Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The Bucket List? Why not?


             Did he really cycle the Dingle Peninsula
                             on a girls bicycle?

The popularity of the recent movie of the same name prompted a travel companion and me to sit down and prepare our joint bucket list. A bucket list is really just a way to plan and organize future travel, and hopefully get it done while you can still walk, talk, see, and enjoy! As the current rage for baby boomers is to plan for retirement (or the fact that it is too late to plan) the logical next step for addicted travelers is to plan where and when you want to travel. Oh, so many places and so little time!

Each year the TripAdvisor® website publishes a top destination choices document that selects the top 100 world destinations as voted on by the website users. In addition to listing the top 100, they also break down the world by the top 25 in the United States, Europe, Asia, the South Pacific, Latin America/Caribbean, South America, Africa and Canada. I suggest you take a look at the 2008 top 100. It is colorful, interesting, and provocative. If you are anything like me, you will print it off, and then go through and check all the places you have been. I still have a lot of work to do in Asia! As a result you can then start work on where you will want to go, and begin setting your travel priorities. You can find this wonderful document at the following site:


As someone who loves to travel, my bucket list just might be a bit more extensive than the average once a year traveler. That is the privilege (and opportunity) of being retired. As an organizing tool I set the bucket list up on an excel spreadsheet. It has a column across the top for each year through 2012 plus an impulse column for those destinations not yet slotted into a year. The left hand vertical column lists all the places I want to newly experience or return to. The left hand side not only lists the “where” but also a “what” section which is a bit more whimsical.

The “what’s” include such items as “Write a bestselling travel book”, travel to Nepal to dedicate a library and/or school financed by our fundraising for www.roomtoread.org, have a syndicated TV hit Senior Travel show (Rick Steve’s eat your heart out), bicycling the Ireland Dingle Peninsula (the great family joke about my athleticism), and complete the planning and organizing for a group visit and volunteer project at the Rafiki Caring Center in Kenya.

As you can see a bucket list is really just the first step towards actually accomplishing some of your life’s dreams. Why don’t you set down at your computer, or grab a tablet, and see where your dreams can take you.

(Published by the ABA Senior Lawyers Division Voice of Experience newsletter in the Summer 2008 issue)

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