Watching a College Throwback Film on a Beach at Sunrise, Five Days Into a Paddle
On the last morning of our five-day paddleboard circumnavigation of Lake Tahoe, my best friend Michael Whalen and I sat on the beach at Zephyr Cove, drank coffee, and watched a short film called Strange Rumblings in Shangri-La, something we'd first seen together in college. Watching it again there, five days into a physically demanding trip, meant something different than it had the first time. Here's why.
Why We Watched It That Specific Morning
We had enough battery left on a phone to play something, and Michael suggested it almost casually, a piece of nostalgia to fill a slow morning before the final push back to Ski Run Marina. Neither of us planned it as a meaningful moment going in. It became one anyway, the way small, unplanned choices sometimes do when the conditions around them happen to be right.
What the Film Actually Meant to Us Back in College
Surfing was the center of our friendship in college, the thing that organized our free time and gave us a shared language before either of us had figured out much else about who we were becoming. Watching this specific film together back then wasn't really about the film itself. It was about being young and having endless time for exactly this kind of thing, watching something together, talking about it afterward, with no real urgency pressing on either of us.
Why Watching It Again Felt Different
Fifteen years later, give or take, sitting on a different beach after four days of genuinely hard physical effort, the film carried a different weight. We weren't just watching something nostalgic. We were watching it as two people who had actually gone and done a hard, adventurous thing together again, for the first time in years, which is exactly the kind of thing the film itself was ultimately about. The nostalgia and the present moment collapsed into each other in a way that neither of us fully anticipated.
What This Moment Revealed About the Whole Trip
Looking back, that morning at Zephyr Cove crystallized something about why 72 Miles of Blue mattered beyond the physical accomplishment of seventy-two miles. The trip wasn't really about proving we could paddle around a lake. It was about creating another one of these moments, another shared experience specific to the two of us, at a point in our lives when the easy excuses to spend real, uninterrupted time together had mostly stopped presenting themselves on their own.
Why Small, Unplanned Moments Often Matter More Than the Big Ones
Some of the most significant parts of this entire trip weren't the seventeen-mile push to Banzai Rock or the dangerous swell near Sand Harbor. They were quieter moments like this one, watching an old film on a beach with coffee, that carried more emotional weight than the physically demanding stretches did. If you're planning your own meaningful trip with someone important to you, don't assume the big, difficult moments will automatically be the ones that stick. Leave room for small, unplanned choices like this one, since they often turn out to matter more than anything you scheduled deliberately.
What I'd Tell Someone Planning a Similar Trip With an Old Friend
Bring something that connects back to your shared history, whatever that looks like for the two of you specifically, even if it seems like an unnecessary thing to pack given everything else a multi-day expedition requires. You won't know in advance which moment will end up mattering the way this one did for us, but having the option available, a song, a film, an old inside joke revisited, gives that kind of moment a chance to happen rather than leaving it entirely to chance.
What Michael Remembers Differently About That Morning
When Michael and I have talked about this moment since the trip, I've noticed we each remember slightly different details, him focusing more on specific lines from the film that stuck with him, me focusing more on the quality of light on the beach and how the coffee tasted after four days of camp meals. That divergence doesn't bother either of us. If anything, it's confirmed something about how shared experiences work, two people can be present for the exact same moment and walk away with genuinely different, equally valid versions of what mattered about it.
Why I Chose to Write About This Specific Moment
Of everything that happened across five days and seventy-two miles, I could have chosen to write about the physically demanding crossings, the near loss of half the team, or the celebratory finish line. I chose this quiet morning instead because it represents something I think gets undervalued in how we typically tell adventure stories, the assumption that the biggest, hardest moments are automatically the most meaningful ones. Sometimes the most meaningful moment is just two old friends drinking coffee on a beach, watching something they used to watch together, with nothing more urgent to do than exist in that specific morning for a while.
Why We Didn't Plan This Moment in Advance
Neither Michael nor I brought that specific film with any intention of watching it on this trip. It came up spontaneously, a passing suggestion on a slow morning with nothing particular scheduled. Looking back, I think the fact that it wasn't planned is part of what made it land the way it did. A deliberately scheduled callback to our college years would have carried a different, more self-conscious weight than this did, arriving instead as something that simply happened because the morning had room for it and neither of us felt any pressure to make it mean something in particular.
What I Hope This Story Offers Other People Planning Similar Trips
If there's one thing I hope someone takes from this specific story, it's permission to let a trip include unplanned, unscheduled moments like this one, even when every instinct pushes toward maximizing efficiency and covering as much ground as possible. Some of what makes an expedition meaningful resists being planned in advance, and building enough slack into your schedule for a moment like ours at Zephyr Cove might be one of the more valuable things you can do for the trip's actual emotional payoff.
Before You Close This Tab
What did revisiting an old favorite piece of shared media together on the last morning of the trip actually mean, based on your own experience of similar moments?
Is there something from your own shared history with an old friend that you'd want to bring on a meaningful trip together?
Have you noticed small, unplanned moments carrying more weight on a trip than the big, physically demanding ones?
What would it mean for you to revisit something from years ago with the same person, after going through something difficult together again?
Dalton Johnson is a photographer, filmmaker, and brand storyteller based in South Lake Tahoe, California. Over the past decade he has worked with brands including Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, and Ford Bronco across all seven continents. He is the creator of the Follow The Journey distribution framework, which has produced over one million organic views per 30-day cycle without paid media. His work includes two published books, an award-winning documentary that aired on PBS, and more than fifty commercial spots directed. He runs Stories by Dalton on Substack, read by more than 34,000 subscribers.