‘Bucket Lists,’ or a list of things to do before you kick the bucket, seem to be in style. I almost made one, but then I thought about my most memorable, shocking and proud experiences – and realised not a single one would have ever made it onto a premeditated list. So here instead is My Unbucket List. This is my ultimate list of unforeseen experiences that have made me a richer person, and I am glad I’ll kick the bucket with them under my belt… even if I didn’t see them coming.
- Involved in a middle of the night, high-speed rickshaw chase
- Saw sundogs at daybreak over Iceland
- Ate hedgehog
- Co-led a memorial service in the fjords of Northern Norway (on a stranger’s boat)
- Pet a wild tapir
- Rode the ‘lunatic line’ in Kenya with a malaria-infected travel companion
- Skinny dipped during a conference dinner
- Was pulled aside at the airport for having a handgun in my Birkenstocks
- Reassessed my (lack of a) fear of spiders while crawling through an arachnid infested cave in Madagascar
- Had one of my photos published by the BBC
- Watched ‘Rocky’ on a solar-powered black and white TV with a Berber family in Morocco
- Rode a camel while wearing my lab jacket
- Couch-surfed in a yurt and woke up to snow – in August
- Described a new species (and named it after a character from the French children’s book Barbapapa)
- Got my drivers license… twice
- Tossed a dead* guinea pig off of the Burrard Street Bridge in Vancouver (*it was dead, of natural causes, before it was tossed)
- Had a picnic under the Eiffel Tower between flights
- Helped a sloth cross the road
- Cloned my own DNA (by accident)
- Spent the wee hours of the morning in a poorly lit (and possibly illegal?) turtle farm next to the Tashkent airport runway
- Laughed at the clouds going by while staring up at the Gherkin
- Came face to face with an aggressive moray eel
- Was driven to my hostel in Bucharest by a bus driver – who went well off of his route to deliver me (much to the annoyance of other passengers on board)
- Rode half way across Italy in a Smart car, with a weeks worth of groceries on my lap
- Rocked down to Electric Avenue
- Meditated to the music of the sea organ in Zadar
- Had a glass of wine in the company of a blue whale named Carolina
- Took a wrong turn and nearly ended up in Saudi Arabia
- Watched boots move around at a haunted hostel in Narvik, Norway
- Was attacked by chocolate-loving kids (the baby goat kind)
- Was generously offered the choice cut of sheep butt-fat with my rice in Uzbekistan
- Temporarily overcame my fear of flying and piloted a plane
- Rang in the new year with a bare polar bear swim in icy Canadian waters
- Married my sister in an apple orchard in France. In the officiant way, not the incestuous way.
biorambler 