So that’s pretty much - sex, drugs & sushi roll.
When people start talking about their bucket lists, it often has a “desperate midlife crisis” feel to it. As if they believe that they’re running out of time and they need to do one dangerous thing; two adventurous things; visit a European, a South American, and an Asian landmark; and try an extreme sport.
That was me. But as I get older, I’m much more content with what I’ve got. And where I’ve been. My testosterone-fueled extreme adventures seem unnecessary now.
I think that’s where my shortened Bucket List (or even an Anti-Bucket List) might be coming from.
Me neither. I also have no desire to go to Times Square on New Year’s Eve, Burning Man, or take a Caribbean cruise. Now, an Alaskan cruise? That, I might be willing to do.
My anti-bucket list includes bungee jumping, rock climbing, mountain climbing, biking across Russia a/o Africa, swimming with dolphins, petting a ray (why? why?!), eating tongue, eating brains, and hunting. I guess, also, being admitted to a hospital or visiting Auschwitz.
OTOH, I am enjoying thinking about where I’d like to travel before my knees go–Montserrat? Rapa Nui? Lithuania? 2-week Cuban birding tour?
Interesting thread idea – kudos to the OP.
Some of these posts put me in a Dr Suess mind:
I will not climb or bungee jump
The Appalachians are for chumps
Disneyland I not will plan
I will not Bucket, Sam I Am!
For me, I won’t do anything claustrophobic. Caving, that sort of thing.
One of my life-long ambitions is to never visit New York.
Interesting to note how much overlap there is in so many of the above posts. My own list could include many of the same. I’m mention piercings and tattoos in particular, among others.
But some unsolicited comments too, FWTW:
Swimming with dolphins: Actually, Treppenwitz, if you just go swimming around wild dolphins, they will almost always avoid people and stay away. If they want to approach you, as they rarely but occasionally do, they will. This may not be such a happy thing as it may seem: Dolphins are highly social, and I’ve seen it speculated that wild dolphins that hang out with people may be social outcasts from their own tribe, seeking human company in their desperate loneliness. Sad, if true.
Tame captive dolphins are a different thing. They are generally friendly and playful, much like dogs, and fun to be around. I worked on a dolphin research project. Others swam with them every weekend, but I only waded during low-water on tank cleaning days. We all played with them a lot from tank side. They loved playing with volleyballs, frisbees, and garden hoses among other toys.
Skydiving: I’ve dabbled with the thought, but that’s all. I did have a reasonable “need” to jump out of a perfectly good airplane though: Most glider pilots including students wear parachutes (in my club, it’s club policy). One would suppose it would be helpful, y’know, if we actually got some experience using them. :smack: (All we got was a 10-minute lecture on how to bail out and use the chute.) I personally know a pilot who is alive today because he wore a parachute and used it once. I also knew two pilots who aren’t alive today because they didn’t or couldn’t bail out when they needed to.
True :eek: stories: At the skydive business where I was flying gliders, they had the jump plane break apart at altitude. The pilot had somehow overstressed the plane and major parts just broke off. The skydivers all managed to scramble out and landed safely. The pilot wasn’t wearing a chute. But somehow, miraculously, he managed to land the plane without breaking it into too many more pieces than it already was.
A few years later (just last year I think), that same plane ended up flying skydivers in Hawaii, where it crashed and burned, killing everyone. :smack:
And those wing suit jumpers are CRAZY! Look up some YouTube videos and see for yourself!
Camping: Didn’t care much for it. Did a few times as a teen with an organized group. Not again until just in the last few years, when I camped several times at airports as part of sailplane activities. Kinda okay at best, but I was just in it for the gliders. (Lotsa cool pics at those links. And yeah, one of the people in those pics is me.)
Implement up that orifice: I’ve had a scope stuck up my nose. No sweat, it turned out. No anesthetic, no sedation needed. It wasn’t particularly unpleasant at all, surprisingly. When they couldn’t get a tube down my mouth due to gagging, they stuck it up my nose instead, which apparently bypasses the gag point. Don’t worry about it. But I sure don’t ever want a tube stuck up my you-know-what other orifice. (They don’t use sedation for that? :eek: )
Okay, just my un-edited ramblings while I’m still de-compressing from that weird MSG thread.
I don’t want to meet any celebrities. No sportsball people, no actors, no musicians, etc. if I run across one I will most likely politely pretend not to notice. Except maybe the Dog Whisperer, I would probably show him a picture of my puppy. And Barack and Michelle Obama, I would be excited to see them.
I don’t want to go on a safari. Or anyplace hot, I get too cranky.
I’ve had colonoscopies, catheters, esophageal endoscopy, doctors examining my eardrums, and a feeding tube in my nose. One of my nostrils is still a virgin, but I don’t remember which one.
I have had one tattoo in my life. The doctors marked a tumor, which was later surgically removed. Not going to get inked voluntarily. All else equal, I think people look better when they are unmutilated.
I would like to visit every brothel in Nevada, and get a souvenir coffee cup from each one. I’m not really interested in paying for the usual services, though.
I wouldn’t mind swimming with dolphins, but I don’t want to swim with sharks. Yes I know that the probability of being bitten is very low. Not low enough.
I prefer to abstain from intoxicating substances. Addiction is . . . undignified.
There’s probably lots of countries I won’t get to as I believe in getting to really a place rather than ticking off a checklist. I’m almost certain I won’t get to any developing countries as I need my creature comforts. I probably should have when I was younger. Unless something changes, I won’t go to the Middle East because of their human rights records and please don’t hijack the thread to tell me how bad the USA is.
I highly doubt I’ll do a typical cruise. The idea of having my bags searched for alcohol reminds me of high school and I really have no desire to eat all day. Shore excursions are too brief and you’re often at the mercy of tacky souvenir sellers and tour guides. And quite frankly, I don’t need to see 50 year old office workers drunk and doing the electric slide. Reminds me of going to the office Christmas party.
Extreme zip lining at the Ark Encounter.
What would Jesus do?
One thing I don’t want to do is compile a bucket list.
In the OP I mentioned that there were two other anti-Bucket List items that were uppermost in my mind. It’s a strange thing that so many people agree on one of them (the bungee jump) but nobody (!) has mentioned the other. Curious. So I feel at liberty to jump back in and do so now: buying the (post-) midlife crisis sports car.
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I never really thought of that as a bucket list thing. It’s an impulse purchase of a common commercial product.
Hm, disgusting foods - the civit crap coffee, fugu, maggoty cheese, larve or insects of any sort, embryonic birds, rotten shark, lutefisk. I have no desire to go to a lot of countries at this time because they don’t like Americans, though most of the Pacific Rim countries are out because of the prevalence of coconut/palm, mushrooms, peppers and fish sauce [I dislike peppers, and have varying level of allergy to the others] so unless I win a serious lottery and can afford a personal drive [handicapped, tour busses and walking are not for me] or go on a cruise ship with a western menu plan, not happening. I have parachuted, zip lined, parasailed and climbed various things, but I will not bungie jump though I would love to try hang gliding if I can do it duo, and would love to go up in a balloon. I have played with dolphins, rays and penguins, and used scallops as impromptu squirt guns [had a roomie that worked the over night shift in maintenance at an aquarium and I used to take him dinner occasionally. I wanted to bring home the 16 pound lobster for dinner =) ]
The extreme zip-lining sounds fun, but I don’t want to support that boondoggle in any way (and I’m Christian).
If you paid for my trip to visit Africa, I m…actually I probably wouldn’t. But if you paid me lots of money to visit Africa, I might, but I still would not want to go to the Devil’s Pool at Victoria Falls. (NSF people who don’t like infinity pools on crack.)
(Yet Victoria Falls itself would be one of the places I’d like to visit if I were forced to choose. That and the Afar Triangle, and then the Pyramids but only under the implausible condition that I could explore them relatively alone.)
OMG! I’d never heard of that before, and now I don’t know whether it’s a “really really want to do” or “really really don’t want to do” thing for me. I might need to ponder on this for a while. And maybe go to Zambia just to see it for myself…
Am I evil for hoping someone gets hurt and they have to shut down their Extreeeeeme Mega-Mondo Zip Lines?
(Yeah, I’m Christian, too. So maybe a MAGA Hat-wearing telemarketer?)
And my favorite t-shirt finally has an appropriate thread to show up in…
I did get to go hang-gliding. But super safely, on the same huge sand dunes that Orv and Wilbur flew on. I screwed up (zoomed straight up, stalled at thirty feet) and… got a mouthful of sand, no bigs.
That was back in my younger days, when I got to swim with dolphins and manatees, too.
But y’know what? If I hadn’t done those things, I might’ve missed them when I was a young’un. But now? Now I’d say “Hey, is everyone without a manatee buddy miserable? Nope.”
While I was going through radiation 2 years ago, my rad-onc was gone for half of it because she and her husband took a safari to that region, which included a helicopter tour of the Victoria Falls region. When I saw her for an update a couple months ago, I remembered that and asked her if she’d heard about the drought, which this story says is not quite as extreme as was reported. It also includes a picture of a whole family in the Devil’s Pool.
He’d be hip like a Zip, let’s take a trip! 
But I’m sure that if Jesus came back to this world and did a zip line, he’d do it somewhere else. (Yeah, one more Jesus freak checking in. :))