The day started off in madness.
I went for a run, totally forgetting that the Bath Half was today, so as I popped out from the canal and onto the road, I was thoroughly surprised to see throngs of people standing in lines that literally went on for ten streets, all clutching their numbers. After breakfast, Sophia and I headed out to the train station to catch the 11:25 train to Wales. Unfortunately, we forgot about the marathoners. We spent the next ten minutes shouting things like “another banana!” and “look, a clownface!” and “Yeah, man-in-dog-suit!” to the various costumed runners. There were also an awful lot of people running for charities, which meant they had to wear really strange outfits. Like the breast cancer runners—they each literally wore a single giant stuffed boob strapped to their chest (or back…). It was strange.
After about an hour and a half, we arrived in Cardiff. It wasn’t a terribly huge, impressive place—in fact, it was rather modern, even plain. At least, until we got to the Castle. The Castle was easily my favorite part of the whole trip. It was so interesting! The outer wall was impressive enough, but inside it, it was just gorgeous. There was a huge open space, all green and wonderful. Plopped in the middle was a still-standing medieval castle. Off to the side, there was the more modern castle that the Victorians used to live in.
The whole thing started off with a bizarre movie set in modern Cardiff but with “history coming to life” through the centuries. The modern girl was running around fighting football players turned to medieval soldiers…odd.
The Victorian castle was pretty nice, mostly because it was really pretty, without being over the top. The rooms were done up nicely, there was an octagon stairwell (that we couldn’t use), the dining room had a huge table, there was suits of armor in the halls. My favorite was the library though. So many books, of course I’d like it! It was decorated with hand-painted banners bearing the names of the duke’s favorite writers. The only ones I can still remember are Aristotle, Pluto, and Dante. I guess he was a fan of the classics.
The medieval part of the castle was really great though. You had to climb a host of stairs to get to the top, but the view was worth it! Cardiff may not be the most glamorous city, but it certainly looked nice from above. The stairs got steeper and steeper as you go through the stone rooms. They weren’t much to look at now, but Hugh, the audio-guide man, told me all about the lives of the families that used to live in these tiny rooms with walls as thick as a bank vault. He also informed me to look at the medieval graffiti and the small hole in the lowest apartment that was apparently the toilet.
After a delicious little lunch at a local sandwich shop, we headed over to the National Museum via the shopping district. The shopping district was modern and placeless, but the National History Museum, alongside the courts and the town hall, were very grand and gorgeous. We went inside the National Museum—but we couldn’t get through it all! Cardiff isn’t big enough to have separate museums; so there was a whole art section, which included neo-classical, impressionism, sculpture, modernism, and even an exhibit on Buddhism, which I loved because it made me think about my (hopefully) future Himalayan trek next summer. I was excited about seeing some Van Gough pieces there until I leaned in closer and saw that had painted that same view 37 times, so its no wonder they have one. But the museum closed at 4:45, and after spending an hour and a half upstairs, we realized that we only had 20 minutes to see the science stuff. Sometimes that gets really boring, and it was at first until we turned the corner and entered the dinosaur room. I wish I got to see more of it, but the guards were literally herding us through the halls to get us out and the only exhibit that I truly remember seeing clearly was the one on prehistoric bugs—including a clump of giant cockroaches and a gigantic spider. I was so traumatized that my heart didn’t slow down until after we sped through the rest of the dinosaurs, went outside, through the reception of an Indian wedding and were back in the center of town.
So begins the bad part. Kristyn really wanted to see a hockey game, so we bought tickets to see the Cardiff Devils—which is way more exciting than it sounds. It was pretty cool, even though I know nothing about hockey. It’s a pretty fast-paced game and really easy to lose track of the puck. The Devils won, which was good. The Devils fans also liked to do this thing where they took off their shoes and held them in the air whenever something happened (I was never clear exactly what that something entailed…) But the game itself was fine. Rowdy, loud, obnoxious (then again, the team mascot is named Lucy Furr, so what can you expect?), but fine. It was what happened before we arrived that was the bad part.
We had to take a bus there. And the bus, being a typical city bus, took us all over the place, meandering here and there through first nice, and then slowly grittier and grimier neighborhoods as the bus slowly ambled outside of the city. We came up to a three-way intersection and saw a stopped red car off to the right side (i.e. the wrong side of the road here) and, thinking it hit another car, I looked at my seatmate and said, ‘Oh, that sucks.’ The bus slowed down to swerve around the car and as we passed it, we realized there was a man lying face-down in the road, halfway under the red car. His jeans were torn, exposing the flesh underneath, and his arms were above his head as if he had tried to brace himself before he fell. By his side, about two meters away, lay a bent, damaged motorcycle. He wasn’t moving, and a little circle of people had gathered around him in a semicircle.
On the bus, there was a collective gasp as people stared at the man, unable to look away. There weren’t any police there, no ambulances or stretchers or people of any kind who were helping him. No one was doing anything. And we just sat there on the bus, watching the scene outside. The three rowdy men in the back actually stopped the bus and jumped off to ‘see what was happening’…pretty sick, right? And then the bus turned the corner and he was gone.
Yet I couldn’t get him out of my mind. That picture of the man, just lying there, unmoving, with the group just standing around him was burned into my eyes. It really disturbed me, that feeling of helplessness; that I didn’t—couldn’t—do anything. For days, I couldn’t get the image out of my mind, instead, sharing it with anyone who’d listen. What did they tell his family? What was he doing there anyway? Why didn’t the two drivers pay better attention? Why do people ride motorcycles anyway, as dangerous as they are? I’m pretty sure that this experience, this image, as fleeting as it was, changed something in me. I’m not sure what, but things suddenly seemed a little different, life suddenly seemed a more important.
Thanks to some Google research, I later found out he died right there on the scene. When that bus drove by, when I looked out that window—he was already gone.
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