I never kissed the Blarney Stone, but after falling in love with Irish Traditional music in New York City in 1973, I stowed away to Ireland and over three years worked in a steak-and-kidney pie factory in Dear Dirty Dublin, as an extra in Irish films, hitchhiked the extremes of the island—even on a curragh out to Tory Island—befriended tinkers (travelers), lived in an Inishbofin cottage with no electricity for four months, and became the Irish Traditional Music columnist for In Dublin Magazine. Work permits be damned!

After leaving the staff of New York Magazine to freelance in 1973, my life changed again when I discovered the Irish Arts Center, learned the tin whistle and built my own Irish wire-strung harp. I started out street performing as a lark in Manhattan, but it soon became my passport to adventure. I loved the serendipity of making stages out of sidewalks and the candid-camera view of passing humanity. You never knew whom you might meet, or where it might lead you—especially around Europe.

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I married a Montreal tattoo artist in 1986 and soon had Quebec tattooed on my soul. Wedding rings may not last, but experiences do. I became a travel columnist for The Montreal Gazette, exploring the vast Canadian province from the U.S. border to the Arctic. I wrote in English but all the travel brochures and press trips and interviews were in French. While binging on French radio and TV, I travelled with Francophone journalists, learning to paddle a 12-seat Rabaska canoe, mountain bike through a Laurentian forest, and go dog-sledding en Français. Sheer proof that you can bluff your way into a new life - in any language!

I loved restoring a vintage VW camper van and flying a flight simulator into Tokyo airspace. But I also enjoy talking with other seasoned travelers about their own adventures—riding a motorbike across the Australian outback, or a South Pacific honeymoon endurance test of 22 stand by flights in 14 days, or insect collecting in South America