Your life list, non-sportswriting version

Yes, but he's still a llama.

 

I'm the classic "constant reader, sporadic poster."

Trust me, I spend waaaaay too much time on here.

 

Yeah, but you post a lot.

I go on a 25-post rampage every six months or so, and that's it.

 

Which means you'll need, what, two days to get there?

 

"5. Once treed by moose.
And that folks is the #1.
Only thing that could beat it would be a bear story.
Congrats, Michael

Did somebody ask for a bear story? Here goes mine.

Camping at Yosemite Valley with the future wife. By camping, I mean we're in a little canvas A-frame cabin where you have to walk down a dirt path to get to the communal bathrooms, etc.
Anyway, it's 3 or 4 in the morning. Gotta get up and take a piss.

I push open the door. Sitting right across the dirt path from me -- and watching me keenly -- is a young brown bear. By young, I mean about as big as me. By across the path, I mean no more than 10 yards away. I don't know much about bears, except that they like to come down to the valley at night and rummage for food. Also, kid bears tend to have their mothers nearby. I look down the road toward the bathrooms and a big bear is assaulting the big stack of lockers everyone uses to store their food overnight. You know, so the bears can't get to it.

I close the door. Return to the bed. Try to keep the bear from hearing my heart thump out of its cage. Not sure what to do. I need to piss. But, also, my mom is in a nearby cabin. Don't want her to walk out in the middle of the night and encounter the bears.

After waiting a spell, I re-open the cabin door. No bears. As carefully as possible, I get around to my mom's cabin and warn her. Still too scared to go near the bathroom. It's been nine years and my kidneys still haven't forgiven me.

Oh, and the wife says she'll never go back to Yosemite unless we stay at that hotel (can't remember its name) that costs more than $300 per night. Can't Marriott build a simple ol' Residence Inn near the base of the falls? Gotta use my points somehow.

LW

 

As a sports spectator, highlight has to be Game 5, 1986 ALCS. Right-field bleachers Anaheim Stadium.

On only one other occasion (my son's sudden-death OT playoff game in which he played six shutout quarters in goal, then scored the winning goal in a shootout) have I left a sporting event physically and emotionally spent.

 

they play baseball in anaheim?

 

Tonight, I got a foot rub from a British infantryman. That's going in the memoirs.

 

you will get your balls busted for that, but before you do, A+.

 

Ugh, Tarantino movies ...

 

Late to this party, but since someone revived it

(in no particular order)

* swam off shore in Key West; crossed the U.S border at the Peace Arch in Washington
* been in 33 states
* looked over 500 yards of open ocean at a Soviet sub
* spent five consecutive Saturday nights (Jan/Feb 90) in police custody but never a night in jail
* driven laps in my truck around Bristol
* been moved to a fever pitch and later moved to tears on a Civil War battle field
* I've been to Fort Moultrie/Fort Sumter and Appomattox Courthouse
* I've been in the vicinity of the spot where my 3xgreat grandfather was captured during the war
* I go to work every day within a block of the home of a former U.S. president and within two blocks of where a major Civil War figure was killed.
* won a competitive bike race
* have a picture of Richard Petty holding me in his arms in about 77 or 78
* been to Old Trafford
* spent the night on the streets in Brussels (waffles and beer at 4 a.m. rock)
* been bitten by a snake (it wasn't poisonous, but it drew blood some I'm counting it)
* have been about 10 yards eye to eye with a bear in the woods (I didn't move until it did)
* wrote my name on the bathroom wall at Capt. Tony's in Key West; carved my name in the bathroom wall at Tootsie's in Nashville
* got my Harley and ride the hell out of it
* been to Cuba
* poured drunkenly onto the streets of a small town in Holland singing "Rocky Top" at the top my my lungs because I obviously didn't know the words to the songs the Dutch folks were singing following their 89th minute win over the Czech Republic at Euro 2000
* went aloft about 90 feet on a ship under way at sea at night to secure a broken radar antenna
* in the third grade was brought onto the floor of a Globetrotters' game by Geese Ausbie
* sat in the same officer's chairs in my lodge as U.S. Presidents Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson
* last Sunday in church I sat two pews away from three CMA Award winners and genuine Grammy nominees

 

Hmm ... of the things I've accomplished in life, the one I'm proudest of is surviving cancer.

Besides that, I faced one of the darkest six-month periods I wouldn't even wish on my worst enemy and have seemingly made it out the other side.

I was president of student government at my community college for a semester.

I introduced the keynote speaker at my high school graduation.

I interviewed my state's then-governor for my then-newspaper.

I have only 16 states, plus D.C. Used to live in Maine. All y'all are missing out.

Each of my high schools has had two reunions. I've been to a total of four.

I've seen Stevie Nicks 12 times, including twice with Fleetwood Mac. Got to touch her hand during "Edge Of Seventeen" twice, including one time on my birthday.

I got promoted at my current company just barely nine months in. As of Tuesday, I'll have been there a year and a half. People who've been there longer ask me how to do things. Managers ask me my opinion on stuff, and one manager often treats me as if I were her peer.

Have met two former Real World castmates and hung out with both. I occasionally text one of them.