One of my favorite concepts is the idea of micro-adventures. I've been doing them in some form or another my whole life without thinking, but I only really became aware of the term when I first watched the TED talk below (by famed micro-adventurist (and normal adventurists, I might add), Alastair Humphreys). Some of his key talking points really resonate with me personally. According to him, Adventure is only a state of mind. Adventure is stretching yourself; mentally, physically or culturally. It is about doing what you do not normally do, pushing yourself hard and doing it to the best of your ability. The bottom line being, they break up the monotony of everyday routine and make life exciting and MEMORABLE! (Watch his TED talk here, if you want: https://youtu.be/xiN6ZU0KFlc). If you search back on my blog posts, you'll find some funny or interesting posts of weirdly memorable things I've done, like the time I decided to ride all of the Chicago "L" lines from end-to-end in one day, or the time I went nuts taking self-portraits in an empty Dallas airport in the middle of the night, or that time, uh...you know, when I tried to climb Mt. Everest. Well, here's another - my girlfriend and I attempted to eat at every $1 slice pizza joint in Manhattan. Here's the video to prove it:
I fucking love dollar slice pizza. It's one of the first things I'd have to eat every time I'd visit the city (now that I live here, it's kind of a problem...thank god for CrossFit). Anyways, I was always curious as to why dollar slice pizza exists vs. normal slices. What's the real difference? They don't taste all that dissimilar. It's either a dollar for the dollar slice, or $2.50+ for the regular slice at a regular pizza place. But really, why? Dollar slice definitely has a distinct taste, and all dollar slices kinda taste the same - the kind of taste that screams "Hey, it's midnight, I'm drunk, and I want pizza and I will eat anything!" But then the more expensive slices sometimes suck, or just aren't any more gourmet-er than the dollar slice. But in the end they all taste like pizza. Pizza is pizza, for the most part.
Anyways, while one of the goals of this little expedition was to find out the answers to a lot of my dollar slice pizza conundrums (I also wanted to try a large sampling of places across the city, and hey let's face it, just eat some damn pizza!), the main goal was to do something exciting, challenging, and different. A little annoying and hard to do, sure, but something that would end up being MEMORABLE. My girlfriend happened to be up for the challenge, so that made it all the more fun.
I love the concept that there are a million adventures starting at your front door. Too many of us, too many times, opt to stay in, work, be lame, just because it seems easier or it costs too much or takes too much to get out and do a proper adventure. But that's so wrong! Adventures don't have to cost anything! You don't even need any experiences to have one! To me, an adventure is something you do where the beer you have while talking about it afterwards makes you feel awesome. That's it. Simple, really. If you read more into that definition you'll see that all I'm really talking about is a memory. That's exactly what a memory is!
I've gotten a lot of feedback on the video (all positive), and some people asked me, "Well?? what was the verdict? What was the best pizza?" The short answer is (in my opinion, of course):
99 CENT FRESH PIZZA, on 5th Ave between 32nd and 33rd
To be honest though, it doesn't matter. Because although this adventure had some over-arching goal of investigating the ins and outs of dollar slice pizza and finding the best one, the real main point was to go on an adventure and do something different. I did that and that's all I really wanted.
So...have you ever had a stupid or crazy idea of a thing you wanted to do? Stop stalling and do it. Now. Like, don't even finish this blog-post. Get off your ass and go do it.