The Fun Scale
Have you been out in the backcountry and heard guides refer to the fun scale? Well here it is just in case you were curious. It’s not always a good thing, but sometimes it is.
Type I Fun –This is the purest form of people having fun during an activity, simple instant gratification where you enjoy the moment. Good food, 5.8 hand cracks, powder skiing, good sex, afternoon hiking, mellow whitewater, and margaritas. You’re bummed when it’s over, but you’d be hard-pressed to remember more than a few specific details.
Type II Fun –Retrospective fun you can look back on and think "hey, that was a good time now that it’s over". Normal people don’t set out to find type II fun, it just happens. Usually it begins with the best intentions before things get carried away into a miserable hateful experience that becomes legendary. Hanging belays in the dark, that time you almost drowned inside your tent. Getting lost, cold, hungry, wet, scared, and coming out on top; that’s the sort of experience that stick with us. Think of the hangover that makes you swear you’ll never drink again.The sneaky thing about type II fun is as time passes you start to remember it as being fun. That is dangerous, as you tend to repeat the same activities that were not fun at the time. First you’re saying “I want my mom so bad right now” and next week you’re like “You know, that wasn’t so bad, what should we try next time?”
Type III Fun –An activity that was never fun and usually involves conditions so horrific that you think, “What in the hell was I doing? If I ever come up with another idea that stupid, somebody slap some sense into me.” The phrase “don’t die, don’t die, don’t die…” is usually running through the mind of someone experiencing type III fun. Anything that ends with you eating your own shoes, or featuring prominently in a non-fiction bestseller likely classifies as type III.
On this highly scientific spectrum, a lot depends on your sense of adventure and pain tolerance. The most memorable experiences and the stories that are shared around the campfire for years to come are born of the rosy reflections afforded us by the passage of time. The important thing is that we’re out there looking for fun.
Into which category a given experience falls, of course, is highly subjective I guess you never really know what sort of fun you’re getting yourself into once you leave the couch. After all, as alpinists and mothers both know: It doesn’t have to be “fun” to be fun.