"Your grand adventure doesn't have to involve climbing Mount Everest," he stressed, which served as a segue into talking about one of the subjects of his book, Andre Tolme of Berkeley, Calif., who in 2004 talked several sponsors into helping finance his trip to Mongolia, where he smacked a golf ball across the entire country, all 1,319 miles. It took him 90 days and 11,880 strokes. When he got back, Jay Leno interviewed him on "The Tonight Show" and he was written up in the New York Times.

If you don't have a particular adventure in mind, the ever-helpful Blumenfeld suggests several in his book. Among them is the opportunity to help an organization called The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery dig for critters called "robber" crabs in the uninhabited atoll of Nikumaroro in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The people at TIGHAR think it's possible that these crabs, which live to be quite old, may have eaten the remains of Amelia Earhart, the famous pilot who disappeared somewhere in the Pacific in 1937 — and traces of her DNA might still be findable.

Find a sponsor and tell them you want to go to Nikumaroro.

Blumenfeld traces "adventure marketing" at least back to Christopher Columbus when Columbus solicited Spanish Queen Isabella to finance his voyage that would involve the novel concept of sailing west to find the East Indies.

"Today the spirit of Columbus lives on," writes Blumenfeld in his book's introduction, "in the pitch letters, cold calls, faxes, and e-mails that pour into my office from an endless stream of … explorers who have their own high concepts but little means to personally fund them."

"It's never easy. It hasn't been easy since Shackleton's day," says Blumenfeld. "The challenge today is not so much to climb Mount Everest or explore the depths of the sea, but rather to figure out a way to pay for it all."

You can contact Jeff via e-mail at editor@expedtionnews.com. His book is available in bookstores and online at Amazon.com.

Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com.