My Story

I swear we three kids were all born in a car. Before I got out of middle school, we had driven through nearly all of the continental United States, from old Sturbridge Village Massachusetts where the horse pulling the carriage was named Penny, to Arizona where the horse I rode was named Copper, to California, where I did not meet any horses. 

I had also mastered the art of being car sick. Repeatedly.

The summer before my senior year of high school, I decided I wanted to go to Europe. Pretty big talk for a shy and bullied 16-year-old kid. Yet I really wanted to go, and my parents (the crazy people that drove us all over the country), were behind it. Three months. THREE MONTHS!

I came home with a totally different countenance. So much so that my parents walked right by me at the airport and didn’t recognize the far more confident person than they dropped off. Or maybe I was just different because I was so relieved that I didn’t get arrested for smuggling and being underage for having alcohol in my suitcase. (That was the first time I was caught smuggling – the second time was in Cuba – but I really didn’t mean to do it.) (Honest).

Before I began my sophomore year of my first college degree, I had made it to every state in the US except Hawaii, and all but two Canadian Provinces. It took me another 50 years to get to Hawaii, but Nunavut and PEI are still taunting me.

For my second degree, in architecture this time, I wanted to spend the third of five years studying in Versailles, France. But I needed a reasonable amount of money to do so. So I did what any self-respecting person would do and I went to the race track and won it all in a single afternoon. I took it as a sign that I was supposed to do this. I mean really, what else was I suppose to think? The school was set up so that we only had five weeks of class, and then we were to travel for two, three, four, or five weeks, and come back with 10 sketches. I mastered the art of three views from one cafe table. (All 42 of us did – we were that good). So I made tracks and drove around 14 countries, and then even added in Egypt at one point.

Oh, and did I mention that our school was actually IN a part of the Palace of Versailles? Okay – it was the small stables and the hayloft, but omg, really??? Before you scoff…

The school was on the left at the top – in the hayloft, and our dining room was on the bottom floor. The school bar, (what can I say – it was France – was on the second floor closer to the yellow door.

In spite of some extreme health challenges, (four bouts of cancer, 21 surgeries, and 28 broken bones, I have led a very privileged life to have traveled as much as I have. I thought that Covid might put an end to it, but then I remembered that I took my Mom to Tibet where we drove from Lhasa to Katmandu, Nepal. And she had to pee on the side of the road, which is something she swore she wouldn’t do. But she did, at 75 years old.

I invite you to come along as I share some of the things that have happened to me. And I promise some excellent tips and tricks from the lessons I have learned.

I might even tell you about how I got caught smuggling in Cuba. But I didn’t mean to.