David Silberkleit was going through a mid-life adventure crisis. He had traveled through Vietnam on a recumbent bicycle, piloted a blimp and a sailplane and gone scuba diving with sharks in Palau.

"Where’s my next adventure?" he wondered as he bicycled through Europe, adjusting to breaking up with his girlfriend.

Then he had a revelation.

"It suddenly hit me that this whole destination-based thinking was overwhelming and it was my attitude that was making my life an adventure," he said.

So he got off his bike, flew back to America and decided to write a book encouraging all of us to find adventure in our daily lives.

"I don’t believe life is meant for suffering between Monday and Friday and that adventure and joy and passion is only for weekends," he said.

Silberkleit’s book, "A New Adventure Every Day: 541 Simple Ways to Live with Pizzazz," includes some off-beat suggestions such as spending five minutes looking at yourself naked in a full-length mirror and bicycling through your old neighborhood to see how things have changed.

He also advises people to talk to strangers and find an adventurous way to criticize your parents by "hiring a skywriter to tell them to stop picking on your posture."

Silberkleit, 42, a life coach who counsels people going through big changes, doesn’t expect readers to actually follow through with a lot of his ideas.

"I want people to (at least) think in this way," he said as he sat in his newer girlfriend’s New Haven apartment. He also rents a place in Stony Creek.

Although it’s unrealistic to hire a skywriter, Silberkleit said people could agree to another of his suggestions: leave a note in your mother’s pocketbook or your father’s pocket that gets across the same message.

He knows what you’re thinking about him. "People say: ‘Who is this guy?’ " he acknowledged. But he added, "I’m just like them."

"I want to support people to be passionate about life," he said. "I am passionate about doing child-like things."

For instance, he occasionally hops on his bike and rides to the top of East Rock Park. That’s number 457 in his book: "Chase a puffy cloud as it floats through your neighborhood."

Silberkleit is disappointed that "seeing life as a child is something we’ve lost in our culture."

He knows it’s not easy to live this way. "Who has time to be child-like when you have 55 e-mails to wade through? And that’s just for starters."

He said we are also living in a "culture of fear" since 9/11.

"This book is important because it works against that," he said. "It gets us back to celebrating life."

Another reason he wrote the book was "to address the longing many people have for adventure. They say, ‘Oh, if only...’ "

He noted a lot of people blame lack of money for not being able to have adventures. They think adventure is impossible unless they go on an African safari or travel to some other foreign country.

"But the trick is, you can do these things for not a lot of money," he said. "I am not a financially wealthy person."

Silberkleit advocates talking to strangers on the street, in stores, anywhere.

"I know it’s hard," he said. "But what if it’s the most fertile ground to adventure? It’s possible you’ll make an emotional connection."

He said he never would have gotten his book published if he hadn’t walked up to a woman who was eating a banana at a book fair in Frankfurt, Germany and asked her, "Where did you find fruit in a country that seems dedicated to putting bratwurst on every corner?"

When she laughed and asked why he was there, Silberkleit told her about his book idea. She took him to a publisher friend and the connection was made.

Silberkleit is on a mini-book tour, speaking at places such as Lulu’s on Cottage Street. He will be at Atticus Bookstore in New Haven Nov. 11 at 7 p.m.

He promises to bring his tandem bicycle to the event and he might even offer rides. A little adventure on Chapel Street.