Walking4Air

My Living To Do Bucket List

101 things to do before I die…

My “Living to do” list…

Also affectionately known as My Ultimate Bucket list!!

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” ~ Helen Keller

I say CHOOSE one!!!

This is a list I created a number of years ago and would add to it as I went along. Some I have achieved already but I still have many more adventures to try…. Been quite an adventure alone reading through what I had already written and what I had already achieved (and no I am sure my mother wouldn’t be proud of it all)…..

“Consciously seek out experiences that expand your sense of who you are and what you are capable of.” Unknown

So before my time is up and my lights go out I plan on …..

1. Meet the Dalai Lama

2. Visit Tibet

3. Learn to play the guitar (got the guitar, currently learning to play – 2010!)

4. Take cooking lessons (ha, ha this might take a while)!!

5. Visit Graceland with my mom

6. Buy a proper piece of art

7. Summit Kilimanjaro before I’m 40 (So Done!! On the morning of Friday, 13th July 2012, I reached the summit of Kilimanjaro, Uhuru Peak at 5895m (19341ft) ~ :):):):)

8. Go on a round the world trip

9. Volunteer at a Hospice

10. Become a mom

11. Decisively win an argument

12. Get barred from a pub (LOL, done! Oh what a night!! – Can’t recall date, London, all a bit of a haze…)

13. Surprise someone (again) (Done! 5 December 2009)

14. Give to charity (anonymously)

15. Spend Christmas and News Years in New York

16. Go on a retreat in a convent

17. Go sledding

18. Surf skiing at dawn

19. Have a pillow fight

20. Fly in a helicopter

21. Get a free upgrade on a plane (done, 1st class is the way to go!!)

22. Walk on the great wall of China

23. Dance with my dad at my wedding

24. Learn how to use chopsticks properly

25. Build a snowman (done – 2001)

26. Take a ride in a hot air balloon (Woohooo, done! As the sun began to rise on the morning of Saturday, 21 July 2012, I rose up into the air in a hot air balloon over the Serengeti!!!! The most amazing, graceful & peaceful thing I have ever done!)

27. Ride a motorbike (done but want to do again!)

28. Get tipsy with good company (done)

29. Sing karaoke with good friends

30. Toilet paper someone’s house

31. Plan a big bash for my funeral (everyone’s invited!)

32. Have a really good food fight

33. Visit Hong Kong

34. Visit the Tower of London (Done)

35. Travel across America (Started 2003/2004…)

36. Travel around Italy ~ Eat pizza. Drink Wine & throw coins into fountains.

37. Ride a gondola in Venice ~ seems like such a romantic, fun thing to do.

38. Fall hopelessly in love ~ I’m not sure I believe in the idea of one true soulmate, but I do believe in great, grand, sweeping love. And I will not settle for anything less.

39. Go skiing/snowboarding

40. Take a trip to Vietnam

41. Go and see Canada

42. Save a life

43. Eat cheesecake in Chicago (done – December 2003)

44. Cook a beautiful meal for all my friends while they sit on the couch drinking wine! (LOL that’ll make a change)

45. Swim one on one with a dolphin (done with my brother & sis & a pod of about 40 dolphins, November 2010 in Mauritius – Wow, absolutely indescribable!!)

46. Try skydiving (so done ~ 10 March 2013  Skydive Robertson ~ What an incredible, indescribable, insane adrenaline rush! When are we doing that again?!!!)

47. Be a spectator at the world cup , Rugby World Cup Semi Finals) (And done again at the Soccer World Cup Quarter Final Game between my beloved Germany and Spain ~ June 2010)

48. Spend some time sailing again (done with Jason, like old times, in the Indian Ocean while in Mauritius, November 2010 ~ So fabulous!)

49. Write a story about my life (done ~ When I compiled this list many years ago I didn’t always know how I would do things. I never said I’d write a book, I said I’d write a story about my life ~ My blog ‘Walking4Air’ was born on Sunday, 11th March 2012 and it chronicles the journey called my life)

50. Sing along in a music store

51. Turn my mobile off for a week (have managed a weekend) (done ~ and how fabulous was that! August 2010)

52. Leave behind a million bucks

53. Go on holiday with no luggage (does what happened to me count?)

54. Play an elaborate, perfect practical joke and get away with it

55. Swing through the sky on a trapeze (childhood dream)

56. Sleep outside watching the stars (done but no sleeping was involved!) (done again ~ In the Fish River Canyon , Namibia ~ Aug 2010)

57. Create an online alter-ego

58. Take pole dancing lessons (done ~ did my first lesson on the 16th August 2012 and still doing lessons ~ So much fun! Loving every second!)

59. Give a homeless person my lunch (done ~ that was the biggest toothless smile I have ever seen on a homeless person 5 Nov 2009)

60. Spend Christmas day in Lapland

61. Give blood

62. Go camping again (done ~ in Namibia August 2010, what an incredible trip!)

63. Learn how to salsa dance (but this time actually move on from the beginners class!)

64. Go white water rafting (wooohooo done!! What a blast!! 4 – 6 Sept 2009)

65. Try fly fishing

66. Learn to say “hello” in 50 languages

67. Participate in the Mardi Gras in New Orleans

68. And party at the carnival in Rio de Janeiro

69. Hike the Otter Trail (done ~ Spent five ridiculously glorious days hiking the Otter with ridiculously amazing friends 15 February – 20 February 2012 ~ Simply Amazing!)

70. Rough it at a massive music festival like Glastonbury. Wear gumboots. Fall down in the mud.

71. Shoes – Have a room full of shoes

72. Finish my degree (done, final results came in on 12th March 2012 & I officially graduated on the 20th June 2012!!! BA in Psych spec. in Psych Counselling. Five years of hard work – The tassles worth the hassles!!)

73. Then do my honours & then masters

74. Visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Holland

75. Win a Nobel Prize

76. Mentor someone (done 2007 but many more to come!)

77. See a panda bear

78. See a performance at Carnegie Hall

79. Hide all the clocks in my house (done ~ I officially have no clocks in my house!)

80. Celebrate life every day (A work in progress)

81. Take up tai chi

82. Have a past life regression (ha, ha done – very unexpectedly! Who would have thought I lived back in 1470!!!)

83. Adopt a child

84. Spend a summer on the beach in a clapboard house in the Hamptons

85. Send my parents on their dream vacation

86. Ride the world’s biggest and scariest roller coaster

87. Get backstage and get off with a super-sexy-rock-god!

88. Capture an exquisite moment on camera

89. Get another tattoo (done 24-07-2010 – My best one yet!!)

90. Buy or build my dream house

91. Conquer my biggest fear

92. Complete the Monopoly board pub crawl (now there’s a challenge!)

93. Get something named after me

94. Go to confession

95. Try marriage at least once

96. Learn to invest and buy some stock

97. Teach someone something (Doing! Teaching my parents to become more computer literate ~ Happening every time I go and visit them and they need to know how to do something! Talk about teaching me patience! :)

98. Try speed dating at least once

99. Meet up with all my friends at the Alex pub in Clapham for the mother of all reunions

100. Do and video tape “the fluff” doing the hug thing

101. Have enough money to do all the things on this list

If forced to come up with an earthly description of heaven, I’d pick flashlights, a slow shutter and good company on a starlit deck.

There is just so much living to do that stopping my bucket list at One Hundred and One is just not going to work for me, so as I tick off items on my original list, my bucket list continues….  It’s like planning ahead all the highlights you want your whole life.

Maximizing every moment of my existence and living my life to the fullest…!

102. Milk a cow by hand

103. Go on holiday to Cape Cod

104. Dress in Victorian and picnic in Kirstenbosch

105. Be the queen at a medieval dinner

106. Throw a dart into a map and travel where it lands

107.  Go sand boarding (done, September 2010 for my birthday celebrations ~ insanely wild!)

108.  Travel to as many countries in Africa as I can (Tanzania and Zanzibar – July 2012)

109.  Go scuba diving

110.  Go trekking in a rainforest in South America

111.  Watch the cherry blossoms bloom in Japan

112.  Do something completely crazy and out of character

113.  Hike the Inca trail

114.  Visit my munchkins at their “beach house”, as Emma so fondly calls it, in Mauritius (Woooohooo done, November 2010 ~ The best holiday ever!!)

115.  Grow a vegetable garden (Thanks to Spur going green, done 2010!)

116.  Fix my MG up and get her back on the road

117.  Take my dad’s MG for a spin for the first time as the driver when it’s back on the road

118.  Find a four-leafed clover

119.  Watch the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra live (Done: On a late summer’s night under a blanket stars I got to watch them play live on a cobblestone square –  11th March 2014)

120.  Hike the Fish River Canyon in Namibia (Done: Wow ~ beyond words! 2nd –  6th August 2010)

121.  Cut back on the two sugars I take in my tea (So done, don’t have sugar in my tea at all anymore – 2010 baby!!)

122.  Become the person I aspire to be

123.  Buy a pair of Manolo Blankik shoes

124.  Master the art of walking in really, really high heels (Done: As much as I ♥ the feeling of being barefoot, nothing makes me feel better than a sexy pair of skyscraper heels… Heeehaaa so mastered sometime in  2010….)

125.  Master the art of getting angry with grace

126.  Get my hair back to it’s natural beautiful colour (Done, started in August 2010)!

127.  Be living debt free and paying for everything cash

128.  Backpack through India

129.  Go back to Namibia to see the wild horse and visit the Ghost Town and take beautiful photographs

130.  Read the Twilight books to see what the fuss is all about

131.  Go on a road trip with no end destination in mind

132.  Visit Alcatraz

133.  Hike the Grand Canyon in Arizona

134.  Hike the Whale Trail

135.  Give a rousing, touching, meaningful, funny toast

136.  Have my palm read

137.  Learn my great-grandparents native tongue

138.  Go zorbing with friends ~ haha I can just image the laughter already!

139.  Attend Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada

140.  Go on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Comostela

141.  Learn to play poker

142.  Get back into my drawing and painting again

143.  Buy all the books I want to read ~ I have a loooong list

144.  Work in Africa

145.  Become an early riser (done, started in Sept 2010, who would have thought, up early every morning to exercise and still going strong and have come to love the early morning stillness!!)

146.  Be apart of a Native American Sweat Lodge ceremony

147.  Share Thanks Giving dinner with my friends the US

148.  Take a photography class

149.  Stay out all night dancing and go to work the next day without having gone home (one more time for old times’ sake cause the first time was so much fun) ~ (lol, done!! What a night!! Dec 2010 – Shared with Abbotts!)

150.  Go rafting in the Grand Canyon

151.  My Ultimate, Ultimate Dream ~ To enter a race like The Raid Gauloises ~ A 10 day extreme adventure race: A Start and a finish, between the two, a great experience!

152.  See Lionel Richie live in concert.

153.  Do a crazy road trip with my team of crazy friends – The Rickshaw Run South East Asia: Now imagine the fastest, safest, most earth-munching all-terrain vehicle in the world. Then imagine the opposite. :) Three wheels, half a horse power and more fun than any other vehicle on planet earth, the humble Rickshaw is undoubtedly the ultimate long distance, off-road machine. Despite being designed for short distances on road.  An unsupported maniac of an adventure, which wobbles over thousands of miles of ridiculous terrain. The most stupid and probably the best thing you could possibly do with two weeks. Haha, I’m so in!!

154.  And yup I won’t be stopping there ~ another crazy-ass road trip with my team of crazy-ass friends – The Mototaxi Junket – Peru: No route, no back-up, no support. Just you, your puny three-wheeled disaster machine and some of the toughest terrain the planet can muster. There’s no guarantee of making it to the finish line and no back-up. It’s just you, two glorious weeks, the worst machine ever invented and thousands of miles of one of the greatest adventures in the world. Bring it on!! :) :) :) :)

155.  And just for good measure, the craziest biggie of the lot – The Mongol Rally across Europe: Imagine you’re lost in a massive desert, hundreds of miles from civilisation, driving a car even your granny would be embarrassed by. 50% of your wheels just fell off and a search for tools turns up a dirty sock and two dried apricots. Getting stuck, lost and in trouble, then finding your way out armed with just your wits and the sock and apricots.It’s about setting forth to tackle 1/3 of the surface of the Earth; unprepared, ill-advised and with no idea of what might happen. 10,000 miles of pure adventure over mountains, deserts and some of the most remote, challenging terrain on the planet.  All in a tiny car designed for doing the weekly shop. Definitely my kind of adventure!

156 Plunge into nature at Iceland’s Blue Lagoon

157. Visit the Northamptonshire Fire & Rescue Service Walker House in the UK.

158. Own a Basset Hound ~ They are just beyond beautiful!

159. Climb as many of the Seven Summits as I can. – (Getting there! In July 2012 I climbed Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and in January 2014 I climbed Aconcagua in Argentina. Two down, five more to go…!)

“A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything.”