The Optimist Bucket List - Item 10

I met my two friends at the airport on schedule but decided to play them up a bit about how the past three days went minding the kids while they were away. The plan was for them to take a few days for their anniversary and, unable to lock in the grandparents on short notice, I volunteered to keep their three young sons so they could have time alone. When they got off the plane I met them at the gate with open arms, crocodile tears and a nervous tick in my left eye and neck.

"So how did it go," they laughed as they saw right through my act, knowing that if I was there then the kids were safe and in school, no worse for the wear than I was pretending to be. The truth of the matter is those three kids and I had a ball that long weekend. While their parents were enjoying themselves we went on a long road-trip of discovery that included lake swimming, sleeping bats and, of course, plenty of good old fashioned dog-piling on their poor old "uncle."

The three of them and I fell in love with each other at first sight two years before and it has been hard to tell the adult apart from the child ever since even though all three are grown and on their own today. No blood relation of any kind we nonetheless are related by choice which is sometimes the best way of all. They want to be a part of my life even today as much as I am deeply moved in their wanting me to remain in theirs.

One is starting off well, joining the workforce right out of high school, is happily married and starting a family of his own. Another is about to enter the military to get a leg up on higher education once his enlistment is up. I've heard that so many times before from people who join up for "just one tour" only to spend the next couple of decades in service to the country. Either way I couldn't be more pleased or proud. For the third I have every prayer and belief that in his own time and way he will find the happiness and success that we all deserve. This is the 10th, last and greatest item on The Traveling Optimist Bucket List.

Each of the three have distinct personalities, one being on the stoic side with another being the cute playboy. The third one is the prankster, full of the devil but blessed with the blarney to make any Irish proud. It's impossible to hate or stay mad at him for long which probably has at least a little to do with his thus far unconcerned approach to his future. Everything will work out in the end.

As we all have to do he is learning the adult consequences of some of his more interesting choices. I've also noticed that the gleam in his eye is tempering just a bit with a few hard knocks though none so hard as to ever knock the gander out of him completely.

In my heart of hearts I have faith in each of the three of them who own solid places of their own in my soul.

Gotta go.

The Optimist Bucket List - Item 9

I love the new Gateway desktop computer I bought last Fall. Thanks to the 23" hi-def monitor I bought with it I'm sitting here writing this and watching a movie on the same screen, combining two favorite hobbies in to one joint activity. I've always enjoyed the different worlds, real and imagined, that movies can and do take me to , from beneath the sea to the farthest planet in the farthest galaxy or perhaps to some long forgotten battle in some out of the way corner long past any further value to the rest of the world. I've been suspending my belief system with a bag of buttered popcorn as far back as I can remember, always slack-jawed and spellbound for a good story. One day after a particularly good movie the idea for a sequel came in to my head.

Never mind what the story is about, I was then and am now faced with the dilemma of having an idea with no credential, experience or training in putting it all on paper. I looked at websites, bought books and software, all the while fumbling about as best I could in piecing together my first script. How hard could it be, I asked myself in the beginning, to come up with 120 usable pages of material?

Scripts, I have discovered, are blue prints, maps as it were, in word form. Words paint the picture, create the mood and the setting and give voice to the characters resident in the mind of the writer. It has to be written down for the imagined to be realized, the vision to have substance, the musings to have meaning. Oh, and a good script requires a vessel, someone who can put their thoughts on paper first of all and in a strictly standardized format after that.

"If you're going to write, Forrester, just write," said Sean Connery in the film "Finding Forrester." Truer words were never spoke or imagined as it said to me to not worry about structure or format. Just write. Let the words, thoughts, feelings and ideas fly, it said, at any and all provocation and opportunity, the clean up process via editing can come later. Even more it said not to fret about the lack of background but rather more to fear not making the attempt - experience comes with trying.

Item 9 on the Optimist Bucket List is to realize the dream of a lifetime, for it certainly has been and feels like a lifelong pursuit. I would be thrilled beyond reason to sell my first project. To wake up and put together all of these individual pieces together at this point is truly to have come to a personal calling later than most. I know I wouldn't necessarily have scripted things this way.

Now comes the real work which, firstly, is to decide if it is harder to finish the project or get somebody to actually buy it.

Gotta go.

The Optimist Bucket List - Item 8

Having never bought my first house I guess I should say that that is the goal for Item #8 on my Optimist Bucket List. My adult life has included addresses in New England, the West Coast, the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Southwest regions of the country. I know where I want to spend the rest of my working life but the question has always intrigued me as to where I would like to spend my retirement. More to the point, why wait until retirement? Why can't I have a second home to enjoy while I'm working as a vacation getaway and where would it be?

The first time I went to Greece I almost immediately wondered what it would be like to live or vacation there on a regular basis. I said the same thing about Scotland while right here in the United States I've considered Florida and Wyoming.

Then I went to New Zealand. I'd been traveling there for six years when I figured out that it would be a great investment if nothing else. I booked a flight down in March of that year and made appointments with local realtors to see suburban, ranch and undeveloped tracts of land. My head spun with questions as the plane roared on through the night to where I dreamed of making my second home.

The suburban home was no great shakes and while I loved the 13 acres and working barn that came with the country home I flat out told the realtor that no American would ever buy the house as it was built. The owner was a contractor who designed the place himself but with five bedrooms it only came with two full baths - and he was the father of four daughters!

The realtor and I sped north of Auckland for the last property on the list, undeveloped rural dairy land being sectioned and sold off by the family. Not even a paved road came with it but free use of a local quarry for all the stone I could use. Nice. What really sold me on the property though was the 85 acres of land which revolved around a natural amphitheater in the form of an extinct volcano cone.

Already terraced and facing west it was begging to be developed as a performance space, a vineyard or just a multi-level garden from which to enjoy the sunset.
Add on to that were three fresh water streams running through the land, one of which featured a 200-foot waterfall. A waterfall in my back yard!!! I'd have to build my own house on the land and ask the current owner to do something with the dairy cattle placidly grazing all around but the price, even in writing, was too good to be true. I had only two problems to figure out before I pulled the trigger: what the tax implications would be in owning foreign property and whether or not I could get the NFL package that far away!

I told them I would be back soon with a final decision on the entire idea if not that property in particular. That would have been September, 2001.

Gotta go.

The Optimist Bucket List - Item 7

In all of my professional life I job changes have kept me hovering around only two weeks of vacation. Only once had I finally earned enough tenure to enjoy three weeks but now, after nearly a lifetime of pinching time here and there to stretch my leave over an entire year I now have four and that's not counting holidays. I know what I would gladly do with at least one of those weeks if ever the opportunity arose.

Simply put, Item 7 on my Bucket List would be to spend a week on board a U.S. aircraft carrier while on patrol. I used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area where "Fleet Week" is a wonderful chance to see some of our tax dollars in port if not necessarily in action. Great PR but to me not nearly the same. I've seen the movies, from "Midway" and "Final Countdown" to the documentaries on The Learning Channel and Discovery about life at sea in the largest of floating cities of 5,000 or more and would love to know up close what that is truly like.

I've been fascinated with aircraft carriers since the first time I saw the film "Tora Tora Tora" as a child in the third grade, not too long after my initial infatuation with airplanes. Airplanes actually on ships far out at sea? Far out! How cool would it be to see how the different colored uniforms fill specific roles in the action or to be in CIC, the Command Information Center, to watch how the entire battle group patrols, interacts and manages threats and handles daily routine?

One conversation with the father of the friend of mine led him to compliment my general knowledge of the American carrier force, being able to rattle off the names of every ship then in active service. I also had the opportunity to see the USS Carl Vinson up close not too long after its commissioning when it called in to Alameda while I was living in the Bay Area. Although tours on board were not permitted, impressive doesn't begin to describe the vessel as it lay quietly at anchor, disgorging the ship's company for some good ol' fashioned shore leave.

This has nothing to do with fulfilling a warmonger's fantasy in wanting to see navy fighters blast and destroy targets or be on the front lines of an actual engagement. I understand that there are days of sheer boredom in crossing great tracts of ocean but a week at sea watching what others consider routine and boring would be nothing short of once-in-a-lifetime thrilling for a civilian like me. What could be more emotionally charged than to sail in to port at Pearl Harbor and salute the U.S.S. Arizona with the entire crew on its way past?

Wanna know what would make it even better? Sailing on an aircraft carrier in one direction and returning to base on a submarine. Boomer or attack class, take your pick!

Gotta go!

The Optimist Bucket List - Item 6

I am at one of life's crossroads where limitations are becoming more and more defined. Some things you simply are no longer supposed to do but you can either use the rejection as motivation or can the whole idea because the rules won't change at the end of the day.

In every amusement park on the planet there are signs that tell the youngsters they have to be this tall in order to ride the big kid rides. In their case they simply have to be patient, wait a few years and add some poundage before they can tackle the "Devil's Pet" or some other such rollercoaster thrill.

I'm middle aged. Not young anymore but not yet ready for the knackers' yard either so age isn't the issue here. I'm also fat but here again this is not necessarily the primary concern for what I want to do. I can lose the weight I'd love to be rid of but would probably still come in as simply being too big for what I want to accomplish. I want to go sky diving.

In the film "The Bucket List" Morgan Freeman's character famously yelled at Jack Nicholson for being completely out of his mind for talking him in to going sky diving. Then he screamed like a school girl as he and his tandem partner jumped out of the airplane. Freeman's character is concerned with living out the remainder of his time on Earth with grace, humility and dignity for past accomplishments. He's content to rest on his laurels; he's old and he's proud of it. Old people don't do crazy things like jump out of airplanes. They don't get to be old by doing dumb sh-tuff.

Item 6 on my Bucket List is one of the few that I share with the film. For a one-time jump including instructions and a tandem diver I have yet to see the cost exceed $300. A favorite expression of mine is having "wasted more money on a whole lot less" so expense is not the issue either. No, it was reading further in to the fine print that I found my institutional rejection: most diving companies will not accept candidates greater than 250 pounds.

You've seen the cartoons - the chute opens at the critical moment only to find it is actually an ACME anvil or perhaps to shred beyond repair, snap its lines and go skittering in to the atmosphere, leaving Daffy Duck screaming for Jesus all the way down to the ground. Where's Bugs "Ain't I a Stinker" Bunny? Floating blithely to the ground chewing a carrot and holding a pair of scissors. Scissors or no, for me the effect would be the same.

Injuries are common occurrences when it comes to novice sky divers who didn't get the landing quite right. They broke a bone, so what? Those injuries and stories are common-place; they lived and they have one heck of a memory to share. Few companies, however, are interested in risking their equipment, employees and reputation to heft the likes of me in to the sky unsure of whether or not I will pancake myself and my diving partner several feet in to the dirt as soon as we touch down. Think Wile E. Coyote crawling from the crater he made at the bottom of the canyon.

Clearly I have some work and convincing to do. Maybe when I show up for my dive I'll bring Mrs. Butterworth with me.

Gotta go!

The Optimist Bucket List - Item 5

In Sunday school I learned of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, Ur of Chaldea and Ramoth-Gilead. I imagined the "sacred waters" of the three great rivers, Jordan, Tigris and the Euphrates flowing through Mesopotamia and Judea. As a young child I read the stories and saw the Ray Harryhausen films of Baghdad, Joppa, Phoenicia, Damascus and the great city of Persepolis. My head spun with the tales of Darius, Xerxes, Sinbad, Scheherazade, Aladdin and Gilgamesh. Flying carpets, Genies, one-eyed Cyclops? Are you kidding? When can I go? Shazzan!

I've had to visit each of these lands either through the 24 hour tragedy of CNN or the don't-go-or-you'll-destroy-it beauty of National Geographic. On one hand I can't go because of the political environment on the ground. On the other I shouldn't go because as a clumsy, heavy-footed tourist I'll unwittingly step on some holy pebble in the road and crush it to powder or bend a blade of grass that flowers once every 30 years and permanently alter the eco-system that relies on that particular variety of weed. Whaddya gonna do?

I wanna go!!! Item Number 5 on the Traveling Optimist Bucket List is to see the Middle East, a long-hidden and often forbidden part of the world. I've been to Israel and Egypt and I am free to travel to Jordan whenever it suits me. I wish for the day, however, when traveling to the big three, Iran, Iraq and Syria will be as routine as going to Greece.

How I have long envied citizens of other countries who are not restricted by their governments from traveling to these uniquely historic lands. Canadians can travel to Cuba and flock to the island nation in droves each winter. I can't. The French fly to Syria and Lebanon as a matter of course. Why not me?

How is an American tourist going to overthrow President Assad when all I want is Syrian tea, bakhlava and an afternoon at the bazaars? He's two years younger than me, probably speaks better English and looks like someone who enjoys a mean game of tennis or racquetball.

Thanks to Google Maps I can see an aerial image of Persepolis, to the northeast of Shiraz in central Iran as plain as day but I'm not physically there, on the ground, smelling the air and keeping the sand out of my eyes. From the comfort of my living room I cannot fully imagine great hosts of warriors and exotic merchants coming and going across the eastern desert plains.

Thanks to National Geographic I am able to view gloriously rendered images of mystic lands complete with erudite narrators and award-winning writers to enlighten, entice and tease me with the places they've been but I am as yet not permitted to travel. Reading the yellow bordered magazine in bed with a light snack and a glass of water before lights out does not give me the immediacy of life on the Tigris with bleating goats and giggling street urchins running from frazzled mothers wrapped in burkhas while shopping for the daily meal.

I'm no fool. I know full well that, if nothing else, my personal safety is not an assured thing in this part of the world. I know of the political differences between nations which keep the borders closed as well. It has always been interesting to me, however, that journalists, photographers and film crews from "The Great Satan" can safely travel and report from beneath the veil in the course of their duties where an average tourist armed with little more than a camera, credit card and curiosity cannot. When?

Gotta go.

The Optimist Bucket List - Item 4

My grandmother was born in 1901 and lived until 1993. Hers is a generation I have long admired not merely because of their propensity for long lives despite every warning and retraction from the Surgeon General on what is and is not healthy. Look at those years again - from 1901 to 1993. Now consider everything they have witnessed regarding the advance of technology and compare it to the developments of only the last 20 years.

There's no comparison.

By 1917 the United States was embroiled in the First World War with the Second, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada and Desert Storm to come. The car and the airplane had been invented and were in mass production by then. The telephone had been around since at least 1876 but television wouldn't come to the party for another 12 years. Try to imagine the social changes realized over such a lifetime or heck, just within the 60s! Pick the evolution of any of those over a lifespan of 90 years and then simply stand back in awe and wonder if such a concentrated era of invention and enlightenment will come again. More to the point, when? What is left?

Recently while in Los Angeles on business I took a friend on a quick tour of the area which included time in the early evening at the Griffith Observatory overlooking the Greater Los Angeles Basin. The view was spectacular as there was a surprisingly clear evening sky above the City of Angels. Probably the most impressive exhibit displayed the size, lifespan and heat ratio of the Sun compared to other stars in the galaxy. Betelgeuse, the yellowish star in the upper left corner of the constellation Orion, pictured here, was the largest orb in the exhibit yet there was a caption that said if it were scaled properly it would be one and a half times the size of the room we were standing in while all others were exactly the scale they should be. Gaack!

Whether or not there is life beyond our planet, WHEN will space travel become available to the masses, as ordinary a routine in daily living as taking the bus? We fret and worry over each shuttle launch, as concerned with weather reports and tarot card readings every time a shingle shakes loose. And other than launching yet another eavesdropping, GPS navigating or phone switching satellite the gamut of experiments still run in the "What is it like to peel an orange in a weightless environment" variety.

Routine travel needs a destination so that means a colony on the moon or nearby planet has to happen in order for space travel to be more than just once around the park. All that is well and good, I'm only asking when. And for something other than reducing the flying to time Australia. I'm talking about going in to space, traveling through outer space and arriving somewhere else in space, somewhere other than Earth.

"Honeeeeey, I'm going to Mars for a conference." "Bring something back for the kids!"

I was born in the age of jet travel. Planes have gotten bigger and made to fly farther but they don't travel any faster. My generation has witnessed the digital age, from CDs to cell phones, cable and imaging technology (cameras). It's allowed us to compress time and information while increasing our productivity yet across the planet we remain at the mercy of fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine. Huh?

Even if it is at the end of my lifetime, which seems more and more likely, I'd like to be able to book a ticket to the moon just for the sake of going, the same as I would hop a flight to New York for no other reason than dinner and a show.

And if the Vulcans happen to pass by and stumble across our warp signature, well that's perfectly fine with me, too.

Gotta go!

The Optimist Bucket List - Item 3

On a recent cruise vacation some relatives returned from a two-week sailing in the Mediterranean an extra $6000 lighter after the cost of the cruise itself. That covered the drinks, shopping on board, cabin tips and the biggest drainer of them all, the shore excursions.
While definitely an experience to remember, the expense of the trip will certainly prompt some of those memories for a while to come!

Cruise lines are out to make money and I have no qualms with that but I wondered exactly what I would get out of such an experience. “Oh, you can always go back later” every travel agent chirps. Norwegian Cruise Lines offers a Western Med cruise that includes a day at Cannes or Nice. Nice! Problem is, the sailing is 5PM and everyone knows nothing really gets going until long after dark. The cruise lines know this and probably so do the hoi polloi. Besides, why blow a wad in Monte Carlo when customers could be losing big in the casinos on board!

For my eight hour “day” on the Riviera my options include paying my respects to Princess Grace, touring the Grand Prix course, knocking back a cocktail at Café de Paris in Monaco, drooling over the mega-yachts in the marina, prowling the film festival pavilion at Cannes and then up to the top of Mont Boron at Villefranche-sur-Mer for that magnificent view of the Cote d’Azur.

That, my friends, is a short list for one port-of-call with Barcelona, Malta, Naples, Rome and Livorno (choose Florence or Pisa for the shore excursion) on the same itinerary.

My ideal cruise, however, does not include over-priced, time sensitive shore excursions that tease me with the “flavor” of a destination to which I may never return in this lifetime. Give me instead a weeklong ocean voyage across the Atlantic or between Honolulu and Australia. I and my money stay on board ship to gamble, shop, hit the spa and dine at the premium restaurants, letting the cruise lines ka-ching all the way across. They make money and I’m well rested into the bargain.

British Airways and Cunard once offered a sail and fly package for those with truncated vacation time, allowing the customer to sail the Atlantic in one direction and fly back in the other. Short of adding on time at either end the journey was the vacation and on the QE-II it was in grand style even in the lower cabins.

I’d love to see a regular schedule of pure ocean sailings with no other purpose than simply being at sea and away from the world. Stop in the Azores, maybe, or Tahiti just so we can feel dry land and maybe a shore excursion but other than that just time away at sea with a good book, a deck and plenty of food. When we make port in Southampton, Barcelona or Sydney just kick me off with only the jet lag missing!

Gotta go!

The Optimist Bucket List - Item 2

In the first installment of my own personal “Bucket List” I mentioned the desire to travel with the presidential entourage on Air Force One. Also, that in creating this list of ten achievements I devised a validity test of at least three of five attributes that each quest must satisfy. In the second of the ten items on my list I would like to witness the discovery of the "Kido Butai," the Japanese fighting force of six aircraft carriers of the "Combined Fleet" that attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.

The story of Pearl Harbor and the outcome of the Second World War has been told and in many ways is still unfolding. The hole left in this story, however, is why no effort has been made to find these historical vessels. Their combined and individual exploits under the Imperial Chrysanthemum shown above have likewise been well documented; what is not documented is exactly where each vessel rests.

Why not?

A National Geographic documentary highlighting the discovery of the USS "Yorktown" included two Japanese survivors of the Battle of Midway who were on board in case “Kaga,” their home carrier was also discovered. I remember most chillingly from the video that a 30,000 ton aircraft carrier would look like a single grain of rice on the radar screen from three miles down! "Kaga" was not found but the emotions felt by these gentlemen once again sailing on the waters of battle were palpable.

It occurred to me from this documentary and also thru time spent in Japan that this is a people deeply in touch with their ancestors and strongly desirous in seeking to ensure those forebears are able to rest peacefully. Four of the six were infamously lost in one day while the last was sunk nearly a year before the final end of the war.

"Akagi," lost at the Battle of Midway by dive bombers, June 4, 1942. 267 men lost
"Kaga," lost at the Battle of Midway by dive bombers, June 4, 1942. 811 men lost.
"Soryu," lost at the Battle of Midway by dive bombers, June 4, 1942. 711 men lost.
"Hiryu," lost at the Battle of Midway by dive bombers, June 4, 1942. 392 men lost.
"Shokaku," lost at the Battle of the Philippine Sea by submarine attack, June 19, 1944. 1, 272 men lost.
"Zuikaku," lost at the Battle of Cape Enganao by torpedoes and bombs, October 25, 1944. 843 men lost.

The "Titanic," "Bismarck" and "Yorktown" were each found and by the same man leading the way, Dr. Robert Ballard. Surely the families of nearly 4,300 men deserve similar closure over 65 years later?

Gotta go.

The Optimist Bucket List - Item 1

Of the 18 items on “The Bucket List” from the film, I can say I have accomplished over half of them.

The most beautiful girl is my niece. Stonehenge, the Louvre, the Great Wall, Hong Kong, the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal, all covered. See something truly majestic? I haven’t seen or climbed Mt. Everest but I have flown over Aconcagua. I’ve laughed until my stomach hurts, tears in my eyes from crying and not moving from sheer exuberant exhaustion. How? A friend and I once re-wrote the script for “Return of the Jedi” in to an x-rated love triangle between the Emperor, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.

The rest made me consider that many items on these kinds of lists for the most part can be accomplished with little assistance from others as long as you have the money.

The Travel List: All too easy to come up with 10, 100 or 1,001 places to visit.
The Pageant List: World peace, hunger, disease, poverty and illiteracy problems? Tall order.
The Sports List: Going to a Superbowl, the Opening Ceremonies, the Cubs winning a World Series or England taking the World Cup? Each folds in to the Travel List or doesn’t help Miss Universe in her noble work.

Most of us do want to change the world for the better but hopefully we also seek self improvement beyond material gain. What I looked for in writing my list was a way to satisfy at least three of the following attributes:

a) Self improvement
b) Cooperation and assistance from others
c) Overcomes social or political objections, human conflicts or personal feelings
d) Fulfills a lifelong personal dream
e) Benefits someone other than myself, either familiar or stranger

I will share the other nine items on my list over regular postings here. For now the first of ten items (not in any order) meets B, C and D.

Everybody wonders what it would be like to be invited to dine or stay at the White House, right? Although I include myself in that I would instead like to fly on Air Force One as part of a presidential entourage to a foreign country.

If a private citizen other than lobbyists, the media or chief executives have ever flown with a sitting president I am not aware of it. The idea is to simply have the commander in chief include an average civilian who can speak for him or herself and is truly one voice of the people as part of a goodwill delegation. You would think that a ten-hour flight to Europe would offer at least 15 minutes with the President, right?

Gotta go!