A Wild Trip to Wisconsin ft. friends

Aakash Vasireddy | Blog Post #1 | Non Fiction Writing | September 9th, 2021

After a week of spending time at a lake house eight hours away with five close friends who make our collective combination of brain cells just over three, I can say that, at the very least, Wisconsin was... interesting. Plentiful highs to complement the lowest of lows, and, of course, all the moments that make up the in-between. Now, naturally I could say, “It was fun, etc. etc.,” and, don’t get me wrong, the experience was tons of fun, but the term interesting not only suits the trip more appropriately, but also generates more… excitement. 

A couple weeks before we took on the exciting but also daunting prospects of our last year at Uni, a few of my closest friends - Ian, Ivan, Elias, Andy, and Ekam - and I took a week-long trip to Andy’s lake house which became filled with funny moments even before we arrived at the house. Pontooning, riding jet skis, watching movies together - these were all things promised when we headed up north to the lake house. However, the actual experiences as they happened that week go so much deeper. Elias did donuts with the pontoon with four of us scrunched on a two-person raft, battling the waves; we had three separate instances where the jet skis messed up, two of which were in the same day; and half of us screamed during the horror movies while the other half sat calmly eating their ice cream.

There are a few reasons why I decided to pick this particular picture to characterize our trip. Out of the countless photos and video clips that I obtained during the trip, this photo was one of the best.

For starters, Ekam decided not to walk about ten yards from the golf cart where he sat comfortably to where we took this selfie, a common theme throughout the trip (no offense Ekam). Next, every single surrounding person essentially dwarfs me because they are all so much taller than me, including Ian who definitely would not be taking the selfie in this group of people. It’s a small detail, but it nonetheless shows how much everyone has grown (and in my case, how we did not grow) throughout our years together. As I write this, the picture also reminds me of another close friend Brooks who came the previous year, but could not come unfortunately due to his soccer practice. He was definitely missed, especially by me who would not have minded a calmer personality in the wake of the craziness.

As you can also notice, I am holding my new GoPro Hero8 in my hand along with the yellow handle which floats in water, a major reassurance for me in case of a potential disaster. The GoPro was a major upgrade from my phone when it came to recording video, and it helped enormously with my newfound vlogging hobby which I used to document and narrate the trip. 

The final takeaway from this photo I will mention is to do with our location and exactly when this photo was taken because the context is everything. We are currently outside the lake house in the front area, the gravel beneath our feet and slides, around three in the afternoon. Now, the reason we were out there instead of out on the lake was because right besides on, just out of frame, is the new jet ski that we accidently sucked rope into while attempting to raft - we were specifically instructed not to lodge anything in the jet ski. Fortunately we got off fine because we just cut the rope free, so I guess all we lost was a couple hours and a ripped up rope. Now, you’d think that would be the end of it, but how wrong you would be because guess what? We got the rope - a different rope this time -  stuck AGAIN. The thoughts going through Andy’s dad’s head as we pathetically towed the $17,000 jet ski back to our dock using tied-together towels that broke apart every twenty seconds… Luckily, we got off fine the next morning when we cut the rope again.

To wrap up, on top of all the things that happened so far and all the other things that happened along the way, the most important takeaway was that during the week, I was able to get closer to every person in this photo (along with the person who is not in this photo) in some way or form, making this an experience I will always remember even after we go off to college.