He travels the country to compete in spelling bees. He's 70. And he's good.

He had flown into Phoenix the day before and checked in at a fancy resort. But Michael Petrina was not here to relax.

There was a spelling bee in town and he was here to win it.

Petrina is a retired attorney who has adopted, as his hobby, spelling. More specifically, spelling at spelling bees.

Yes, spelling bees, like the ones that petrify fifth-graders or agonize eighth-graders with the mysterious Latin root word or the silent letter. But Petrina is 70. He finds spelling bees for adults.

There aren’t many. Maybe only two or three each year, Petrina said. But he finds it worth his while to search them out and travel to them.

On this October weekday evening, the registered spellers gathered at an open meeting room adjoining the First Draft Book Bar in central Phoenix. They drew cards to determine position. Two people drew No. 1 and then decided they didn’t want to go first. Petrina drew it next. He didn’t mind.

The moderator started them off easy. Petrina’s first word: island.

Possibly out of habit, possibly for the chuckles it would cause, he asked for the word to be used in a sentence. Then, he stated it, spelled it, and stated it again.

He sat down and waited for the next round. For harder words.

This was not Petrina's first spelling bee.

He competed first as a student.

He was 13 in 1958, when he won his regional competition and entry to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. But the crown would elude him. He came in 24th place. He went out on on the word "soricine."

He became an attorney, making a life in Virginia.

His mother died of Alzheimer's disease in 1997.

Ten years later, when he was 62, he started entering spelling bees. It would be a way to keep his mind sharp, he thought.

And, perhaps, to slay "soricine."

It took him two years. He became a champion in 2009, at age 64, at an AARP-sponsored adult bee in Cheyenne, Wyo. He would win it again in 2012, becoming the bee's only two-time champion.

That bee ended, sending Petrina on his quest to find other bees.

The quest involves typing the phrase "adult spelling bee" into Google.

When he finds a new one, he signs up.

Try it, and you might find the adult spelling bee in Kootenai County, Idaho. There's one in Lincoln, Neb., one in Urbandale, Iowa, and a National Adult Spelling Bee in Long Beach, Calif.

Petrina said there are not enough consistently annual ones to make a circuit, like a professional golfer might work. One can’t-miss stop, he said, was the bee sponsored by the Austin Chronicle that has gone on since 2002.

“It’s an expensive hobby,” he said, during a phone interview a few days after the Phoenix bee.

At the bees, Petrina inevitably finds himself in a roomful of strangers. And when it comes time for small talk, someone will inevitably ask him where he’s from, or why he entered.

“I will respond to questions,” he said. “I don’t necessarily volunteer unless I’m asked.”

He and two other friends he knew from the AARP contest entered as a team at the adult spelling bee in New Haven, Conn., a fundraiser for the New Haven Reads literacy program. When word got around about their semi-professional pedigree, they were apparently seen as ringers.

“We were asked not to come back,” Petrina said. “We were scaring the locals.”

Petrina was glad to find the Phoenix bee, a fundraiser for the local chapter of a national journalism fellowship organization, the Asian American Journalists Association.

“I’ve been to Phoenix a few times in the past,” Petrina said. “I really love the desert.”

He e-mailed the organizer, a Republic reporter, in August to see if non-Arizonans could compete. “I wanted to make sure I was not an out-of-town interloper before I went up,” he said.

He was not. So he signed up. And two months later he was spelling that first word, a relative softball: island.

He was among 13 spellers at the bee.

Each wore a paper number around his or her neck.

The spirit was collegial more than competitive. As if there were a pickup game for spelling bees.

Early words in the bee included pizza, ladle and flour — the grain, not the plant.

Then words got more challenging. For most.

Petrina's kept spelling. Buoyant.  Abscess. Phlegm.

At last, Petrina was one of two spellers still standing.

The moderator asked the two to tell a bit about themselves. Petrina was modest. He mentioned his regional win as a kid. Not his two championships as an adult.

Then came the final round. The other finalist was given the word bougainvillea. He misspelled it.

Petrina was given the chance to correctly spell it. He did, navigating the tangle of vowels.

Then, he received his final word: asymptote.

He stated the word, emphasizing the “p” sound in the middle. Maybe it was part question, and maybe part showing he knew there was an alternate pronunciation.

Then, he stated it, spelled it, and then stated it again.

For Navajo speller, bee is bigger than a single word

Winning adult spelling bees, it should be noted, is not a lucrative pursuit.

For his trouble, Petrina won a $50 gift card to the Changing Hands bookstore. He went next door and spent it. Well, most of it. He has $2 left on it. He didn’t know when a bee would bring him back to Phoenix.

"They are few and far between," he said of the bees for grown-ups, days after his victory.

He was calling from a cruise ship. It was a vacation that did not involve a bee. Though there was, he said, nightly trivia.