Love of fun and food and great conversation.

A willingness to come uptown.

Humor and honesty. And, like me, they always think the unnecessary last drink is a great idea.

I personally wouldn’t be, if I could possibly help it, involved in a serious pursuit in which there weren’t a few people who could laugh a bit about it. Because I can remember many occasions — maybe we’ve been stuck in a tent or we’re up on the side of a mountain, this heavy snow, avalanches all around us, and we can’t get up and we can’t get down, but we just sat in the tent and reminisced about occasions and days gone by and laughed about old jokes and all the rest of it. Then you really have a very good time, even though you’re sort of poised there between disaster both up and down. People who can make you laugh under those circumstances are very valuable indeed in an expedition.

People taking themselves seriously.

Generally? Hurting someone’s feelings. Specifically? Being kidnapped while on vacation.

Falling asleep watching a movie on a sofa because I drank too much wine at dinner, my head resting on the thigh of a loved one, who will later explain what happened.

Sunday mornings with my parents when I visited from college.