For the past six years, a Nova Scotia man has been travelling the world working on his bucket list. Each time he completes an item on the list, he posts videos and pictures to social media to share his experiences.
From the desert, to the mountains, Dave MacLeod's bucket list has taken to him to places far beyond his home province of Nova Scotia. The 26-year-old can now be found in Italy.
“In Fano, Italy,” says MacLeod. “So it's on the east coast of Italy, just east of Florence and I'm just here skydiving.”
With more than 100 jumps under his belt, skydiving was crossed off MacLeod's bucket list ages ago.
“At the time, I was kind of in that mode of just wanting to get the most out of life and I just kind of realized the kind of person I am. I work better if I have lists and goals and things to strive towards,” says MacLeod.
So the bucket list was born – a compilation of 100 things the MacLeod wants to complete in his life time.
MacLeod currently works for an oil company in New Zealand, but his first bucket list item was scratched off the list in Halifax six years ago with a polar bear dip.
“It was freezing cold, but I did go back the second year as well, so it became a bit of a routine,” says MacLeod.
Since then he's bought a car, flown a plane, and fired a military grade rifle.
Now he's in Europe, crossing a few more things off that list.
“I went to Pompeii, which is just south of Naples,” says MacLeod. “It’s an old historic city that was basically covered by Mt. Vesuvius when it erupted about 2,000 years ago, so it's a very, very interesting city.”
MacLeod's bucket list has taken him all over the world, but he still has a number of items that have yet to be checked – items like #1 to walk the Great Wall of China, or #22 visit the pyramids in Egypt and #78 make a call in an English phone booth.
What’s surprising is some of the boxes he has been able to cross off closer to home, like #60, eat kangaroo steak, which he bought at a Sobeys in Halifax.
“It was good. It was just like a really, really red meat, like a steak almost,” says MacLeod.
MacLeod says the Rocky movies inspired him to eat a raw egg, #81 on his list.
“I didn't like it. I'll never do it again.”
Another food related item is #59.
“Go to La Tomatina, which is the big tomato fight they have in Spain and also the running with the bulls. I wanna go to that as well,” says MacLeod.
MacLeod says running a half marathon, #36 on the list, was the most satisfying.
“You just can't go out and do it. You need to train for a couple months to get my running to that ability. So definitely running half a marathon would be the hardest so far,” says MacLeod.
While the half marathon may have been the hardest, #50 just might have hurt the most - taking a punch from a UFC fighter.
“He took it a bit easy on me, because he had a fight coming up, he didn't want to break his hand, but he gave me a solid punch. That was TJ Grant,” says MacLeod.
MacLeod has accomplished a lot of his goals in the past six years, but has 70 items left to go to complete the bucket list.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Matt Woodman