April 9, 2012

THE GOOD LIFE

 Second Acts

 What do you do for an encore? Here are portraits of people who are taking new paths and changing their lives.

By KRISTI  ESSICK

Career in Math Yields to Paris

Stephen Solosky first visited Paris when he was in his mid-40s—and promptly fell in love. In the past decade, he has visited the City of Light more than 50 times.

 "Paris is a city of discovery for me," says Mr. Solosky, 55. "Every time I go, I find a new corner. It never gets old."

 When he retired in late 2010 from a 31-year career as a math professor at Nassau Community College in Garden City, N.Y., Mr. Solosky knew he wanted to build some type of part-time business around his passion for Paris. Over the years, he had taken meticulous notes on Parisian sights, restaurants, neighborhoods and museums, and had turned those notes into a book, "The Traveling Professor's Guide to Paris," published in 2009. Yet it wasn't until friends and readers of his book started asking if he would accompany them on trips to Paris that Mr. Solosky hit upon the idea of leading tours.

 As soon as he retired, he started Traveling Professor, a company that takes groups of as many as 12 people to Paris, Italy and Peru.

 "I started with Paris, because that's the city I know best. But people loved the tours and asked if I could do other countries, too," says Mr. Solosky, who is planning to add Spain this year. He runs about six trips a year, and recently signed up two other professors to help him expand the business.

 Many of his clients have never traveled abroad before, and Mr. Solosky enjoys teaching them about the history and culture of the cities they visit, as well as introducing them to his local friends.

 Mr. Solosky's second act is something of a surprise to him. He has lived his whole life on Long Island. But when he divorced 10 years ago, he felt compelled to start traveling the world. Most trips find him in Europe, but he has also traveled extensively in Peru and Bolivia, where he's involved in a long-term volunteer mission to aid local communities.

Mr. Solosky makes one exception to this on-the-go lifestyle: He doesn't travel during the summer. He spends those months at his lake house in Great Barrington, Mass.

 The tour business provides supplemental income, but Mr. Solosky says what really enabled him to "live his dream in retirement" was careful saving and a bit of luck. He started socking money away at age 18, lived frugally and receives a pension from his teaching job.

 "I want to start spending more of my time helping others," says Mr. Solosky, who says he will favor volunteering in overseas locales. "I just can't sit still."

The article can be seen online at:  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203833004577251524178931452

See more on The Professor at http://www.travelingprofessor.com

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