100goals
is now over
To find out what comes next
see my new website at:- IanUsher.com
Current status: 93/100 goals - 100/100 weeks
Meet 10 new people from ALife4Sale
5 - Completed
All over Worldwide - No specific date
Legend:
This is one of my current favourite goals. Throughout the ALife4Sale process I got so many emails from so many people. I have picked 10 people from all these that I would really like to meet for one reason or another.
For obvious privacy reasons, I cannot list who they are or why they are in the list, unless they allow me to, as I promised that all emails received would remain entirely confidential. However, here are a few locations I need to visit:
Dubai
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
San Fransisco
(lost my list !!!)
Related Blogs
Viva Las Vegas! Thursday, November 20, 2008
I still had alot of things that I wanted to see in Las Vegas, so on my last day there I was up early and headed out to Red Rock Canyon, which is just a few miles to the west of the city. From Simon and Myles's house it only took minutes to get there, and yet it is a world away form The Strip! Las Vegas is quite an unusual place, in that it is very built up as far as they can build, right to the foot of the mountains, and then just stops, where building is no longer possible.
Red Rock Canyon was quite busy, being so close and so accessible, but it was nice to be able to get out into natural surroundings so easily.
In the afternoon I met up with Misty again, as she had a day off work, and had offered to give me a guided tour around The Strip. At her house I finally got to see the painting she had done, inspired by my "ALife4Sale" project. She had emailed me way back in March or April, telling me about her idea for this painting, and later had sent me a photo of the finished work. You can read more about it in an earlier blog here.
It was fantastic to see the painting in real life, and I felt pretty flattered that someone half a world away from where I lived had taken such inspiration from something I had done. It was very satisfying to actually meet Misty and see the picture.
So I had added Misty to the list of people I wanted to meet when I set off on my travels, and she is actually about the seventh person that I have met who I have come into contact with through putting my "life" up for sale. Being a bit of a gambler (she plays alot of tournament poker!), she insisted on being counted as lucky number 7. So she has actually become an integral part of three of my goals: 1). Seeing Las Vegas 2). Meeting ten new people from ALife4Sale 3). Entering a $1,000 poker competition
We headed down to The Strip as soon as it started going dark, and the first place to visit was the Stratosphere, a tall tower offering great views of The Strip, and with a couple of pretty wild fairground-type rides on top of the tower. We bought tickets and went on X-Scream, a sort of see-saw which tips you right over the edge of the tower. It was pretty intense.
After dinner at the restaurant where Misty works we headed out to see more casinos, including a circus show at Circus Circus, the pirate show at Treasure Island, the pyramid-shaped Luxor, and the best of all, the water fountains at Bellagio.
Misty gave me a few pointers on poker etiquette, and a few suggestions on how best to prepare for a bigger tournament, and I reckon she would make a great coach for that goal, which I may aim to achieve sometime next year. Hopefully we might be able to play a bit online over the coming months!
Las Vegas is certainly a different, and much more enjoyable place to look around with someone else, rather than on your own, and I had a much better impression of it on my last night out there than I did on my first!
Viva Las Vegas! Huge thanks to Simon and Myles, and to Misty too, for being such great hosts, and helping me achieve my goal of gambling in Las Vegas.
Portland. Saturday, December 13, 2008
Back in June I ran a competition prior to the "ALife4Sale" auction, just for a bit of fun. I had made a short video to show my home theatre system in it's best light, and asked people to name the movies, video game and concert shown in the clip. You can see the video clip, the answers and results here.
The winner, David, lives with his family in Portland in Oregon, and had invited me to visit. Heading north from Gold Beach would take me directly through the city. Unfortunately, after an early start, the alternator on the RV, after squeeking continuously for the last two thousand miles went ominously quiet, and the battery indicator on the dashboard showed that there may be trouble ahead!
I found an auto repair shop at the next town, and without daring to turn the engine off, had them put a meter on the alternator, and discovered that it was still putting out a little charge, probably enough to keep the vehicle running, but not enough to recharge the battery. I decided to push on and try to resolve the issue in Portland.
I made good time for the rest of the trip, and arrived at David's house without further incident. I left the RV running, explaining my predicament, and we looked in the local Yellow Pages for a repair shop. I took it to Keith's Autos, and after a few sharp intakes of breath, and alot of head shaking, a meter pronounced the alternator dead. Keith was left with the RV, and a request for a speedy repair, and David and I returned home for dinner.
I met his wife Lisa, and their two fantastic kids Ian and Amy, and for the rest of the evening we played ten-pin bowling on the Nintendo Wii. I was proud to win the first two games against the kids - they were both very good - but I became complacent, and was soundly thrashed in the last game.
After the kids went to bed, Marc Acito, another friend of David's turned up at the house. David had thought we would be interested in meeting, as Marc is about my age, and is in the final stages of his very own mid-life-crisis project, which is quite similar to my own. He is almost at the end of doing a new thing every day for a year. You can see his blog here: http://marcacito.blogspot.com/
David had very kindly taken the next day off work to entertain me, and had booked a couple of exciting things for us to do. In the morning we went for breakfast with Lisa, and then to a poi-twirling lesson. Poi are pair of balls on the end of strings which are held one in each hand, and twirled in some amazing patterns. Well, that is the theory, but David and I struggled to master the dexterity needed to handle them effectively. With some patient teaching though we did improve, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
After a quick bite to eat we headed down to the local radio station to meet up with Marc again, where he features on one of the local shows on a regular basis. I sat down in the studio, put some headphones on, and chatted away with Marc and the show hosts. It was great fun, and reminded me of the cray days when "ALife4Sale" meant I was interviewed regularly by radio stations, as I enjoyed my 15 minutes of fame!
We dashed out of the radio station as soon as we were finished, and Marc, David and I headed into town for the "Portland Underground" tour. Portland has a fascinating history, and at one time had an extensive system of tunnels underneath the city, connecting most of the downtown buildings with the waterfront. The tunnels have seen many uses, including opium dens, illegal drinking establishments during prohibition, prostitution, and even white-slave trading.
But their most infamous use was for an even more ominous trade. It was from these tunnels that many men were "Shang-Haied", simply disappearing from the world above, finding themselves as unwilling crew members aboard ships bound for the Orient and beyond.
The tour was fascinating, and I was astounded to find that the illegal practices, which started around 1850 in Portland, had continued until as recently as 1941. I would highly recommend the tour for anyone visiting Portland.
I was very proud to be mentioned by Marc in his blog for day 351 of his year, for which seeing the Portland Underground was his new thing for the day. Read about it here.
Not long to go now Marc, keep up the good work! Thanks to David and family for being such fantastic Portland hosts, and going well beyond what is ever expected from a cometition winner!
Another person from ALife4Sale. Wednesday, January 7, 2009
When I first put my ALife4Sale.com website online on 14th March 2008, the world's press got a little excited about it all, and a few people asked if I had any worries about actually being able to list my "life" for sale on eBay, and whether I had actually spoken to anyone at eBay about it. After all, it was suggested, several auctions had been cancelled recently by eBay, particularly the guy who tried to sell his soul!
I had tried to contact eBay before my website went live, but without any luck. They have an almost impenetrable system of online help services that make it practically impossible to speak to a real living person. I wasn't too worried though, as I was actually listing physical assets, such as my house and it's contents.
Within a week of launching the website I was surprised to find an online interview in which an eBay represantative was questioned about my auction. They were obviously aware then of what I was proposing to do, and as I had hoped, seemed to have no issues with it.
I made further efforts to get to speak to someone personally at eBay, as I still had many questions on the practicalities of how I would like to do things, and eventually I was rewarded when I was contacted by Matthew, one of the Australia help reps. Finally I had a direct line to someone who could answer all of my questions, and help get things set up efficiently with plenty of time to spare.
Matthew and I spoke many times in the months running up to the auction, and I found out that he is actually based in Vancouver, but works Australian business hours. When I finally decided what I would be doing after the auction ended, and realised that I would be passing through Vancouver at some point, we decided that we should try to meet up when I did.
And so this morning Matthew flew back in from his winter break in Hawaii, and came to collect me. We headed down into the city, and went to Granville Island Markets for a look around and to see the city from the south-western side. After lunch Matthew took me to an interesting ice cream shop.
Before Christmas, Jason and Merryn had taken me there after our Vancouver tour, but the place had been closed - it is obviusly well known and loved by locals. The International Ice Cream Factory is hidden away on an industrial estate and as a tourist you would never find it without local help. They serve 218 different ice cream flavours, and are well known for some of the very unusual ones they create.
I tried Apple Wasabi, which was surprisingly good. The Chili Chocolate was very spicy, and I was tempted. I could not resist trying Garlic, but was not very keen - it would not be my choice today. Finally I settled on a two-scoop combination, one Rice flavour, and one Curry! I was really quite nice, but I couldn't decide whether it was like eating a main course or a dessert!
Matthew is one of the people on my list that I wanted to meet from ALife4Sale, and as such brings me a step closer to completing my "Meet ten new people from ALife4Sale" goal. I am pretty sure that I have now met many more than ten new people, but there are still a couple left to track down and meet.
Thanks for the tour guide services Matthew, good to finally put a face to the name.
Goal 59 - ten out of ten! Monday, September 21, 2009
From Las Vegas I spent a long hot day on Saturday driving down to Los Angeles, where I turned up at my friend Evan's house, in a lovely location right by the beach, about 50 miles north of the city.
I first "met" Evan when he helped out with some of the online publicity for ALife4Sale, and then met him in person last year when I came to LA in November, when I achieved Goal #17 - skydiving in a wind tunnel.
Evan was away for the weekend, but had left me the keys for his apartment and car, and a note asking if I could pick him up at LAX airport at 10pm the next evening. So on Sunday afternoon I went to meet another internet contact, Chris, and his mate Nick, in The Corner Office sports bar in Costa Mesa. I managed to gain a slightly better understanding of American football, but am still somewhat confused by all the plays.
After the game, we arranged to meet the following weekend again if we didn't manage to catch up during the week, and I made my way to the airport, where I was pleased to see Evan again.
On Monday I borrowed Evan's car once more, and went to meet Andrew, who had just flown in from Australia. Andrew had joined me on my trip to Israelite Bay earlier in the year, and had planned to join me in Las Vegas, but unfortunately had not been able to make it.
We wandered around Hollywood Boulevard, and took a drive out to the coast at Santa Monica, and up Highway 1 to Malibu, where we watched the sunset over a huge field of commemorative flags at Pepperdine University.
That evening we met up with Eric, who I have spoken to several times on the telephone, and was looking forward to meet. Eric chose Dukes Restaurant right on the water's edge at Malibu as our rendezvous, where we had a great Hawaiian chicken meal.
Eric is a TV producer, and I had had an amusing conversation when I spoke to him the first time, right at the very end of the ALife4Sale auction, about three or four minutes before the auction closed. At the time of the conversation there were three different TV crews in my living room, a news helicopter flying overhead looking for a place to land, and a live uStream internet video feed from my house. When I think back about that time it all seems so long ago now.
Eric is actually the tenth person on the the list of people that I wanted to meet in person, who I had come across during the course of selling my life. After I finished ALife4Sale, and wrote out my list of 100 goals, I decided that I would like to meet some of these people who had contacted me to offer support, or ideas, or encouragement during that process. There were about twenty people on that list, and I have now met ten of them. In actual fact, I must have met at least fifty people, maybe more, who knew of me and contacted me because of ALife4Sale, or 100goals, so the goal has been well-and-truly achieved!
The ten people that I have met that were on my original to-meet list are as follows:-
Misty Misty wrote to me to tell me she was doing a painting inspired my my life for sale idea, and I got to meet her, and see the picture, in Las Vegas in November 2008
Evan Evan White helped me alot with PR for ALife4Sale, and we became good friends. We met and went to Perris Skydiving in California, where Evan did a tandem jump, and I tried out the wind tunnel. EvanWhitePR
Yvette Yvette writes a couple of blogs herself, and made a few comments on my ALife4Sale blogs. She also was trying to achieve a new adventure each month in 2008. Her idea was that one of her adventures might be to try to meet me, and we went for an evening out in Los Angeles when we discovered we were both there in November 2008.
Brandon Evan introduced me to Brandon when several people were asking about movie rights early on during the development of media interest in the ALife4Sale story. I finally met Brandon in person when we went for lunch in Beverley Hills.
John John email me to tell me that he was using my idea as inspiration for his own life-sale, and offered his home and lifestyle living and working as an artist by the beach on hus website artistlifeforsale.com. I experienced the life that was in offer when I visited him in Santa Monica.
David David was the winner of my video clips competition that I ran in the final days running up to the auction, and chose the book "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" as his prize. We jept in touch, and I mrt him and his family in Portland, Oregon as I passed through.
Moe Moe had offered to take me dogsledding in the wilderness if i fancied a change of pace after selling my life, and that idea subsequently went onto the 100 Goals list, and became a wonderful reality when i flew up to Whithorse in Canada for an amazing week.
Matthew Matthew was my dedicated eBay help representative for the whole of ALife4Sale, and we talked alot during that time. We finally got to meet when I was in his hometown of vancouver.
Richard Richard branson was quite an inspiration for my final decision to go ahead with ALife4Sale, and although I did not speak to him during those months, I did blog about him here, and finally got to meet him in London.
Eric Eric seems to have a remarkable ability to call me just as somethng big is happening. He called duting the final minutes of the auction, and then completely at random he called when I was in Australia, the evening before I was due to set off on the second part of my 100goals journey - great timing!
There are so many others that could have been on this list that I have met over the last 14 months, and I imagine many more wonderful people yet to meet before this adventure is all over. Thanks again to everyone who has offered help, support and encouragement on this amazing journey. It would never have been possible to have achieved so much without your kindness and generosity.
Hey Ian... Any ideas who you'd like to meet yet? Or will this be completely random? Personally, I'd love to see a video clip of you meeting up with Eddie... in the basement of his mommy's house while he's playing World of Warcraft in his not so tidy whities! LOL!! <Eddie - I hope you take this as the joke it's intended to be. > Take care Annie
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