Friction makes the story

Events going sideways creates the best memories.

What up, Traipser! Dakota here with a hearty welcome to Traipsing About, my newsletter about reclaiming creativity as an adult and ditching tired personal paradigms. No bots, no AI, just good, clean, human-spun fun.

I just read astute travel writer Paul Theroux’s book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. In it, he follows a route that he traveled 33 years prior…and lo and behold, I traversed much of the same in my year-long escapade overseas after college, including going from Berlin to Bangkok via train and bus. AND he did it in 2006, the same year I was out and about exploring Myanmar, China, Vietnam, and so on!

So trippy reading his perspective as a life-long travel writer about the same places I visited. Since I was only 24 on my first trip abroad and very mature goofing around, his sharp eye and research helps shine new light on past memories. I love the concept of revisiting past locations like that.

Otherwise, we’re just cruising here in Oregon while enjoying fall vibes, fun in the mountains, and excellent camping trips. Wildfires have served up smoke here or there, but hey, such is life in a mountain town these days. (I say with equanimity while almost forgetting a day last week where pure rage was the primary emotion.)

Two recent camping trips (Cascade Mountains and S. Oregon over Summer Lake), hiking with Chelsea.

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Blazing hot off the Traipsing About press this week:

• No friction, no story (Part 3 in my friction series)

• Smoke risk quantified

• Traipsing Tidbits:

In case you missed it: Last newsletter, I continued my series on friction with how it strengthens friendships; the first essay was in praise of friction.

I try to keep my complaining about smoke mostly contained to drawings.

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Friction is the story

Most holidays blur together for me, but not the one where a fully-laden Christmas tree toppled onto my flailing grandma as my raucous Italian family laughed uncontrollably. At least one of my aunts peed her pants.

In fact, my best stories are rarely (never?) about things going smoothly. They’re about friction, be it a family holiday or a far-flung trip.

I'm talking about things like a Hawaiian wave soaking me and Chelsea during our wedding photos. Or a small child throwing up all over Chelsea and our traveling companions on an overnight train in China. Or perhaps bike trips laced with lightning storms, broken derailleurs and bike frames, or weirdos in a Walmart parking lot scaring the bejeebus out of us as we "stealth camped" in our van overnight.

Comfy sleeping on a Chinese train, hiding from lightning on the Colorado Trail, and Brady's very broken bike on the Oregon Timber Trail (and our makeshift fix).

Yes, please, serve me some friction with a side of unknown! For dessert, I'd like some randomness.

After all, in storytelling, conflict = plot. In life, friction = memory. Perfect beach vacations are lovely, sure, but they're yawn-tastic in a story. "We went to the beach. It was sunny. We drank cocktails. The end.”

A family dinner where everything goes right is pleasant. The one where I accidentally spilled an entire pitcher of grape juice and my grandpa's blood pressure pinged off the moon is engraved forever in my memory. (My poor grandparents!)

As Kevin Kelly puts it in his excellent “50 Years of Travel Tips,” travel comes in two flavors: retreat (recharging with margaritas on the beach) or engage (leaning into uncertainty and surprise). Craig Mod describes it as stepping into the unknown.

I just call it friction. The kind of travel that leaves you changed, with stories worth telling. Like my brother and me spending six days on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, building a makeshift sail to push air into our sweltering cabin (Paul Theroux would have been proud). Well, until furious Russian train attendants tore it down. Annoying in the moment (gawd it was hot in Siberia), unforgettable in hindsight.

The Trans-Siberian babyyy. Check that sail out! My bro and I played so.many.games of chess, with a 50 pushup penalty for losing. Good times.

When people travel, they often try to erase friction, researching every corner of a destination until no surprises remain. The Airbnb, landmarks, restaurants, and the coffee or croissant spot are already mapped. (What about the toilets; better check those in advance!)

But what if you left a little to chance? Showed up without an agenda, without Instagram’s highlight reel guiding your every move? Whatever magic a destination holds gets hammered out by too many tourists anyway; a selfie stick to the eye wrecks any experience.

Sure, some friction is just hassle. In 2006, me traveling without a phone or laptop meant hunting for internet cafés just to book a ticket, or fending off shouting hotel touts after stepping off a bus or boat. Not fun, not a good story.

There's a place for it though. Lisa Abend takes a delightful modern twist on this. "Each month, I go to a place in Europe I’ve never been before, travel around entirely offline, and bring back stories of my adventures."

Even with cell phones, other friction opens doors. On a three-month bike trip through Europe, we left our route unplanned and commented on a vegan food blog in Belgium. That led to three unexpected days staying with the blogger near Bruges, plus connections with friends in Ghent. Scheduled and booked, it never would have happened.

Making friends near Bruges and in Ghent.

This has been true on every journey I’ve taken: Every time I leave things open, serendipity shows up. Over and over, friction isn’t inconvenience, it’s the spark for stories and relationships.

That isn’t just true on the road. Life itself works the same way. The moments we remember aren’t when everything went smoothly, but when things went fabulously sideways. Grape juice spills and power outages shake things up!

Perfect trips and seamless dinners fade. At the end of our days, what we’ll remember are the stories, our time with people, whether close family and friends or a stranger eager to share a piece of their life.

Friction becomes story. So if a Christmas tree happens to topple onto grandma this year… well, you might just be gifting your family the best holiday memory yet.

Give the tree a little bump with your hip.

Best Grandma ever. I miss her.

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What does smoke do to us anyway?

Since wildfire smoke is now part of life, I decided to do more digging into the health impacts. My goal: figure out what the health risks in various Air Quality Index (AQI) numbers at low effort levels vs. during intense exercise.

Long-term wildfire smoke exposure hasn’t been studied much because, well, it’s a relatively new thing. Still, there’s the Berkeley Earth cigarette equivalence air pollution metric, which draws a comparison between bad air quality and smoking cigarettes. With a little ChatGPT help, I put together a ciggies spreadsheet for various AQIs and effort levels.

For example, being outside in 100 AQI with low exertion for 24 hours is the same as smoking 1.61 cigarettes. Three hours of hard exercise is 1.81 cigs. So a weekend camping trip with three activities would be like smoking 8-9 ciggies. Yummm…not. But a one-hour bike ride or walk with Chelsea in 75 AQI…? No biggie.

This is useful for me when I'm deciding if the mental health benefits of getting outside are worth the risk. Caveats: a) I’m no PhD researcher and b) the absolute risk of disease for you depends on many factors, including comorbidities. Do your own research to figure out how this would actually affect you. BUT, if you’re feeling stir-crazy and at risk of self-immolation, I say it’s probably worth heading out the door to do something if it’s not Smoke Armageddon outside.

That said, Berkeley Earth’s final statement on their website is that “air pollution is arguably the greatest environmental catastrophe in the world today." Now we just gotta learn how to navigate it. (Blue Air filters are our go-to.)

Three smoke-themed drawings. Half the fun is the ideation!

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Traipsing Tidbits

1. Flashback to a post I wrote about buddies vs. friends:
   Buddies are people you do stuff with.
   Friends are people who are committed to you becoming wiser.
   And you’re committed to them becoming wiser.

2. This modern Where’s Waldo is powerful, especially the one of people walking up a ramp looking at their phones…and falling off like the video game lemmings.

3. If I were a parent, I’d definitely want my kids to play on high-risk playgrounds like this one. Hell, I want one!

4. People sure are good at stuff, including this Yo-Yo tricks world champ.

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Quote for the road:

“I always felt lucky on a train, as on this one. So many other travelers are hurrying to the airport, to be interrogated and frisked and their luggage searched for bombs.

They would be better off on a national railway, probably the best way of getting a glimpse of how people actually live—the back yards, the barns, the hovels, the side roads and slums, the telling facts of village life, the misery that airplanes fly over.

Yes, the train takes more time, and many trains are dirty, but so what? Delay and dirt are the realities of the most rewarding travel."

Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

This Traipsing About newsletter has left the station.

Unsolicited advice: leave some unplanned time in your next trip…and treasure the mistakes at family events!

Onward,

Dakota