When I was younger, I slept over at one of my friend house quite often. His name was Nick.
He had two massive sheep dogs with wild hair. They looked like small bears except grey and white. Nick had hair a lot like the dogs, it was all over the place.
Nick’s dad, a scientist. His mom, a banker. He had one older brother. Nick and his family (minus the dogs) would take trips all over the country and world. The Great Wall of China one moment and somewhere in California the next.
One thing I’ll always remember is waking up on a Saturday morning. Nick and I would run upstairs from the depths of the basement where we had played WWE video games the night prior.
When we got upstairs there would be a white bag sitting on the kitchen table. In the bag, chocolate donuts. We’d sit on stools at the kitchen table and enjoy our classic “breakfast”.
Often times, Nick’s father would have some form of comedic-news, like the Colbert Report, playing on the computer behind us. We’d turn around to look and the computer would be asleep, just playing the audio.
As the computer slept, it would shuffle through a gallery of images that had been stored on the computer.
Many times, the images would be from past trips they had taken to foreign lands. Swimming in one place and hiking in the next. Always adventurous.
There was nothing particularly special about these images, at least to me. They were just your typical “point and shoot” type of photos to capture the moment.
But to Nick and his family, I’m sure they meant much more. They told a story.
Earlier this year, we took a trip to Wales to tell our own stories for a documentary we are producing.
Our program, Ball State Sports Link, has partnered with Cardiff Met University. It’s a partnership years in the making, forged by Chris Taylor and Joe Towns. A brilliant power play by both programs and universities.
On this trip, we had about three minutes that weren’t accounted for. This meant we were running around pretty much the entire trip, which was fantastic.
One moment we would be interviewing an athlete and the next we would be hiking a mountain or touring a rugby stadium. Lots of bus rides, Ubers and walks. You’ll be seeing a lot of what we experienced in the upcoming documentary and features our team is producing.
One moment that stands out in particular was when we visited Dunraven Bay. This was probably my favorite part of the entire trip. The location is famous in movies and television, especially as a backdrop in the popular series, Dr. Who.
As we pulled up and stepped off of the bus, the view was breathtaking. It was one of those places where every time you looked up you were amazed by the scenery.
As we walked down the road, more and more of the landscape was revealed. The group began to split up and go on their own mini adventures. Brad Dailey, Dylan Thompson and I decided to stick together and explore.
After we had gone off on our own for a bit, one of us looked at our phone. There was a message from Kartman or CT saying that everyone was to meet up to visit a castle up the hill. The message had been sent out 15 minutes prior.
Brad, Dylan and I looked at each other and thought: “well, we’re already late and it would take us at least 10 minutes to make our way up there.”
So, we decided to keep exploring on our own.
In some parts of the bay, there was water streaming through the rocks. This turned the rocks into miniature islands of hope from wet socks.
We would attempt to hop from rock to rock without falling in the water. It worked for a while but eventually I think we all fell in.
From there, we ended up having to barricade ourselves under an overhanging rock from the sudden downpour of rain. We hung out for a bit and chatted with each other. That was it. Though it was a small moment within the trip, it was just one of those moments that I’ll always remember.
I’m glad we decided to go out and explore in our own little group. I’m also glad that we had cameras to capture the moments.
Just like Nick’s photos, there is nothing particularly special about these images from others’ perspective. But they’re special to the people who are in them.
We replaced the chocolate donuts with Welsh cakes and now we have our own images to play on our computers with our own stories to tell.