The list began with the Indianapolis 500.
Every Memorial Day weekend, a crowd of 400,000 people jostle for an opportunity to watch what’s billed as the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”—the race that features more than 30 drivers careening 200 laps around Indianapolis Motor Speedway in order to win one of the most significant sporting events in the world.
Throw in a trip into Pit Row with a crew and a meeting with racing kings John Andretti and Richard Petty, and even the most hardcore fan would be in heaven.
It’s a day Jim Roland will never forget.
“When I found out about this opportunity to go to the Indy 500, I called a buddy of mine, one of my very best friends from college,” Roland says. “He says, ‘Oh man, that’s one for the bucket list.’ That’s what’s got me thinking in those terms.”
Roland might not resemble Jack Nicholson or Morgan Freeman, but attending the Indy 500 ranked in the top tier of his “bucket list,” which is defined as a list of things a person wants to do before he or she kicks the bucket.
“Everybody’s supposed to have a bucket list,” Roland says. “I won’t claim that I do, but I do have a lot of things I want to do in my life. ”
Roland, Window World’s CEO, caught wind of the Indy 500 trip when the company’s North Carolina dealership became friends with Andretti and agreed to sponsor a car in NASCAR’s Daytona 500. Andretti and Petty were brought in as a team with Window World as a sponsor.
“We had tremendous access,” Roland says. “I got to be right down in the pit before and during the race. I’ve done a bunch of fun things in my life, but I was taken aback by the Indy 500.”
While Roland has always been interested in muscle cars, racing has never been his forte. He likened the week leading up to the Indy 500 to a Saturday night before an LSU-Auburn football game.
“People like to have a great time,” he says. “It was a great experience.”
The Indy 500 was just one trip in an action-packed year for Roland, kicking off with scuba diving in the Caribbean island of Bonaire, skiing in Montana and visiting Italy. Adding to his extensive list of adventures, Roland went last month on a nine-day duck-hunting trip in Argentina.
The group, which included Roland and one of his sons, started in Buenos Aires and flew to a small town before heading four hours into the wilderness to hunt duck, doves and pigeons.
“Most of Argentina is as flat as a pancake. It’s all high plains,” Roland says. “I stood in one field where it looked like you could see the curve of the Earth in one direction with nothing between us and there.”
Roland’s bucket list happens as his interests grow and he develops hobbies, such as whitewater rafting. He has made several trips through the Grand Canyon, and he plans to make a private 21-day excursion next year with his wife Susan, their six children and family friends in six or seven boats. He applied for the permit 10 years ago, and the trip has been scheduled for October.
“Whitewater rafting is something I’ve always wanted to do, but we live in Louisiana,” he says. “Unless the dam breaks, there’s really not that much to do.”
People who keep bucket lists—or “things to do while you’re still living” for the politically correct—characteristically exhibit an awareness of the world around them and a dedication to achieving goals, says Ron Marks, dean of Tulane University’s School of Social Work.
“A bucket list is a valuable thing to do,” Marks says. “By making a bucket list, you are actively pursuing ways to be engaged in the world. That’s important.”
Dale Brown, the longtime LSU basketball coach who now is a motivational speaker, says his bucket list has taken him to 90 countries and countless adventures along the way, including trips down the Amazon and Mississippi rivers, to the Great Wall of China and on two searches for Bigfoot.
“You attract exactly what you think,” Brown says. “If you don’t have hopes, dreams and wishes, you wander around like a molecule or a cumulus cloud. There are reasons for these things.”
Roland’s next adventure is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro—at 19,330 feet, it’s the highest peak in Africa—in January. Africa has always been on Roland’s list of places to travel, and he believes this first trip is only the beginning. Other places on his list include the Himalayas and India.
Roland wasn’t always checking things off of his bucket list.
He has been in the window business for 30 years, establishing his first Window World office in Baton Rouge in 2002 and opening a second office in Houston in 2004. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, sales increased from a projected $6 million to $26.2 million by 2007. With 90 employees in the two offices, Roland has been able to balance his bucket list with building his company.
“With Katrina, we grew very rapidly and had to build an infrastructure to accommodate the growth,” he says. “My ability to take off has to do with the systems we put up to take care of the volume of business we handle.”
Roland, 60, also had some adventures on the home front. His six children range from ages 38 to 20 and include 22-year-old quadruples.
“Susan is a world-class mother and that doesn’t ever quit, but it’s a more stable situation,” Roland says. “We’ll do adventure traveling together as long as we can, and then we’ll do cruises after that. We plan on seeing the world.”
THINGS TO DO
Window World CEO Jim Roland has accomplished several things on his “want to do” list, including a family trip to the Grand Canyon and climbing Mount Rainier. Here is a list of what he’s done this year, and what he plans to do in the future:
2009
January Scuba diving trip, Bonaire
March Ski trip, Montana
April Italy
May Indianapolis 500
June Duck hunting, Argentina
2010
January Climb Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
October Private, 21-day Grand Canyon trip
