DISCOVERY CHANNEL Putting dreams to the test

Contestants are given time and cash to fulfill a self-created challenge.
By AARON BARNHART
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
As host of "The Amazing Race," Phil Keoghan has flown the equivalent of 10 laps around Earth in 2004 alone. But that's nothing compared with the 4 million miles he's logged in his life pursuing his own extreme travel quests.
After he nearly drowned in a shipwreck at age 19, Keoghan says he decided he would live to the fullest. This meant thinking up a series of daring if unorthodox challenges and then completing them. Remember that shot of "Survivor" host Jeff Probst standing on the edge of an active volcano? Keoghan did that years ago -- and ate a five-star meal.
"We carried everything up there but the kitchen sink," recalled Keoghan, now 37. "The chef used the heat of the volcano to make the dinner. You cannot buy an experience like that. An experience like that comes from imagination."
Keoghan likes to say that imagination is currency. And contestants spend that currency like it's going out of style on the terrific new adventure reality series "No Opportunity Wasted," airing at 8 tonight on the Discovery channel.
Given time and money
Each week Keoghan ambushes a contestant who has written in describing a self-created challenge that he or she would undertake if given the time and money to do it. The show's producers conspire secretly with the contestant's friends, family and employers to free up 72 hours on that person's schedule. Then Keoghan shows up, gives the lucky guy or gal a $3,000 budget and starts the clock.
In one show we meet a 32-year-old Michiganer, Shane Platt, whose love for scuba diving is limited to fresh water -- he's terrified of sharks. Platt's inability to overcome fear seems to be a metaphor for his whole life (dead-end job, low self-esteem). He feels he must swim with the sharks.
Keoghan gets Platt down to the Bahamas, but Platt then has second thoughts. "I don't mean to be rude, but you guys get to go to the next thing and you'll probably forget my name in two weeks," Platt says.