Today I started thinking about the excruciatingly exciting and jam-packed summer I have planned. First, in May, my mother and I are taking her renovated Airstream trailer, hitching it to the Range Rover and driving from Denver to California and all the way up the West Coast for a solid three weeks. It will be a fantastic, beautiful and memorable trip… if one of us doesn’t strangle the other in her sleep. Then off to Paris for a six week study abroad program. I’ll be sitting in cafés drinking wine, eating croissant and brie, and oh, right… trying to speak French, which I haven’t done since high school (for the record, its been three years). But I’ll have two fantastic life experiences crossed off on my life-long “to do” list. So I thought I should make an actual list- how else would I be expected to keep track of the last 21 years and the next 80 or so?
Here’s the first 35 on a list I’m sure I’ll update often, at least mentally.
1. See the Aurora Borealis
2. Go topless at a nude beach
3. Visit the Great Wall of China
4. Visit every continent
5. Raise a child
6. Read all the books on Time’s 100 All Time Best Novels List
7. Go to the Olympics
8. Hike the Grand Canyon
9. Take cooking classes
10. Have sex in all 50 states (CO, CT, TN)
11. Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro
12. Complete a Marathon
13. Ride a horse on the beach
14. Eat pizza in Rome
15. Go bungee jumping
16. Drink vodka with Chelsea Handler
17. Learn to drive a stick shift
18. Go wine tasting in Napa
19. Take dance lessons again
20. Run with the bulls in Spain (or watch from the sidelines)
21. Get published
22. Have a house with a dark room and art studio
23. Learn to listen well
24. Go skydiving again
25. Try a “Flaming Dr. Pepper”
26. Attend Carnival in Rio and Mardi Gras in New Orleans
27. Go to a cool music festival and do it right- tent, dirty hippies, the works.
28. Oktoberfest in Munich
29. Backpack Europe
30. Ride in hot air balloon
31. Learn to live without cheese
32. Live in New York City (if only temporarily)
33. Sail around the Greek islands
34. Learn to sail.
35. Learn to roll my r’s
