YOUR SPACE: Quest to conquer 100 things leads to our peak

After his divorce, Australian Ian Usher didn’t cry in his beer. He chased new conquests.

He made a list of 100 goals and gave himself 100 weeks to do it.

Usher, 46, is halfway through his nonstop bucket list.

He ran with bulls in Spain, worked a Canadian soup kitchen, hobnobbed at Cannes Film Festival, slept in a Japanese capsule hotel and juggled fire clubs.

“I have a few scrapes,” he says. “It has never gone terribly.”

Let’s hope it stays that way. He arrives in Colorado Springs today for Goal No. 56: “Seven peaks in seven days”  ... and about as many happy hours.

“It is open to anyone who wants to join in,” he says.

Join him at 9 a.m. Wednesday at Devil’s Playground parking lot to hike Pikes Peak. The week’s lineup: Mounts Lincoln/Democrat/Bross, Mount Sneffels, Wetterhorn Peak and Crestone Peak.

Springs resident Val Baughman came up with the “seven peaks” goal for Usher.

“I read his story on Yahoo News. He was inviting ideas for five goals,” Baughman says. “I was intrigued, and a little envious. He took a tough challenge and turned it into a fun thing.”

Usher got worldwide press last year when he tried to sell his life — home, car, toys  — as a packaged deal on eBay. “It included extending an introduction to my friends, the whole lifestyle package,” he says. 

“It didn’t end as I hoped.”

The final bid was $399,300, but the buyer backed out. So, too, did the five other top bidders.

Usher put the house on the market and last summer forged ahead with the project, which includes raising money for colon cancer. “It took my father 15 years ago,” Usher says.

The British-born Aussie always had a wild streak. He got a degree in outdoor education, sold cars, motorcycles and rugs, ran a jet skiing outfit  and drove a dump truck in a gold mine.

Now, he’s driving the 1986 motor home be bought last fall to cross the US, at times jetting overseas. Last night he returned from a zany Birdman competition in England, where he flew (plummeted, actually) off a pier dressed like an ostrich.

At times he wonders, “What on earth was I thinking?” But not very often.

Some of the simplest goals had kinks: He couldn’t pull off the plan of gathering five Ian Ushers in one place.

Future goals include driving a car off a jetty into water, skydiving in the nude, memorizing the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling and securing a book deal.

Next stop is Vegas to play in a $1,000 poker game.

BTW: He’s not lovelorn anymore, nor is he attached. “The lifestyle I’m living is not conducive,” he says. “And I’m past the age of having groupies.”

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