Types of Fun
Because Not All Fun is Created Equal
December 2024
Table of Contents
Wait, Why are There "Types" of Fun?
Trust me, you’ve experienced this, even if you didn’t have the language to explain it.
It happens like this… you spend two weeks in Costa Rica with your new boyfriend… Along the way, your luggage gets lost, your rental car gets a flat tire, you accidentally order octopus instead of clams off the Spanish menu (and you definitely DO NOT eat octopus…), and a taxi boat drops you off on a seemingly deserted island in the dark with no dock, no lights, no trail, and no people around to ask for help…
And yet! When you get back home, you tell all your friends that you had "so much fun!"
Or, on a much smaller scale, you find yourself on a challenging rock climb… You’ve been on your toes so long that your calf muscles are starting to twitch, it seems like the sharp rock slicing into your finger pads is actually the only reason you haven’t fallen off yet, and there is a distinctive odor coming from your arm pits that’s different than your regular BO. It’s the smell of fear. In this moment, you hate this sport, hate the person belaying you and the audience below, and probably hate yourself for putting yourself in this situation. You likely want to cry, give up, or maybe even throw up. Giving up sounds like the better of those options, so you decide that you will make some desperate move that will look cool to the people below but isn’t actually going to work. You’ll take your fall and then get gently lowered down to Terra Firma where you belong.
Except for then that desperate move actually DOES work and you find yourself able to complete the route.
Then your face looks like this when you return to the bottom…
Looks like "fun" to me, despite the tears and bile mere moments earlier...
So no, not all fun is created equal. Some “fun” is easier than others while some you have to work for. Some “fun” appears funNER with the appropriate passage of time. So I’ve created this guide to help you put words to those conflicting feelings you’ve been having out on the trail or as you travel.
A quick Google search will reveal other articles that list 3 different categories, but this is the only place where you can find all 6 of the ACTUAL Types of Fun...
Type 1- "Easy" Fun
This is the type of fun you imagine as you are planning your vacation or packing for a day in the great outdoors. It’s the kind of fun you experience when absolutely nothing goes wrong.
Some things you might find yourself saying in this stage are…
“We couldn’t get better weather!”
“This is amazing/beautiful!”
“No, I don’t need a break. I can keep going.”
“This is the BEST day!”
Type 1 Fun can USUALLY found at the beginning of an outing or a trip because, so far, everything is going according to plan.
The cover photo of this article was taken on the first day (honestly the first hour) of my thru-hike of the Colorado Trail. Definitely Type 1 Fun! All the planning and training was finally coming to fruition! I was uninjured, un-rained-on, and with a full belly of real food powering me on. John was there escorting me in for the first few miles and I was giddy with the excitement of what was to come. Days of thunder storms, aching joints, dehydrated meals, and loneliness led to fluctuating levels of fun at other points along the way.
But I’ve been blessed with whole days/weekends that just ooze Type 1 Fun the whole time. One day that comes to mind occurred in my first visit to Yellowstone National Park. I was able to fulfill a lifelong dream to see Old Faithful and rainy weather only enhanced my fun by keeping the crowds at bay. The experience resulted in one of my favorite photos of myself because I just look so darn happy.
Type 2- Fun that Required Struggle
John would say that all adventures with Rae spend some time in the Type 2 realm. He’s probably right. As I write this, I realize that Type 2 Fun is probably my favorite type of fun. At the very least, I would say that Type 2 Fun is the type of fun WORTH having. Because you might find yourself saying…
“That was soooo WORTH it!”
This type of fun is defined as being not-so-fun in the moment, but considered fun afterwards.
USUALLY, like the climbing example above, "afterwards" means right away when the experience is over.
Something else you might hear coming out of your mouth is…
“I’m glad I did it, but I will NEVER do that again!”
Which is exactly what I said after completing a summit of Long’s Peak. The photo below was taken in my naive Type 1 phase before we crossed the boulder field, slid on slick rock at an 80 degree angle, encountered a fellow climber awaiting medical support after his slide resulted in broken ribs, got rained on, and finished waaaaay after dark with absolutely no energy left.
USUALLY, photos of people are not taken during the Type 2 phase as the person will NOT be smiling.
An important thing to note about Type 2 Fun is that it is INCREDIBLY common and COMPLETELY normal. I would even go out on a limb to say that Type 2 Fun is the kind that most of us are actually having on any type of adventure. Or maybe it’s the reaching of Type 2 Fun that MAKES an outing into an adventure.
When on a backpacking trip with some fellow moms, it was almost a relief to finally find our Type 2 moment on the third day when multiple river crossings resulted in delays that brought us into camp well after dark. We all knew it would happen at SOME POINT on the trip, and it was nice to have reached and overcome that point.
See? Not smiling...
Type 3- Fun that Makes a Good Story
While John defines an adventure with Rae as “Type 2 Fun”, I would define an outing with my dad as “Type 3”.
I can EASILY think of 6 times when that man has almost killed me.
Not that death is required in Type 3 Fun… Instead it is defined as an experience that was NOT fun during and NOT fun looking back on it, but at least makes a good story to tell.
As an example, he and I were backpacking in to Saint Louis Lake with lots of gear that would allow us to paddle around in the water during our multi-day stay.
One might say we were actually a bit OVER loaded which is probably why something as simple as my misplaced step resulted in a broken ankle not too far from our destination. Hiking the 5 miles downhill back to the trail head in normal conditions would have only taken us a couple of hours. But I wasn’t able to put weight on my injured leg which slowed our pace to a crawl.
I should probably pause here to mention that when I say there have been 6 times my dad has almost killed me, I could probably more accurately say there have been 6 times my dad has saved my life.
This was one of them. In fact, my Type 3 experience could very well have been a Type 1 for him. I could practically feel his excitement as he got to try out some emergency rescue operations. He first attempted to pull me back down the trail on a travois rigged up with two slender logs and a tarp. It worked for a while, but the rocky trail did its damage and the tarp ripped out from under me.
Next, he fashioned me a pair of crutches from the travois logs, wrapping the tops with some padding so I didn’t impale my armpits. (You can see one of them in the image below.) Of course it had started raining by the time this picture was taken. We were stopping to rest my arms and refuel, as it was taking HOURS for me to limp my way back down.
Again, NORMALLY pictures aren't taken in the Type 3 phase, but I still suspect that my dad was actually closer to the Type 1 area of the spectrum and therefore felt no need to refrain from documenting my misery.
Even his dog, Voodoo, looks unhappy.
As darkness fell and the temperature continued to drop, we began to shiver uncontrollably in our wet clothes. Thankfully, it was at about this time that we reached the trailhead where we had stashed our bikes. The Forest Service road to the trailhead was closed behind a gate, so we had biked in a few miles to the actual trailhead itself. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing we were “out of the woods” and could just coast down the dirt road to the car.
But even that was not to be...
Trees had fallen over the road during the storm. So now I had to stop several times to lift my bike up and over the tangled branches… with a broken ankle. By the time we made it back to the car and then back to the house, my lips were blue and I couldn’t stop shivering. My mom put me in a hot bath and had me drink hot chocolate to try to regulate my body temperature.
Certainly not any fun whatsoever... but as you can see... it makes a good story...
Perhaps another element of a Type 3 experience is the bond developed among the people involved in the tale. You have overcome a hardship together and now get to laugh a little about it in the future.
Type 4- Fun You Don't Want to Talk About
Here is where the other online articles will start to leave you hanging. Perhaps because some people don’t think that this type of fun could be called “fun” at all. I argue that it’s all dependent on your perspective.
After all, you set out on this trip or adventure planning to have fun... maybe things didn't go as planned and this is what you got instead.
I would say that this type of fun comes into play when the experience is a Type 3, but perhaps it doesn’t make a good story because there are parts of it that are inappropriate to share with others or involve some sort of embarrassment on your part.
One example that John and I share comes from our trip to New Zealand. We drove hours and hours to arrive at the very specific location of the Mt. John Observatory for a Dark Sky stargazing tour event. We checked into our Airbnb which was really a type of Tuff Shed building with walls made of plywood. Unimpressed with our accommodations, we thought we would just go to sleep early to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the observatory. I reached for my phone to set an alarm.
“Do you want me to set one, too?” John asks.
On edge after a long day of driving and our shady shack to sleep in, I snapped, “I’ve got it!”
Turns out I did not.
I set my alarm for PM, instead of AM. We awoke in the middle of the night, but well after our tour had begun without us. In our despair, we walked out in the driveway of our rental to see what we could see on our own.
There was the Southern Cross shining brightly, but not bright enough to dispel our disappointment... and my shame.
Type 5- Fun That Haunts Your Nightmares
This is perhaps the hardest Type of Fun to articulate. Perhaps the best way to explain it is to say that it is an experience so truly awful, that your mind actually blocks it from your memory in order to protect you. Perhaps you would never adventure again otherwise.
Thankfully, it is pretty rare in my experience. There is only one documented reference to Type 5 Fun in my life.
It was during a solo road trip in the Pacific Northwest. I was otherwise thoroughly enjoying a few days in Redwoods National Park. I visited Fern Canyon and then tried to proceed further on the Coastal Trail to see Gold Dust Falls and apparently it didn’t go so well. I say “apparently” because I actually have ZERO memory of this, but in my travel journal I wrote, “tried and failed 3 times to get to Gold Dust Falls! I don’t want to talk about it. Type 5 Fun.”
Apparently this fun that haunts your nightmares creates those moments when you wake up in a cold sweat, but don’t actually remember why.
There is a river crossing that I would have had to navigate in order to make it to the falls. My assumption is that the river was too rough to cross and I must have tried (and fell) 3 times before I gave up. I really am just confused why I don’t remember this AT ALL!
As with Type 4 Fun, there are no photos because no one wants to remember these for posterity.
Type O- The "Original" Fun
I couldn’t let this article end on such a depressing note, so I saved this one for last. And actually, it’s the Type of Fun that has most recently come into my life, at least the words to explain it.
It was on that same Mama Bears Backpacking Trip mentioned above in Type 2 that my friend BJ coined the phrase “Type O Fun”. This particular group of adventurous women had plenty of stories to share spanning the gamut of Types of Fun. And while we each had experienced possibly the full spectrum of fun on this trip with each other, we struggled to come up with a term that could describe the totality of the experience.
BJ put it correctly when she said this was Type O Fun…
"It's the type of fun that is fun in the moment, but only gets even BETTER with time!"
I have been blessed to experience many of these Type O moments in my life. Some are big moments that screamed “FUN!” across space and time. Others were small and could easily have been overlooked. Instead their whisper echoed just as importantly in my life.
Many of them I owe to my family.
In Reflection
So there you have it, labels for all the conflicting feelings that happen within a single day, sometimes within a single hour, out on an adventure.
Remember that your fun is YOUR fun! It’s okay if it’s not a Type 1 fun all day, every day. But if you find yourself getting stuck in a Type 3 or worse kind of rut, don’t forget that a shift in perspective can shift what you are experiencing. Sometimes you just have to laugh when it rains or poke fun at yourself when you arrive at the crag and you’ve forgotten the climbing rope at home.
And don’t forget to communicate how you are feeling with adventure buddies. Maybe they can help shift a Type 2 moment by proposing a break and a snack. Then, once you stop, you notice a species of bird that you have never seen before and a smile comes to your lips.
I am writing this article in the last few days of the 2024 year. It is tempting to wish you a 2025 full of only Type O kind of fun… but variety is the spice of life… Instead I will wish all my readers the perfect mixture of all the types of fun.
May you have some that is easy, some that you earn through sweat and fear, some great stories, and some learning experiences in the New Year.
I’ve had a five types of fun with your mom lol.