WHAT ABOUT A BUCKET LIST?
    
       
  As I travel, I hear a lot of people talk about their 'bucket list'. The term refers to a list of goals to achieve before death. It was popularized by the 2007 film The Bucket List, but it was coined by screenwriter Justin Zackham in 1999 as a shortened version of his "List of Things to Do Before I Kick the Bucket". It is rooted in the 18th-century idiom "kick the bucket". I am afraid so many people use it as an excuse not to do the thing that they really want to do.    
     
 

1. "What purpose does a bucket list serve?" Sadly, by it's own definition it is stuff you want to do before you die. So if you're not dead yet, you're still okay, right? My response to that is this - 'He who aims at nothing usually hits it'. If you do not set a tentative date that you are aiming to hit, you will never get it done. I really don't have a 'bucket list' because places I want to visit I have done so. I wanted to ride in New Zealand so I started planning. I knew it would be expensive, and it would burn all of my vacation at the first of the year, so I had to come to grips with that. I started planning that trip in 2009 and kept saving my money and sorting things out with that goal in mind. I had to keep moving the date out as things occurred in life but there was always a date. Finally in 2014 I was able to make that trip and it was all that I thought it would be. I could have just said "Well, it's on my bucket list' and I would still not have made the trip.

2. "What Is stopping you from doing it?" This is the question that you need to consider. Is it time? Is it money? Is it personal obligations? Will postponing it for twenty years make it any easier to do? I can't remember how many folks I have talked to over the years that were going to this and going to that when they retired and then they couldn't for a variety of reasons. Remember this if nothing else - Your 'bucket' may get a hole in it! As you get older, you generally do not get healthier. The longer you wait, the more expensive stuff becomes and often the harder it becomes to do. I am not proposing going on a wild, reckless spending spree, but have you sat down and come up with a tentative budget on just what your dream would cost and what time it would take? With the online resources available at your finger tips now, there is no reason you can't at least do that. Maybe it will take you 5 years or more to accumulate the funds to do it - you start with putting the first dollar away if it's nothing more than a big jug for your change. At least that is a start toward where you want to go. Winning the lottery is not a very good plan to count on to finance your adventure.

3."How bad do you really want to do it or is it just a passing fancy?" I started out very poor in the hills of Tennessee. If you had told me that one day I would travel around this globe as I have been able to do, I would have laughed in your face. But I had dreams like everyone else and I was determined to try to fulfill some of those. When I started riding motorcycles in 1968, I heard about how riding a motorcycle in the Alps was the 'best it gets' as far as the riding experience. So I started looking into making that trip. That one took almost 40 years before I could pull it off. I developed a network of friends over there and started making short rides in the United Kingdom to sort how this rental motorcycle thing worked out. Then I was able to go over with my friends over there and dip my riding 'feet' in Europe. Then finally money and time worked out so I could do the Alps tour. It took many years to get things sorted but I had a goal and I kept my eye on it. If I had waited until I retired, I don't know if I would have been able to make the trip or not. I've had a lot of 'repairs' since then on this old body and some things just don't work like they used to.

4.The purpose of this website is to encourage you to take that trip you've always talked about but never pulled the trigger. Without fail when I tell someone that, I can see their wheels turning as they are thinking about that very thing. I remind people that all of my travels on this website up through 2022 were done while working a 40 hour a week job with 3 to 4 weeks of paid vacation. I determined early on that I would live a financially conservative lifestyle so that I might have a little 'play money' to travel at some point. I don't have to have the latest IPhone or a 60 inch big screen TV or the latest, greatest vehicle - I'd rather take that money and put it toward a trip. But one thing is for sure - I will not laying in a bed in some nursing home wishing I had done the stuff on my 'bucket list'. How about you?