Posts
13058
Joined
4/1/2008
Location
Tualatin, OR, USA
Running into someone you know thousands of miles from home, finding out a coworker used to live in your childhood house, or discovering that two people you’ve known for years are related…
What’s the coincidence that made you stop and say, “What are the odds of that?”
From Midwest.
Winter riding in AZ with a buddy. Driving back to the area we where staying after a morning ride. We are talking and sharing stories, like you do with your friends on trips like these.
I shared some stories of how much fun I used to have when I was around 14-15, going to stay at a freinds house in a tiny small town. We raced together. Man we had fun running wild.... Riding our dirt bikes, chasin girls, ditch hoppin trucks.... good clean fun though. It was always so much more fun (still is) to hang with moto brethren that you can relate with! I hadn't thought about these memories in a long time... (over 30 years ago...)It was fun to share.
So my stories of that place get cut short as we are now pulling up to a taco joint for lunch. This is in a NW retirement suburb of Phoenix.
Sit down and are eating. Older couple next to us. The lady comment that she likes my hat (Vice Grip Garage). I was surprised an older lady would notice and say something. (Side note, I LOVED the friendly, laid back vibes of the older people down there. Went to the east hardware store to get a simple screw in mosare for an hour , talking with the people!). Anyways, we start talking, asking where each other are from, and where both from the same state. I ask what town, she says the name of the tiny town (500 people) that I was just talking about for the last hour!
**No, we hadn't spoke about it inside the restaurant... pure coincidence!
What a fun day and lunch that was!
Nothing really crazy . Doorbell rings ,its some guy holding an envelope . I answer the door and says i believe I got your mail. He then says he collects cards and could tell it was some kind of collectable card . I tell him my son collects bryce harper cards. He then tells us that he too collects bryce harper cards and asks about my sons collection. I yell up the stairs to my son Archer and tell him to grab his cards. He asks me if I just called my son Archer . Turns out the people who bought the house across the street from is his daughter and they also have a son named Archer.
While researching and working on my family tree, I discovered that I have a distant cousin who is a very famous singer, and a third cousin who is a WWE wrestler.
Names, please.
The Shop
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Not quite me running into someone, but my brother has randomly called me up about a dozen times from Arizona, Mexico, Vegas, and even Scotland (!) asking me if I know this person or that person. When I tell him that I remember them, he’s usually got them on speaker phone and we end up chatting for a bit. I sometimes ask why he goes around asking everyone he sees if they know me!
My oldest son has always been really shy and has almost always had a pretty small circle of friends. He randomly ran into one of his former college roommates in Shanghai of all places, and a friend from high school at the airport returning from London. I thought that was pretty crazy.
Was vacationing in the Bahamas and talking to a guy next to me and he asks where im from I laugh and say no one knows. Its a town called Florida Ohio and he asks if I live close to a business just down the road from me. Turns out he is from another small town close by
I've run into probably half a dozen people I went to high school with here in Japan. Maybe not too odd considering there were close to 4,000 kids at my school.
My youngest son plays on the volleyball team at the AFB he's stationed at in Texas. He texted me a couple of weeks ago and told me a new player walked into practice wearing a t-shirt from his high school on the Navy base I work at. Turns out she went to a big international school in Tokyo, but had a lot of friends who went to my son's school. He said she's quite a bit older than he is (he's 21), so they didn't know each other, but it was definitely a small world moment since my son's school has less than 1,000 students across four grades every year.
Went to Florida in Feb 2007, I'm from the UK. Saw my Uncle and Aunt a few weeks before we went, and my little cousin who was probably only 10 mentioned her best friend is going to Florida in Feb and we should look out for them. My auntie told her not to be so silly.
We are a few days into the Florida holiday. Stood in Magic Kingdom Disneyland, fairly late to watch the fire works. We notice a family next to us sound English. My Mum is the mega chatty type so of course she starts speaking to them. As the conversation rolls on my Mum is able to find out that its my little Cousins best friend. We all took a picture together and showed my Aunt/Cousin when we got home.
It was pretty mind boggling it happened. Florida is huge, Disneyland is huge, yet we happened to be at the same park, in the same 10 foot area, and then start conversation to find out it was them.
I was on here a couple of years ago telling the story of when we went to the after party of the '92 des Nations and when we got to our car we found a VERY drunk famous Aussie pro Peter Melton (RIP) passed out on our car and then the girl that was with him posted and put up the picture my mate took of them haha
On one of our Laughlin Nevada jetski trips my girlfriend and I were in an elevator going down to have some dinner. And when we stepped in, there was a family and the kids had motocross shirts on.
I've never been shy to say anything. So I said, "nice shirts" and the pretty blond girl said, "you like motocross? Meet Marty Smith." 😳
It was not a well-lit elevator and he had a hat on so I did not instantly know who he was, until Nancy said something. I shook his hand and said something like, I loved watching you race.
If I would have been more quick witted, I should have said something like, Bob Hannah is an a******! 😂
My dads middle name is Archer by mistake. Apparently it was supposed to be Arthur but when the birth certificate came it said Archer. So they just left that way.
I'm selling motorcycles at a multi-line dealership in Virginia in the mid-90s and a guy walks in and I recognize him as a kid I went to high school with in Africa about 13-15 years before. We shot the shit about Kenya and riding motorcycles for a bit. That was pretty wild.
My oldest son and my youngest daughter had friends over to the house one weekend. My son and his friend are probably just about to start 10th grade, my daughter going into 3rd grade.
The boys had been skateboarding all afternoon, and when they got back to the house the whole rest of the family were all sitting on the patio. I knew that both of the guests were adopted from Africa, but as we all started talking they started to realize that they were from places only a few miles from each other. They had never met in the United States as the 4 year difference meant that they never attended the same school, but after that their families started having dinners every few months together and making Ethiopian food for them to enjoy.
I am pretty sure that the young girl also had a biological brother that was a year younger than her that was adopted by the same family so 3 kids from just a few miles apart in Ethiopia met each other because of us sitting out on our patio chatting!
Not my story, my step fathers story. He was in the Philippines during WW2 and after Japan surrendered he was transferred to Japan. After 6 months he got orders to go home. He said as far as you could see was solders and bags. He then saw a guy walking with a distinct limp, he knew right away it was his childhood friend from the same small town(1500) in Ohio.
I am distant relative to Steve Jobs. He was adopted ..his biological mother from my dad’s side of the family..
I built a home in 2001, sold it in 2005. Was with a new co worker last year and we were discussing where we used to live. Turns out he had bought that same house in 2018 and sold it in 2022. What makes this even more odd is that this house was in northern WI (Minocqua) which is 200 miles north of where we live now..
Eddie, Valerie and Wolfie at " RawHide " Arizona....we were tourists they were just there for kicks.
" Hey !! , what's going on " !
Just catching a sunset and dinner...
Cool...
Thats it , We kept on walking lol
We were camping at Gorman one time and this guy rolls into our camp pointing to my trailer and saying it's his and I stole it. I told him no... I bought it from a friend of mine. It was a unique trailer. A 3 rail bike trailer with a box on the front, one side had a leaf spring and the other side had some weird torsion bar deal with a shock absorber. The weird set up broke on one side so the previous owner took it off and welded on a leaf spring. It wasn't some generic trailer by any stretch. I didn't have any paperwork for it so it was going to be my word against his. He was adamant it was his stolen trailer. So he takes off and says he's coming back with a ranger. So he does. The ranger heard his story and then came to question me. Yeah my names Bill I live in San Clemente yada yada, oh you're from San Clemente ? So am I. Oh ok... I said well I don't what this guys deal is but I bought that trailer from a friend of mine named Dean Reynolds, he goes Dean Reynolds ? Mike's brother ? I know those guys !, I remember that trailer ! He said he remembered when they added the leaf on the one side. After that he told the other guy he knew the trailer and it's history and there's no way that's his stolen trailer. The guy wasn't buying it and was looking at us like the ranger was in on some trailer theft ring we had going on LOL. I slept pretty light that night, I fully expected the guy to come back and grab it that night.
Came to the US to race AMA Supermoto in 2003, stayed with a friend in Long Beach, who had a friend who's boss was big into F1,which i worked in at the time, and over the course of the visit we were invited to a BBQ at this guys house . He had a huge collection of memorabilia , and couldnt wait to show me his latest purchase, which was an Eddie Irvine Jaguar Racing Crash helmet.
It had arrived that morning and was out on the table , being looked at by him and a few of his friends, one of which was saying that it could have been a fake/copy and there was no way to really know.
I was introduced to them, and looked at the helmet, and saw a faint pencil line down the centre of the helmet, that i had put on it 3 months earlier, to use to line it up on my machine to scan it to create an more accurate CAD model of it.
We used to go to Vegas a couple of times a year, over about a 20 year period. I would see people I knew, and had not seen in years, at least one trip per year. I grew up in a small town, so what the hell?
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