What kind of stories do I want to collect?

Cross country is wonderful, if you do it for the right reasons. Unfortunately, it's all too easy to do it for the wrong reasons. It's easy, all too easy, to fall victim to what I call the 'disease of numbers'; to forget the flight itself and focus only on numbers in a logbook, competition results, or the forms and barograph trace you're hoping to submit to the FAI. This is fine, if numbers are REALLY what you want, but I suspect that most pilots want something else. I suspect that most pilots measure themselves by the distance they fly because it's the only measure that our culture recognizes. Our media, our clubs, and our peers pay attention to distances, times, competition results, and records because these things are easy to measure. Then, in the absence of any alternative, we secretly dream about distances, times, competition results, records.
I want to propose an alternative to the 'disease of numbers'. This alternative can be summed up in one word: