No, I didn’t win the Irish soda bread contest (a young girl did), but I did have fun making my grandmother’s recipe from the back of my new book, Round Ireland with a Duck.

I tucked the warm loaf into my denim satchel (free with AARP membership!) and bungee-corded it in my bike basket for the 11-mile ride to a nearby city’s City Hall complex for the annual Irishfest event, leaving room for that stupid BikeNoodle needed out here in car-centric suburbia.

Besides entering the contest (judged by an Irish chef from the Saint Regis Hotel and the head of an Ireland/Scotland tour company), I joined five other tin-whistlers in a class run by a seasoned woodwind instructor/performer. We sat in a circle and learned a new Irish ditty together, and it felt powerful to be part of a collective artistic effort.

I then popped into an excellent Irish language class given by an Irish woman who taught in an Irish-language immersion school (and may be the teacher for whom I’ve been looking, after trying so many online things to advance my meager language skills). 

My five new best friends and I danced, sang, and laughed while getting more and more comfortable having short conversations in this endangered language (40 words of which are sprinkled throughout my book, and in a glossary at the end).

I watched a few excellent performances (including a youth troupe of musicians/dancers from County Clare, Ireland — 3,900 miles/6,300 kilometers away — and thought, as always, about the future of this world-in-crisis) and then rode my rothar (bike) home. 

Sin é (that’s it). Lá eile ag taisteal ar luas rothair (another day traveling at the speed of bike).