“The List”

 It has been a very quiet birthday. I mean how does one celebrate their 37 birthday?! It isn’t what I would call a milestone in any sense. In fact it has been a pretty quiet birthday. Overall life is good. I can’t really complain. Life isn’t perfect, but it isn’t bad either.

Anyhow, I was thinking I wanted to give myself a present. I thought about it for a while and I decided for my own present I would give myself a new website. Designing a website is easy. I do that all the time, the hard part is deciding what the website was going to be about.

The name of the website is going to be goaltravels.com. This website/blog is going to be dedicated about making something out of nothing. It might be something great, then again it might be just another of many websites that have come and gone. As the name implies this website is about the goals and travel. More importantly, it is about the journey that gets to that goal.

So the first question of course is what is the goal? In 2010 I made a “list.” I made this list after I found a site calledhttp://only72.com/now-open/, it’s a site where you can get a really good deal, but it’s only available for 72 hrs. Well, on this deal, which I obviously bought, you got a bunch of self-help books (22 of them, pretty desperate I know) for only $97. One of the books was titled Reclaim Your Dreams. Basically, it talked about how we all have dreams and forget about them. Which got me thinking “Wait, a minute! I think I have some dreams, I think I even wrote them down!” So I looked it up and sure enough I did write them down.

I started to list my dreams out and then I decided I wanted to add some more and this is what I got:
(Completed / In Progress stuff is in parenthesis)
1) Hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
2) Visit Rome and Cinque Terre
3) See the Pyramids in Egypt
4)See the Capitols of all 50 states (CO, UT, AZ, CA, NV)
5) Hike the PCT or AT (Started part of it)
6) Run a marathon (11/10/12, Santa Barbara)
7) Enter a food eating contest (done in 1995 UCSB)
8) Ride a mechanical bull
9) Drive all of route 66
10) See the White House (done 8/11/10)
11) Visit the Statue of Liberty
12) Visit Vienna
13) Eliminate all personal debts
14) Memorize one book in the New Testament
15) See all of the California 21 missions (S Fern, S Diego, S Barb, S Inez, s Gabriel, S Luis Obispo, La Purisima, S Buena Ventura, S Luis Rey, S Juan Capistrano, S Francisco Solano (Sonoma), S Rafael, S Juan Baustista, Soledad, S Antonio de Padua, S Miguel, Dolores, S Clara, S Carmel, S Cruz, S Jose )

16) Learn to milk a cow.
17) See a show on Broadway
18) Get a video to 5000 views (EDIT: Accomplished as of 12/2/12 my video “Calle Revolucion, Tijuana, Mexico” is at 16,698 views)
19) Weigh 184 (195 now)
20) Ride an Ostrich
21) Swim in the Hearst Castle pool
22) Participate in a historical re-enactment
23) write a book
24) write a comic strip
25) grow a vegetable garden
26) Memorize all Articles of Faith (Done 6/1/14)
27) Make a living with a personal business
28) Climb Mt. Fuji, Japan (Done 7/2/16)
29) Visit Tikal, Guatemala (Done March 2012)
30) Go on two missions (1 was 96-98 Buenos Aires North)
31) Visit the Sacred Grove
32) Become an Analyst / Manager
33) Get a blog post up to 20,000 views
34) Ride 100 miles on a bicycle.

I told Denise (my wife) about this list and she told me she also has goals and so I decided to list them as well:

1. Be a healthy weight.
2. Hike a 50 miler carrying own pack.
3. Week plus roadtrip in RV/Teardrop
4. See Independence Hall, PA.
5. Visit a Civil War Battlefield (at least 2).
6. Sew myself a dress that I love.
7. Knitt myself a sweater I love.
8. Grow a garden big enough that I can preserve some of it.
9. Read every book that I own.
10. Go on a mission.
11. Crotchet an altar cloth for a temple.
12. Visit Church History Sites (Carharage, Navhoo, Indep, Far West, etc.)
13. Visit observation deck of Empire State Building.
14. Bike across USA.

So there it is and the website is officially up and running. Writing this list has been an interesting exercise. It has told me two things: I have some more blog posts I need to write about and I still want to add more things to the list. If by any chance you are reading these and you’d like to help me fulfill some of these goals please let me know. I can be contacted by leaving a comment or by emailing me at johnpedroza(At)hotmail(dot)com. If you have some goals I would love to hear about them as well. I also would like any ideas you have for this website. It isn’t much to look at now but I am confident with a little bit of effort it too can be something special.