"Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.” - Leon Trotsky
Jeez. I’m almost 40. I’ve felt old as long as I’ve been alive. I hope it doesn’t get worse.
Pretty sure I time travelled once. The horrible ex and I decided to go up to Bagby Hot Springs one fine night–used to do this fairly often, spend the night soaking then drive home in the morning. Anyway, I only knew one way to get there, Hwy 224 out of Estacada that turns into National Forest Road 46 past Indian Henry campground, go past the turnoff to Timothy Lake after the Ripplebrook Ranger Station then turn right on NF-63 then right again on NF-70 to the trailhead. Easy peasy, we’d done it a bunch of times before.
So we hiked up to the springs, filled up a tub and were soaking when another couple showed up and asked if they could share the tub and since it was one of the communal ten person round tubs the answer of course was “Sure, no problem.” We soaked and chatted and got high AF and one of them asked how we got up there, given the road closure. And we were all, “What road closure? Came up past Ripplebrook the usual way.” They looked at us like we had two heads (each!) and said that NF-63 was closed due to a landslide. We all dropped it but sure enough on the way back out I turned from NF-70 onto NF-63, precisely backtracking the way we came in and whaddaya know? There was a line of those huge concrete blocks completely crossing the road a couple miles past the turnoff that I swear to gods had NOT been there just a few hours before. I stopped the car, we got out and looked and sure as hell there was a big, but not completely fresh, landslide that had taken out a couple hundred feet of the road so there was a steep drop down to the river below. Shone a flashlight across the slide and there was another identical set of blocks on the other side of the slide area. There were reflectors and warning signs and the whole nine that I swear we did not pass on the way in, even if there WERE another way in, which there isn’t, not right there.
It took a really long time and about 3x the miles to backtrack along NF-63 to find another way to get out to Hwy 26 to get home. Since I live in far SE Portland, just north of the Clackamas county line, coming back in via 26 took SO much longer than it took us to get up there and we came in by totally the opposite direction. This being the late '90s, with the internet in its infancy it took a bit of hunting around to find a news article in the The Oregonian reporting the landslide that had, apparently, occurred a couple weeks previously and detailing the road closures, such as the one on NF-63 I’d already scoped out and also that Hwy 224 was closed right after the turnoff to Three Lynx, a small community of people who live there because they’re in charge of maintenance for the electric lines and whatnot. I drove back up there a couple days later and sure enough, 224 was buttoned up tight right where the paper said it was. Which means either we time travelled or we matter transported right through a bunch of road closure points that included multiple thousands of pounds of cement barrier. Hwy 224 was closed for a really long time (there had been yet another landslide between Three Lynx and Ripplebrook, it was a really wet year) and although I did find out how to take some tiny dirt roads that skirted the closures I didn’t learn about them for months–I rescued a USPS driver who’d had car troubles on 224 and in exchange for a ride down to Estacada she vouchsafed to me the arcane knowledge of how to sneak in without a permit and not get caught. Those small logging roads aren’t actually public roads and if the rangers caught you on them without a permit you’d get a goodly fine.
So yeah, I think I time travelled once.
I was born.
I’ve mentioned this here before, but I still can’t explain it.
Our daughter was a toddler, and we were at a local shopping mall. I was watching her in a designated play space in the mall (a big empty store space they hadn’t been able to rent out, with some largish toys to play with and lots of space to run around). There was one other woman there with her similarly-aged son. I was reading as our daughter played. Suddenly I had the intense conviction that the woman sitting not far away was an author, so I went over and asked her. She was, indeed, a published author of mysteries. We talked for quite a while. I had written, but not yet published, my first book.
I have no idea how I knew this. I’m sure I see plenty of authors all the time (the greater Boston area is infested with them). None of them have external distinguishing marks. This woman wasn’t reading, wasn’t holding a book-themed tote bag, didn’t have a neon sign on her back reading “I’m an Author!”.
None of the usual signs.
I’d never seen her or her photograph before. In fact, I’d never heard of her before, and never read any of her books. (By now I’ve read most of them)
So how did I know she was an author? No idea.
IMHO the most likely explanation is that you had seen her photo before (in a context where it didn’t make much of an impression on you, but your brain still subconsciously stored it under “authors”) but had forgotten that you had done so.
OK, since it is on-topic and has been mentioned 3 times in this thread, I’ll do ya.
Mr. Biology’s not here, man.
I started that poll about how you feel vs. your chronological age. I voted -30+ years.
I turned 60 last July. I feel like I am 20, no joke. Hell I feel BETTER than I did when I was 20. Tons of energy each and every day, each of which I see as a precious gift. Note I got a testosterone test a year ago which read “very low”, but have none of the symptoms. [BMI of 23.4 btw] I have had a partially slipped disc and a bunch of loose cartilage in my left knee both mysteriously repair themselves. The only niggling issues I have are ones I’ve had my entire life (occ. sinus and digestive issues, but a diet change helped with the latter), and some dental work this past fall which I had been putting off. Otherwise I am completely pain free, can sprint like a demon across an athletic field like the wind, can drive upwards of 15-16 hours a day with just a handful of short rest stops if need be, and get out of the car at the end feeling like I could go another 15. My doctor has told me several times that I look “great”.
We have another active thread about how long your older primary relatives lived, and my birth mother does have some national track and field age records (until she fell, had a bad concussion then a stroke and has slowed way down now), and my 2 biological sisters look easily 10-15 years less than their ages (54 & 51), my birth mother’s mother did live to be 98 and was independent up until her last year. Even then my current state seems to represent 2-3 orders of magnitude more than even all that.
I do have an explanation, but if I told ya I’d have to kill ya.
Browsing in a book store. You pick up a ton of books and look at the front, back and blurb but if you don’t buy the book you’re unlikely to remember an author photo but if your facial recognition is good (I’m moderately face blind so I’m speculating here lol) it might be enough to jog you into hooking together that the person you’re seeing is someone whose pic you saw in a book jacket. Think you nailed this one.
Logical and rational, but VERY unlikely.
Sure, it’s unlikely that you’d recognize any random author in this way.
But you need to condition the probability of this explanation on the known fact that you did recognize her, which surely makes it certain that you had seen her somewhere before, unless it was a fluke.
“Fluke” is, believe me, more likely.
If you’re fine with the fact that it may have just been a fluke, why are you categorizing it as something mysterious that defies explanation, and resisting a sensible explanation?
Ah, so you think this thread should only be about things for which all rational explanations have been discounted.
I’m saying that I can’t give a definite explanation for what happened, and think the obvious ones that come to mind are unlikely. “Fluke” is not really an explanation. I could’ve as easily thought she was a politician or a lion tamer.
‘Fluke’ is defined as an unlikely chance occurrence.
I think that qualifies for mysterious.
IMHO
And I think the mistake you’re making is in thinking that the obvious explanations are unlikely because they are unlikely a priori.
The classic example of this was OJ Simpson’s lawyers making the fallacious argument that because only 1 in 10,000 husbands kill their wives, it’s very unlikely that OJ Simpson killed his wife. But the probability should obviously have been conditioned on the fact that she was known to be dead. Given the information that somebody murdered a wife (and no other facts), the probability that the husband is the killer is over 50%.
Similarly, you need to condition the probability of the explanations on the known fact that you did recognize her (if it was not fluke).
It’s quite difficult trying to figure out how unlikely flukes really are. If you do 100 things a week where some kind of “1% fluke” is possible, then you will experience about one such fluke every week.
Is it in a briefcase that emits a golden glow when opened?
True, and I think the numbers are likely much higher than we imagine.
The number of things per day alone that could generate even a one in a thousand fluke are likely in the thousands. Every thing you do, everyone you interact with and everything they tell you, everything you read, see or hear holds the potential for fluke or co-incidence and being pattern-seeking creatures we are apt to grab onto them.
Given all of that and given that this question is open to hundreds of people with years and years of fertile “fluke-producing” existence, and that people with such stories are likely to be interested, the really inexplicable thing would have been if no-one had brought up examples of such flukes.