  We study the behaviour of quasi-geodesics in Out(F_n). Given an element f in
Out(F_n) there are several natural paths connecting the origin to f in
Out(F_n); for example, paths associated to sequences of Stallings folds and
paths induced by the shadow of greedy folding paths in Outer Space. We show
that none of these paths is, in general, a quasi-geodesic in Out(F_n). In fact,
in contrast with the mapping class group setting, we construct examples where
any quasi-geodesic in Out(F_n) connecting f to the origin will have to
back-track in some free factor of F_n.
