to talk.

Possible:

• Start taking piano lessons again
• Touring more of Canada (we've been into Ontario and Quebec and touched into Manitoba)
• Mother Dragon's Mississippi paddleboat
• Visiting more of the United States (Key West, New Orleans, the Pacific Northwest and the old-growth forest)
• Starting my own blog (food, the cats, gardening, you name it; I've often said that I'm a frustrated blogger....maybe that's why some of my posts are longer than they should be and some of my PMs to people consists of book chapters! Well, that, plus the fact that I love to chat with people.)

Possible, but Improbable

• Ireland and Scotland (I refuse to take this off my bucket list!)
• On that note, getting over the plane-phobia thing
• Getting my Master's in Planning, although I don't know why at my age....I guess just because I can?

Not Gonna Happen

• Opening my own bed-and-breakfast establishment where people could bring their cats (I've gone as far as checking into houses in the Lancaster, PA area. My brother said he'd be the maintenance guy and help out any way he could. Our son is also interested in helping out with us and has gone with me to look at real estate. Real estate in that area is really expensive.) Because of our universities in this area, I might be able to do something around here, too. It all costs money.
• Or opening a very simple cookie/cupcake business
• Winning the lottery (kind of difficult because I don't play often)
• Reading every single book that I want to read, owning every single cookbook that I want
• Baking every recipe that I want to bake (without gaining weight) - I can dream! I love spending time in the kitchen, but my waistline cringes every time I walk in there.

 

[maggiedemi]

I really only have one thing on my bucket list: Winning the Lottery or Publisher's Clearing House. With the money I would get brand new everything- house, appliances, furniture, clothes, linens, cat supplies. Then I would rescue more cats and live simply off the money, nothing too fancy.

 

[muffy]

Winning a really big lottery would be the only thing on my bucket list. Like the above poster said I could help rescue cats and buy everything new. Most of the money would be spent caring and feeding people and animals. All people and all animals.

Ellen

 

[foxxycat]

Winchester don't stop writing. I love reading your posts. So yes do a blog. write a book. You would be good at it.

Ok bucket list=

So much I want to do..

ok for the future..go to Key West-or western shores of Florida-drive down the coast and take pictures of sun sets.
Get a book written. I keep starting a few but after 50 pages I get discouraged and don't finish.
Drive from NH to California.
Hit all the thrift stores in between or wherever..
See more concerts.
Go out dancing or roller-skating. Anything that involves MUSIC.

Stuff on bucket list that don't think will get done in this lifetime.

Drive a racecar on a real mile long race track.
Build a muscle car or at least own on.
Go to Finland or other less touristy attraction and just ride my bike around. I like country and no crowds. Don't need anything fancy. Maybe Italy too. Ireland..wherever it's green and has trees.

Never in this lifetime but I will dream.

Have a huge home for unwanted pets
Get my veterinary license MD=is it too late at 42?! the money!!!
Go live somewhere else in another country where it's cheaper to get by. Maybe Mexico? or other place? Need green grass and trees-snow is ok. Experience another country. New Zealand was another possibility...

 

[blueyedgirl5946]

I don't have a list. Maybe I need to think about this one though. I don't like to travel and I like to sleep in my own bed every night.

 

[arouetta]

I think all mine are Not Going To Happen.

Sky diving. If that happens, it'll probably be the last thing. Because that high up, I'll either chicken out or I'll die of fright on the way down. Scratch that, as Margret says, go big - stratospheric space diving. Or be a test subject for mesospheric or thermospheric space diving.

Colonize Mars. Be part of that group that's never coming back.

Climb in an active volcano. Okay, so this one actually is Possible but Improbable. I would just need to get a PhD in Geology or Vulcanology and get in shape first. But I'm 44 and taking into account the time to get the degree, I'll probably be too old to put on one of those suits and climb into the caldera to sample the gasses.

Adopt a Woolly Mammoth. Well, they cloned Dolly. I might live long enough to see them clone a mammoth and I might win the lottery and have the funding to be part of the project. Just no frog DNA please.

See the Large Hadron Collider. As in be there when they open it up for upgrades or repairs and see the inside with my own eyeballs.

See Tesla's papers. The ones that would have to be declassified since the FBI stole them out of his safe as soon as he was dead. While we are at it, the JFK paperwork and the Roswell paperwork too.

Go to the 100th anniversary of Roswell. Possible but Improbable. I missed the 50th anniversary and I hate myself for missing it. I'll only be 74 when year 100 rolls around.

Sail on a Tall Ship. Hey, I've got one that's Possible. It'll be like that opening scene in that Star Trek film, where Picard is all poetic about being one with the wind and the sea and Riker is practical about bad food and brutal discipline. Problem is that I'd be wanting to bring a cutlass and a pirate flag on board. So to make this Not Going To Happen, I'm going to win the lottery, buy a tall ship, and be one of those people who live on a ship permanently...except this one doesn't have motors and is named Queen Anne's Revenge II.

To be honest, I've given far more thought to my post-bucket list. All the things I want to see when I'm a ghost. It starts with see what was before the Big Bang and ends with finding out if Dark Energy wins. And along the way is seeing if Shakespeare actually wrote his own plays, who is Jack the Ripper, what did the loot in Khufu's tomb look like before the grave robbers dug their way in, did the fifth gas giant get ejected from the solar system or smash into the sun or is still hanging around the Kuiper Belt, see what happened to the Roanoke colony, find out exactly how did sabertooth tigers take down prey without breaking their teeth, and find where exactly that missing nuclear bomb is in Greenland.

 

[Margret]

Adopt a Woolly Mammoth. Well, they cloned Dolly. I might live long enough to see them clone a mammoth and I might win the lottery and have the funding to be part of the project. Just no frog DNA please.

Definitely no frog DNA!

I had a dream once that some friends of mine were involved in a project to clone Woolly Mammoths, except they were also doing some genetic tinkering to make the clones a good deal smaller, about the size of a Labrador Retriever (though with a vastly different shape). Adorable.

See Tesla's papers. The ones that would have to be declassified since the FBI stole them out of his safe as soon as he was dead.

Oh, yeah. Have you read any of Spider Robinson's Callahan's Place series, with a still-living Nicola Tesla?

Margret

 

[Mother Dragon]

I think all mine are Not Going To Happen.

Sky diving. If that happens, it'll probably be the last thing. Because that high up, I'll either chicken out or I'll die of fright on the way down. Scratch that, as Margret says, go big - stratospheric space diving. Or be a test subject for mesospheric or thermospheric space diving.

Colonize Mars. Be part of that group that's never coming back.

Climb in an active volcano. Okay, so this one actually is Possible but Improbable. I would just need to get a PhD in Geology or Vulcanology and get in shape first. But I'm 44 and taking into account the time to get the degree, I'll probably be too old to put on one of those suits and climb into the caldera to sample the gasses.

Adopt a Woolly Mammoth. Well, they cloned Dolly. I might live long enough to see them clone a mammoth and I might win the lottery and have the funding to be part of the project. Just no frog DNA please.

See the Large Hadron Collider. As in be there when they open it up for upgrades or repairs and see the inside with my own eyeballs.

See Tesla's papers. The ones that would have to be declassified since the FBI stole them out of his safe as soon as he was dead. While we are at it, the JFK paperwork and the Roswell paperwork too.

Go to the 100th anniversary of Roswell. Possible but Improbable. I missed the 50th anniversary and I hate myself for missing it. I'll only be 74 when year 100 rolls around.

Sail on a Tall Ship. Hey, I've got one that's Possible. It'll be like that opening scene in that Star Trek film, where Picard is all poetic about being one with the wind and the sea and Riker is practical about bad food and brutal discipline. Problem is that I'd be wanting to bring a cutlass and a pirate flag on board. So to make this Not Going To Happen, I'm going to win the lottery, buy a tall ship, and be one of those people who live on a ship permanently...except this one doesn't have motors and is named Queen Anne's Revenge II.

To be honest, I've given far more thought to my post-bucket list. All the things I want to see when I'm a ghost. It starts with see what was before the Big Bang and ends with finding out if Dark Energy wins. And along the way is seeing if Shakespeare actually wrote his own plays, who is Jack the Ripper, what did the loot in Khufu's tomb look like before the grave robbers dug their way in, did the fifth gas giant get ejected from the solar system or smash into the sun or is still hanging around the Kuiper Belt, see what happened to the Roanoke colony, find out exactly how did sabertooth tigers take down prey without breaking their teeth, and find where exactly that missing nuclear bomb is in Greenland.

I love your choices. There is a chain called iFly where you essentially fly free in a wind tunnel. It's on the pricey side, but I hear it's a lot of fun. Our daughter took our granddaughter there for her 15th birthday. They said it was short but incredible fun.

iFLY Indoor Skydiving - You Can Fly - Locations Nationwide


If you live near one, you can usually volunteer on a tall ship. The volunteers are often rewarded for their work with a short cruise.

You can get uncomfortably close to an active volcano in Hawaii. For a miniature version, visit some of the geysers in Yellowstone National Park. A lot of them are hot and sulphurous just like a volcano.

I saw a museum exhibit on the La Brea tar pits and they had a saber-tooth cat there. While the teeth were long, the cat had an enormous mouth and could bite just like a regular cat, only with more force and penetration.

I like your post-bucket choices, too.

Keep your dreams alive. You never know when you'll have a chance to have them come true.

 

[arouetta]

I saw a museum exhibit on the La Brea tar pits and they had a saber-tooth cat there. While the teeth were long, the cat had an enormous mouth and could bite just like a regular cat, only with more force and penetration.

Some scientists looked over the skull proportions, bone density, etc and determined that if the sabertooth tiger attacked prey like a housecat or a tiger or nearly all other cats, the fangs would break. They just weren't dense enough or strong enough to pierce the neck of a struggling creature. The scientists said that lions attack differently, claws at first to take down the prey and then teeth only when the prey is near dead, and the leg bones of a sabertooth tiger seemed suited for that hunting style.

 

[Margret]

There is a chain called iFly where you essentially fly free in a wind tunnel. It's on the pricey side, but I hear it's a lot of fun. Our daughter took our granddaughter there for her 15th birthday. They said it was short but incredible fun.

There was one of these in Las Vegas when my parents were living there briefly, except it was named "Flyaways." We went, and Roger went flying. I didn't because the required goggles didn't allow for eye glasses and I didn't think I'd have much fun flying with a headache, but I watched Roger and he had a blast. The employee who was shepherding Roger's group through the experience went flying briefly on his own after the clients were done. At that time fliers had to wear these over-sized jump suits over their regular clothes that had lots of slits in them so the suit could catch the wind, but this employee was a skinny young man and he could fly merely by pulling his tee shirt out of his pants and holding it out to catch the wind.

We have one near us now. If I had the money I'd get some prescription goggles made and go there. You can add that one to my bucket list.

You can get uncomfortably close to an active volcano in Hawaii. For a miniature version, visit some of the geysers in Yellowstone National Park. A lot of them are hot and sulphurous just like a volcano.

Yellowstone appears to be the caldera of an ancient volcano. For the time being, at least, it's managing to vent most of its energy via geysers and hot springs. And if it ever becomes totally active again, heaven help us all in Wyoming and the states around it.

Margret

 

[arouetta]

Yellowstone appears to be the caldera of an ancient volcano. For the time being, at least, it's managing to vent most of its energy via geysers and hot springs. And if it ever becomes totally active again, heaven help us all in Wyoming and the states around it.

Margret

That's the understatement of the year.

Yellowstone is not just a volcano, it's a super-volcano. Which means when it blows the entire world is going to suffer. It's going to put so much stuff in the atmosphere that we will basically have a nuclear winter for several years and about 2/3 of the continental US is going to be blanketed in ash.

Unfortunately the geysers aren't venting really anything. The water is being heated because the magma is right there barely underground. About the only thing that vents a volcano to make an eruption less explosive is the release of gas, and because of the scale of the super-volcano if Yellowstone were releasing enough gas to make it a calmer eruption then the air would just not be breathable for miles. Yeah, there's pools of water that can eat a car but it's not enough of a venting when you look at the scale of things.

Plus there are some landscape deformations happening that shows the land is lifting pretty rapidly, when looking at a geological timescale. That's not good because it means the magma is coming closer to the surface and pushing the above land out of its way.

And for the final fun fact, Yellowstone's last eruption was 600,000 years ago. The one before that was 1.2 million years ago. Before that was 1.8 million years ago. Notice a pattern? That makes that ground swelling look really, really scary.

(And I so regret not going to college for this.)