Eric Hansen heads up Pearl Street, cutting through the happy hour crowds with his daypack and cigarette and old-school Ray-Bans. Earlier we'd agreed to meet for an interview in Trident Café, but the hot afternoon is calling for beer. We walk next door to the West End Tavern where the girl tending bar sees Eric then runs out and gives him a hug.

“When did you get back?” she asks.

“Just a few days ago,” he says with a huge smile.

A regular contributor to Outside, Men’s Journal, Skiing, Wired, and Orion, Eric makes his living traveling and writing about it. His work is unique: in a market that centers on über-athletes and high adventure, Eric's stories tend toward the average guy and epic misadventure. Some of his best-known pieces in Outside include trying to descend Mt. Kilimanjaro on mini-skis, searching for “the worlds most dangerous bar” in Colombia, and swimming across Walden Pond on inflatable pool toys while drinking and smoking.

As we talk it feels less like an interview and more like a conversation between friends. Eric punctuates nearly every answer with a big laugh.

So where were you in Italy? What were you doing there?

“We were in Cinque Terre, east of Genoa. The mission was to buy a fishing boat—and do like the locals and row from village to village with my buddy from Milwaukee. It turned into a helacious trip. We didn’t find a boat until the second to last day—and so we spent the first seven days going door to door, leaving little notes on the boats that were all over the beaches. We’d walk up to people and ask them for boats. We got nowhere. We asked everyone from the fucking lifeguard on the beach to the old lady sitting on the stairs. It was our own damn fault in a way because number one: it was a national park—which we could’ve known before—and they have strict regulations on who can row what boats. And two: there’s no fucking fishermen left. All the boats are owned by vacationers from Milan. So when we finally did find a boat we rowed out to sea and couldn’t find two other boats on the water. It isn’t part of their culture anymore.

So how are you going to write about that?

We’re going to twist it into a story about what makes a good travel partner. [laughter]

Where were you before Italy?

I went to the Stanford University Human Pain research lab, this little room tucked away in the far lonely corner of the med school where they do all this cutting edge kind of ethically dubious pain research. The sunburned me, poked me with needles, put my hand in a freezing bath, burned me on the tender skin of the inner forearm.

Damn.  Read More...