A series of coincidences

In My Humble Opinion
1

There are a lot of British aircraft mentioned in the favourite bomber thread. This reminded me of the Vickers VC-10K. (A tanker, not a bomber.)

It was in the late-1980s or early-1990s that the g/f and I went to the airshow at NAS Miramar. She’d been to England and had made friends with some members of 101 Squadron. As we walked I saw a distinctive vertical stabiliser rising above the ramp and pointed it out to her. We went over to the aircraft, and it turns out that it was a VC-10K from 101 Squadron. And she knew the crew members. We were invited to come aboard after the show.

Turns out that this aircrew were not supposed to be at Miramar. They were supposed to go to another airshow (perhaps not on the same weekend) and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to attend Miramar. As we chatted with a crewman (on first-meeting, not when we came back for the party), an older man excitedly dragged his wife toward the cordon. He was from South Africa and flew VC-10s in commercial service for South African AIrlines.

We went to the tanker after the air show was over and climbed aboard. A familiar looking girl boarded. I went up to her and said, ‘Ridley Mission Control?’ She said, ‘Yellow Porsche?’ Yup, we worked in the same building at Edwards. She hadn’t planned on attending the airshow, but she had friends who were going and she decided to ride along.

Then the ex-SAA pilot and his wife came aboard. He looked at the registration that was posted near the cockpit. Not only had he flown VC-10s in commercial service, but he had flown that very aircraft when it was a passenger plane!

So:
[ul][li]G/F had to have been to England and had to have befriended an aircrew from 101 Squadron[/li][li]That very aircrew had to be selected to tour their aircraft at airshows in the U.S.[/li][li]The aircrew had to have made a ‘snap decision’ to attend Miramar[/li][li]G/F and I had to decide to attend Miramar (Okay, that’s not much of a stretch. We loved to go to airshows, and Miramar is a ‘must see’.)[/li][li]The SAA pilot had to be, well, an SAA pilot[/li][li]The SAA pilot had to have immigrated to the U.S., settle in San Diego, and attend the airshow where 101 Squadron decided to show up at the last minute[/li][li]The RAF had to obtain that VC-10 from SAA, convert it to a tanker, assign it to 101 Squadron, who my g/f knew, send it to the U.S., and make an appearance at an airshow they weren’t originally scheduled to attend in order to be at a place where my g/f and the SAA pilot would both be[/li][li]I had to work at Ridley with the girl in the same building, and she had to decide to drive 200 miles with her friends on a lark.[/ul][/li]That was a fun series of coincidences. And the gin & tonics and screwdrivers in the water/tea/coffee containers were nice too.

Let’s hear your conicidences.

2

I ran into a friend from many years ago.

In the middle of Times Square in New York City.
At the time, I was living in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was living in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t a big holiday, like the Christmas season, when a lot of people tend to head to the city – it was a pretty nondescript summer day.
So:

1.)I was in NYC, far away from Utah

2.) She was in NYC, far away from Washington

3.) we both decided to go to the same place, Times Square

4.) we both decided to go there at the same time

5.) We were in the same part of the square (I’ve been unable to find people there I was supposed to be meeting, at a specified time and place)

6.) We both actually saw each other.

I’m pretty amazed. I haven’t seen her since.

Even more amazing, it’s happened to me again – I ran into an acquaitance with whom I used to work when I was in San Antonio, Texas. Neither of us had been there before. I was there on a business trip. She was on vacation. Even granted that out-of-towners gravitate towards the FRiverwalk, that doesn’t by any means guarantee that they’ll meet – the RiverWalk is bigger than Times Square.

3

I bumped into a childhood friend from the little Ohio River town where I grew up, about twenty years later, on the sidewalk outside Grand Central Station. I was visiting NYC; he was working there.

My parents were once at a dinner party at a friend’s house with a dozen or so people, some of whom, such as Leo and Bob, didn’t know each other before that night. They got to talking about their childhoods.

Said Leo, “I grew up in [town name],” five or six states away from where the dinner party was.

Replied Bob, “Hey, I did too! Where did you live?”

“On the East Side.”

“Me too! What street?”

It turned out that not only did they spend time (10+ years apart) on the same street, but in the same house, and each had the same bedroom. Weird.

4

Another meeting –
While canoeing on the Concord River in Massachusetts, I ran into someone I knew from Utah. I was living in Massachusetts at the time, so I’m not as impressed by this one, but in another sense — we were both well off the beaten path. Off the path, literally, in fact. It takes effort and planning to be on the river in a canoe. What are the odds we’d both be doig it on the same river at the same time, 2000 miles from the other guy’s house?

5

My favorite coincidence involves the guy I dated this time last year:

We met through OKCupid: as we were getting to know each other via e-mail, we discovered that we were born less than 2 weeks apart … in the same hospital … in Monterey, California! 3000 miles away! His father was in the Navy and mine was in the Army, and they were both at the Defense Language Institute (DLI). Both of the military hospitals happened to be full, so we were born at the only civilian hospital in the area. Our relationship was short-lived and we have not kept in touch, but sometimes I still can’t get over that we managed to meet on the other side of the country 33 years after being born in the same hospital just weeks apart. :slight_smile:

6

A minor coincidence: I worked with a guy in the late-'80s to 1992. I showed up at a Dopefest/FathomFest at Universal studios to find out that my old coworker was Cowboy Greg, a Doper.

7

I was in Liberal, KS last summer on a San Diego-to-Chicago roadtrip. After checking out the Mid America Air Museum, I cruised over to “Dorothy’s House”; the Wizard of Oz-inspired tourist trap, where appropriately-dressed local girls lead you through a series of rooms with recreated scenes from the movie.

The only other people on my tour was a family from San Diego They had been to Chicago on vacation, and were on their way home.

8

One time I dropped a cell phone and the screen stopped working, so a few days later i picked it up to throw it out, dropped it again, and the screen worked!

9

I met someone I knew once but hadn’t seen for over 2 years on top of the eiffel tower, at sunset. We’re both from Australia.

10

I was in my friend’s wedding a few years ago. At one point, another groomsman and I had to go get our tuxes refittited before the ceremony, and the other groomsman brought a friend who wasn’t in the wedding.

The wedding was in a small town somewhere in between my hometown and Chicago. The other groomsman’s buddy lived in Chicago, so we started talking about our experiences there, since I had moved out a few years before. I asked where he lived. Lakeview? Me too. Where at? Off Broadway? Yeah, me too. What intersection? Wellington? No shit, me too! What addres? HOLY SHIT, that was my building! And it wasn’t a huge skyscraper… it was 4 levels, maybe 60 units total.

There ya go. I met a complete stranger in a strange small town I’d never been to who lived in the same building I lived at in a huge city. Biggest coincidence I ever ran into personally.

11

Coincidentally, I had a similar experience. :eek:

I was tubing down the Mohican River in Ohio with some of my family and we were drifting languidly by one of the many campgrounds along the Black Fork branch of the river, when I saw a man at his campsite on the riverbank grilling up some dinner. It smelled great and just on a lark and a whim I yelled, “Smells good, what’s for dinner!?”. His back was to us, and he slowly turned and replied, “BBQ Ribs, want some!?”. That’s when I recognized him as my Chemistry teacher from High School! I hadn’t seen him in more than a decade and he didn’t recognize me at all. I said, “You’re Mr. Chemistry Teacher From High School, aren’t you?”. He said, “Yes, how did you know that?”. I went on to tell him who I was and parted adieu as I drifted slowly around the bend and on down the river. We were both about a hundred miles plus from home.

The funny thing is, very shortly after that I kept seeing him pop up on my local PBS station hosting a local talk show and appearing in PSA’s and what not. Looks like he got out of teaching, got his doctorate in Communications (or some related field-- not sure exactly) and became the Program Director for the PBS station.

Still kind of freaks me out.

12

This one was truly strange in the way that twisty plot details are revealed at the end of a suspense movie. My wife and I were living in Boston in 2001 when I decided it was time to buy a house. I had very specific requirements and took over the house finding tasks. I searched the internet with properties with some lamd and potential which was difficult because Boston houses are so extremely high. I found this house (where we now live) in a distant suburb that neither of us had been to before. I called the real estate agent and talked to him about it. He was a friendly guy but there was a problem because he lived in Maine and was only doing the owner a favor by sellling the house. He couldn’t drive down until the next weekend. He called a few times during the week and we chatted and he seemed really friendly towards us.

We saw the house that weekend. It was a pre-Revolutionary War colonial on 2 1/2 acres of land. What a dump! The house had potential and the land was gorgeous with orchards and a colonial barn and stone walls. Still, it was priced to much because it would take hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore it. We talked to the real estate agent and he just said to make an offer. We made one over $100,000 dollars below asking. MUch to our suprise, we got a call later that day saying that it was accepted.

We stayed in touch with Don (the agent) over the next two months while we worked out the closing. We bought and closed on the house in July.

We shook hands with Don after the closing and he looked hesitant and said “I have to tell you something.” He said to my wife, “You don’t know me but I know you several different ways and I knew that you had to have that house when you called.”

Here are all the ways that Don knew us and why he talked the owner into giving us the house:

  1. My wife didn’t know her grandfather well at all because he moved to Florida when she was little. Somehow Don lived next door to her grandfather in Florida and was like a second son to him. He gave us pictures of them together that day and told my wife stories about her grandfather used to brag about her.

  2. Don was engaged at a young age to the woman that would become my wife’s aunt by marriage. This was through a geographic puzzle that even he couldn’t explain and somewhat unrealted to point one.

  3. The place that my wife ate lunch at a few times a week was owned by Don’s brother. They knew each other casually for years.

I don’t believe in fate much but Don said that in our initial conversation that he figured out who we were and it was clear that we were going to have that house. We have it now and somehow I cannot argue with the strangeness of it all.

13

I was at a three day Grateful Dead show in Monterey, CA with two of my friends. The night before the first day the three of us talked about lost loves and our biggest ‘one that got away’ regret. Jim’s lived in San Francisco, Sam’s lived in Saratoga, NY and mine lived in Long Beach, CA. None of us had contact with them in years.

On the first day, Jim ran into the very gal he was talking about. Unbelievably, Sam ran into his lady on the second day. She had moved to Califonia two months earlier. I wish that I had a better ending to this because no matter how hard I looked, I was denied on Day 3.

14

Many years ago, before there was much www, and all this sort of blather happened on usenet newsgroups. Maybe 25% of the populace of developed countrys is online today. Back then it was maybe 1%.

In rec.crafts.metalworking, I posed a question as to how the lead screw for the first engine lathe was made, as this is a part that would normally require an engine lathe to make. It’s a chicken vs. egg conundrum.

Living in the US, I got a lengthy, well reasoned and very informative reply via email from a fellow in Australia (down under).

Back then r.c.m. had the tradition of us all using our real names, in reaction to the mother of all trolls who went by the pseudonym “altavoz”. My name is very gailic, and so he assumed I was a fellow australian.

He had a rather unusual last name, one I recognized, and a similar first name to the the other fellow I knew with that last name, so I thanked him, and by the way was he in any way related to the fellow I knew from spending time in Vienna. (Austria, northern hemisphere)

“Well, yes, as it happens, he’s my brother.”

So this australian guy, on a whim, inadvertantly emails an american, thinking he is an australian, who turns out to know his brother’s family who lives in Europe.

15

I was attending school in Durango, Colo., and during summer break, I went to visit my mom, who was living on Kauai at the time.

We made plans to hike the Na Pali Coast, and on the last week of my vacation we were waiting in line at the Zodiac boat rental shop, booking our return trip from Kalalau, when a woman tapped me on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” she said, “Are you from Colorado?”

I was wearing one of my Farquahrt’s work shirts, so I figured she must know the place, a popular restaurant/night club at the time.

“Yup, why, have you been to Farquahrt’s?” I asked her.

Her: “Why yes, we have a friend who works there. You might know him - his name is Robert?”

Me: “Of course I know Robert! We’ve worked together for a couple of years now. A great guy! How do you know him? Do you live in Durango?”

Her: “No, we live in Sedona, but I used to work with Robert a long time ago.”

Me: “Really? You live in Sedona? I have some friends who live there, perhaps you know them? Ron and Dahlia Brown?”

Her: “You’re kidding!? They’re my next door neighbors!”
So both of us were far from home–perfect strangers who struck up a conversation over a T-shirt–yet I worked with someone she knew, and she lived right next door to someone I knew. How bizarre is that?