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LUNCH BREAK READS

FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2026

We made it to Friday!

A comment on Reddit reminded me of some of my favorite adventure-related longform stories from the past few years. I spent some time revisiting them yesterday, and decided they would be great stories to close out the week. I hope you enjoy them!

Enjoy your lunch.

Brett

p.s. Are you interested in receiving the occasional weekend e-mail with the best stories of the month and other interesting stories to read?

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No thanks!

01 • ~30 Minute Read

Outside Magazine

Sean Williams

Stone Skipping Is a Lost Art. Kurt Steiner Wants the World to Find It.

Kurt Steiner holds the world stone-skipping record: 88 confirmed skips on a single throw, a number physicists called impossible. He lives alone in a handbuilt cabin deep in the Pennsylvania wilderness, no shower, no central heat, surviving on food stamps and seasonal produce. Competitions have brought him ESPN coverage and a documentary. They've also left him broke and divorced, and when his great rival died of cancer in 2017, the sport lost its center of gravity. Stone skipping is the one thing that quiets his mind, and after 22 years, he's still not sure he chose it.

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02 • ~24 Minute Read

Backpacker

Casey Lyons

Gone Hiking

Andy Lyon was 23 with a 10 percent shot at surviving five years when he decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, all 2,655 miles, with no long-distance hiking experience and a body full of cancer. His family objected. He went anyway, alone, convinced that pushing himself into real hardship was the only way to fight on his own terms. He made it nearly to the end before a tumor pressing on his spine dropped him. What saved him, partly, was luck: the tiny Washington hospital where he collapsed happened to stock an experimental drug almost nobody had yet. He walked the last miles himself and died ten months after finishing.

Read the Story →

03 • ~35 Minute Read

Dagbladet

Anders Fjellberg

The Wetsuitman

Two bodies washed ashore in Europe wearing identical wetsuits bought the same October evening at a Decathlon in Calais. Cash purchase, no footage, no match in any missing persons database. Norwegian and Dutch investigators eventually traced them to two young Syrian men, Mouaz Al Balkhi and Shadi Omar Kataf, both trying to reach England by swimming the Channel. Mouaz texted his uncle that afternoon: "I can see England." His uncle told him not to try. Hours later, both men were gone. Their families spent months searching before DNA confirmed what had happened. No official system had ever flagged either of them missing.

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04 • ~13 Minute Read

Aeon	Michael Crawley

The Ethiopian running secret

Athletes from Ethiopia and neighboring East African nations hold 69 of the top 100 spots in the men's world marathon rankings, and their training looks nothing like what Western sports science recommends. Ethiopian runners treat energy as something shared between people, train in groups by feel, and have been known to report a GPS watch as broken mid-run to avoid being governed by it. Western elites, meanwhile, pause between intervals to prick their fingers and read blood lactate levels. Social anthropologist Michael Crawley and sports physiologist Geoff Burns spent years studying both systems and concluded that each is genuinely scientific, and that each, pushed to its extreme, breaks itself.

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The doctors gave him two years. He spent them hiking to Canada.

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