The best travel stories usually begin with failure. This is inconvenient. We spend enormous amounts of time trying to prevent exactly this. Reservations. Confirmations. Backups. Insurance. Weather apps. Maps. Schedules. Then years later, nobody tells the story about the trip where every reservation worked. We remember the disaster. The storm. The missed flight. The hotel [...]

We know too much about each other. This is a strange problem. For most of history, if you met an attractive stranger, you had questions. Where does he live? What does he do? Who are his friends? What does he like? Where has he traveled? What kind of person is he? Now, depending on the [...]

I am a terrible eavesdropper. Not maliciously. Curiously. There is a difference. Probably. Restaurants are full of fragments. A sentence from the next table. A look between two people. A hand gesture. A silence. And suddenly I have invented an entire biography. Are they married? Having an affair? Closing a deal? Breaking up? Celebrating something? [...]