View Full Version : Small World Department
So I was at work today and the new supervisor for the uniform company, Mike, comes by to bring the uniforms. We go into my office to talk about the uniforms and he notices the desktop on my computer--a picture of Snapshot dangling his feet off the edge of McAfee Knob.
Where'd I get the picture? I took it. When? And so on.
Turns out this guy is Rambo from '01. Anyone out there know him back in the day?
2001 is "back in the day" now? Sheesh, time sure does fly by quickly. :eek: ;)
2001 is "back in the day" now? Sheesh, time sure does fly by quickly. :eek: ;)
Yeah, post-thru-hiking time can really drag. I reached Springer just over a year ago, and it seems like a lifetime ago. I can't imagine how distant a 2006 hike will seem in 2013.
Gray Blazer
02-08-2008, 12:27
Hey Marta, How're you doin'. I read your thread yesterday and thought that was pretty neat. Then today, I'm walkin' into the school cafeteria and this substitute teacher comes up to me and says you're the music teacher, right? My husband and I met you on the trail last summer. My name is so and so (not giving real names here) and you gave us some snickers bars. Well, I think that is so cool. It's a small world after all...... Have a good day!:sun
I always love those kinds of stories! While my "small world" story was not about the trail it was an odd one... When I lived in Florida, in a very small town (population 896, and it was 1 square mile + 66 acres) I went on a Caribbean cruise (Princess). I did an excursion to St. Johns for some diving. The 'captain' of the excursion boat was drumming up conversation for the passengers... said he was from a small town in central FL... later learned he used to live on the SAME street I was now living on! Yea, small world.
I hope to have similar stories that you do Marta! Keep 'em coming!
Bare Bear
02-08-2008, 12:51
Last week while driving the tour bus a passenger noticed my
AT 06 Photo, turned out he was an 01AT'r and we knew about half a dozen common hiker friends..................way cool.
Pennsylvania Rose
02-08-2008, 13:20
Think I've told this story before, but it always amazes me...
Met some really cool people on the Trail, including my now ex-husband and a woman from Washington, DC. I'm from Pittsburgh, my ex is from far southeast KY. When we got married we moved to Pgh, but in six months later we moved to central KY. About a year and a half after that I was sitting in the midwives' office, very pregnant with our daughter. As the patient before me got up to go to the exam room, I took a quick glance at her...I was pretty sure it was the same girl from Washington DC!!! When she came back out, I stopped her. Lo and behold, it WAS her! She was going to college in the next town over; her daughter and my son were born only a couple of weeks apart; her son was a newborn, and I was just about to have my daughter; and, amazingly, we had picked the same unusual name for our daughters.
Haven't talked to her in a while (she lives 1000 miles away now). I need to give her a call.
I was hunting in British Columbia about 30 years ago, about a 2 hour floatplane ride south of Watson Lake, Yukon. There were 4 in our party, we were hunting separate, with a guide. Each of us had tens thousands of acres to ourselves. WE came upon another party (same outfitter) who had encroached a little into my territory. Come to find out the other hunter lived about 60 miles from me, and knew one of the people in my party.
Gray Blazer
02-08-2008, 13:46
Last week while driving the tour bus a passenger noticed my
AT 06 Photo, turned out he was an 01AT'r and we knew about half a dozen common hiker friends..................way cool.
Bare Bear and I went to the same High School. He was 2 years ahead of me. Small world.
I guess we will all need to start our own "profiles" on here and see where we've all crossed paths, other than on the trails!
briarpatch
02-08-2008, 13:58
While I was stopped geting gas at a crossroads in South Dakota, I recognized the guy getting gas for his RV as a guy I had worked for in a small town in West Georgia. The only gas station for 40 miles and we ended up there at the same time. Both of us were just passing through the area on vacations.
I was doing a benchmark test for a client in Dallas, and my contact there turned out to a cousin I had never met. My grandfather and his were brothers. He looked just like pictures I had seen of my grandfather at 25. As soon as I saw him and heard his last name I said "So you must be Aaron and Myrt's grandson". He gave me a really strange look until I explained the connection.
Lone Wolf
02-08-2008, 14:06
met a guy one summer in rangeley, maine. he was selling fresh peanuts next to the IGA. he was from texas right outside of Big Bend national park. 2 years later i was out there and was heading west just outside the park. i stopped at a grocery store and there he was.
StepChld
02-08-2008, 15:28
met a guy one summer in rangeley, maine. he was selling fresh peanuts next to the IGA. he was from texas right outside of Big Bend national park. 2 years later i was out there and was heading west just outside the park. i stopped at a grocery store and there he was.His name wasn't Michael Ryan was it? If so, he's my cuz...also a Ranger at Big Bend now...or last I heard:-?
Lone Wolf
02-08-2008, 15:34
His name wasn't Michael Ryan was it? If so, he's my cuz...also a Ranger at Big Bend now...or last I heard:-?
i don't remember his name but he had a big beard and rode a harley and his peanut truck looked like a little house
max patch
02-08-2008, 15:45
My first night on my thru I stayed at Gooch Gap Shelter. There was an older couple from NY somewhere who decided to hike the trail in GA using their RV as a base. I told them I was only going to Damascus so as to not get into the whole 50 questions thing. I was tired after that first day; 16.5 miles with a 50 pound pack will do that do you when you're not in trail shape.
Couple months later as I walk into a shelter near Duncannon I hear "Thot you were only going to Damascus!" It was the same couple; they were taking a week off and were hiking around PA as they had did in GA the first time I met them.
That happens to me all the time since I moved to chapel hill, NC. I moved into an apartment in carrboro, NC, my neighbor two doors down was a B.L.A.H.S. member, I had snorted wiskey with him at trail daze '04.
A year later I moved down the street to a co-op and met my new house mate colonel chaco, turns out we had a bunch of common friends: Wonder, Otto, etc. About two months later we threw a huge party concert at the co-op and Lowrider (lowrider press) showed up. Traded me a set of candy cane christmas lights for admission and beer. I have met about a dozen or so hikers while hiking that lived here. I imagine its the same in asheville.
StepChld
02-08-2008, 15:57
After high school, I decided to go to a small bible school in Comfort, Tx. No one has probably heard of it and it's been 20+ years. Fast forward to last year living near Dallas,Tx....my son and I are big into Scouts and had been members of a scout troop for about 3 months at this point. One weekend we're on a campout with some of the other leaders when the old retired Scoutmaster and I start talking books...and then we talked scenery on which various plots of some books take place (Louis L'Amour in particular). I casually mention that I thought Spring time in the Hill Country of Texas is just about the most beautiful place in the world. He then says he usta go to this small bible school in Comfort, Texas (the school can only handle about 50-60 people at a time) and he was from Jersey! Although we had never met before, we both knew a lot of the same people. Pretty small world:banana
StepChld
02-08-2008, 16:00
i don't remember his name but he had a big beard and rode a harley and his peanut truck looked like a little houseNope, not my cuz...he's tall and lanky and hasn't ever been able to grow a beard...although I bet those two know each other...seems like all the locals in Big Bend know each other.
My first night on my thru I stayed at Gooch Gap Shelter. There was an older couple from NY somewhere who decided to hike the trail in GA using their RV as a base. I told them I was only going to Damascus so as to not get into the whole 50 questions thing. I was tired after that first day; 16.5 miles with a 50 pound pack will do that do you when you're not in trail shape.
Couple months later as I walk into a shelter near Duncannon I hear "Thot you were only going to Damascus!" It was the same couple; they were taking a week off and were hiking around PA as they had did in GA the first time I met them.
They weren't called the Overland Hermits were they?
Rain Man
02-08-2008, 16:07
Couple months later as I walk into a shelter near Duncannon I hear "Thot you were only going to Damascus!" ...
See... yer lies will always catch up with you!!! LOL
I have my own "little world on the AT" story to tell, but gotta dig out my notes to get my story straight.
Rain:sunMan
.
I ran into the Attorney General of Maine when I hiked the Bigelows this past summer.
Kirby
I graduated high school from near Detroit Mich. About 5 years later, I'm living in West Palm Beach Florida, and at a 4th of July fling on the Intercoastal. There are thousands of people there to watch the boat show. I sit down next to someone on the breakwall to watch the show. After about 15 minutes, the person next to me whips off their sunglasses and hat and says OMG!! Mary HI it's me, Marie. Turns out I sat down right next to one of my best friends in high school.
This kind of thing happens all the time to my husband. One year we went to one of the casinos in Alabama to see Ringo Starr. It was a very small venue, probably sat no more than 300 people, and it was open seating, nothing reserved. We decided to give up our place in line to get something to eat and while we were in the restaurant, he runs into someone he knows from the Opry. Turns out, the guy was working security there. He ended up letting us into the room 15 minutes before anyone else. We had front and center seats for Ringo. Very cool!! My husband is a HUGE Beatles fan, and during the end of the show, he was close enough to get a high five from Ringo. It made his year :)
max patch
02-08-2008, 18:42
They weren't called the Overland Hermits were they?
No; they called themselves Professor Trivia and Faithful Squaw. They were retired but both spent a lot of time as volunteers at a local hospital.
turtle fast
02-08-2008, 18:43
In college, I had gone on a Spanish language program at a school in the very small city of Merida in the Andes mountains of Venezuela. I had hiked the mountains and ended up in this small town where I was invited to write my name and where I was from right on the wall of this small restraunt/cantina like I was a rockstar or something...they never got any foreigners in there so... Anyway, years forward, I was traveling on vacation in Goreme Turkey my wife and I were on a small bus tour of this beautiful valley and had lunch beside this little river...I had struck up a conversation with the American girl I was sitting next to who had been on an archeological dig with her mother who was an archeologist. She was going to college in the fall and had asked where I had gone to college and Merida Venezuela came up...it turns out that her mothers family came from that small village...(which I am afraid I can't rermember the name of right now) and her aunt had said somethng about this American that had come to sign the wall in their village to her mother a few years ago....onlt to meet him in a little valley in the middle of TURKEY!!!!!!
I have hiked and hiked all around this portion of Rockbridge and Botetourt Co.s VA. (just west of the AT), having lived here since 1990. I was happily married with two school aged children. Life was good.
My husband passed away in '03, my 21 y.o. daughter in '06. I had two surgeries in '06. Life seemed hopelessly busy and unsatisfactory to say the least.
Right after Christmas '06 I met Nessmuk on Yahoo. Nessmuk, who:
1.) was living 2 miles from me,
2.) whose brother did some repair work on my home
3.) who had worked at the same state mental health facility I had, but 10 years later
4.) who ALSO caved and was a diver
5.) who works with 3 men on my block
6.) who was parked at Apple Orchard Falls during bear season '06 when I hiked right by.
7.) worked with one of my favorite former students and with a fellow teacher at my school
8.) is ALSO trained in wilderness search and rescue
These are only a FEW of the 'coincidences', which I honestly do not consider coincidences.
An aside--he said when he read my profile on Yahoo, that he started driving up and down all the roads in our teeny town, looking for the blonde woman who rides motorcycle. All he had to do was ask his co-workers, or even the convenience store clerk. In such a small place, how had we NOT met?
I am so blessed to have found a hiking sweetheart right around the corner. He has made a profound difference in MY small world.
Frau
Ahh, serendipity! :)
Great stories, like reading about them!
In college, I had gone on a Spanish language program at a school in the very small city of Merida in the Andes mountains of Venezuela. I had hiked the mountains and ended up in this small town where I was invited to write my name and where I was from right on the wall of this small restraunt/cantina like I was a rockstar or something...they never got any foreigners in there so... Anyway, years forward, I was traveling on vacation in Goreme Turkey my wife and I were on a small bus tour of this beautiful valley and had lunch beside this little river...I had struck up a conversation with the American girl I was sitting next to who had been on an archeological dig with her mother who was an archeologist. She was going to college in the fall and had asked where I had gone to college and Merida Venezuela came up...it turns out that her mothers family came from that small village...(which I am afraid I can't rermember the name of right now) and her aunt had said somethng about this American that had come to sign the wall in their village to her mother a few years ago....onlt to meet him in a little valley in the middle of TURKEY!!!!!!
Ok you win
Skidsteer
02-08-2008, 20:06
After high school, I decided to go to a small bible school in Comfort, Tx....
Comfort, Tx!
Been there many times. Nice town. I lived in Boerne, TX for 8 years.
Magic Man
02-08-2008, 20:11
Last summer Boo-Boo (www.trailjournals.com/rebecca (http://www.trailjournals.com/rebecca)) was hiking SOBO coming down off Moxie Bald and crossed paths with NOBO Moxie and her husband Tecumseh.
They exchanged the normal pleasantries and trail information and continued on their separate journeys.
As it turned out, Boo-Boo and Moxie both grew on Vashon Island near Seattle Washington. And Boo-Boo's dad (that would be me) gets his water from Moxie's dad, who owns and operates my local water company. I also went to grade school and graduated from high school with Moxie's brother.
Small world!
Here's my "brush with greatness story":
I was working for a company which manufactured kitchen exhaust hoods. Among my duties was taking phone calls and processing orders for repair parts. I pick up the phone one day and the guy on the line says that he's the maintenance foreman at The White House, and he needs to buy a detergent pump. As I'm talking to the guy I can hear a cat in the background. It turns out that it was Socks!
It seems that Socks was really hard on the carpets, drapes, wallpaper, and furniture. The maintenance guy had to take care of him while the first family was away. So the guy holds out the phone and lets me say hello to Socks the Cat.
By the way, I know a little about cats and what they're saying. He had the samething of his mind as President Clinton.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Socks_cat_1.JPG (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Socks_cat_1.JPG)
Almost There
02-08-2008, 20:37
November 2005 I was out hiking near Tray Gap and ran into Purple Rose and Amoeba hiking the same section of trail that I was on. Roll it forward to summer 2006 I've now been on the trail for several days and I am coming up towards the Blue Ridge Parkway near, Black Rock Gap in Va.? Anyways, who do I see coming my way SOBO, but Purple Rose and Amoeba. It seems that they just happened to be section hiking where I was at again....Small World.
Miss Janet
02-08-2008, 20:42
I LOVE these stories. Six degrees of separation is a neat theory but I think if you add the AT into the equation then it becomes about TWO degrees of separation.
Last Jan I was in the Florida Everglades and walking through a mangrove when I started talking to these three people walking the other way. The usual kinds of things were exchanged and somehow the Smokies came up. The boy was telling me how I should go hiking up there on the "Appalachian Trail"... I just smiled and said I knew what he was talking about. He mentions his best friend was a girls who wrote an article about her hike and being harrassed by all the men. Without thinking I said... "You mean___hikers name____? and he almost feel into the water! The look on his face was priceless. He couldn't believe I knew her.
Same trip, a few days later, we took the canoe out at a little pull off area in the middle of nowhere in the Everglades. Two people were sitting beside their van watching birds. Again, the conversation was about where we were all from. When I said Tennessee,the guy said his good friend had just spent two weeks in Tennessee while she was hiking the Appalachian Trail. I just looked at him and asked if her name was -----hikername---- and his jaw just dropped! When I said she had stayed at my house for those two weeks he looked at me and said "You're The Miss Janet?" My big head got a little bigger!
I tell you, two degrees...
Here's my "brush with greatness story":
I was working for a company which manufactured kitchen exhaust hoods. Among my duties was taking phone calls and processing orders for repair parts. I pick up the phone one day and the guy on the line says that he's the maintenance foreman at The White House, and he needs to buy a detergent pump. As I'm talking to the guy I can hear a cat in the background. It turns out that it was Socks!
It seems that Socks was really hard on the carpets, drapes, wallpaper, and furniture. The maintenance guy had to take care of him while the first family was away. So the guy holds out the phone and lets me say hello to Socks the Cat.
By the way, I know a little about cats and what they're saying. He had the samething of his mind as President Clinton.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Socks_cat_1.JPG (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Socks_cat_1.JPG)
UUUHHHH, Hamburgers, or Monica?
I graduated high school from near Detroit Mich. About 5 years later, I'm living in West Palm Beach Florida,
NO!!??
I grew up "down river" area... Trenton, Woodhaven, Wyandotte... And then lived in Tampa for almost 20 years!!
We'll chat next week!
I was taking classes in a town about 50 miles from my own, one afternoon I left class early and went for a ride.
Followed a long dirt road that dead ended at at the Yadkin river...just as I was to leave around the bend comes a party of 6 kinda lost paddlers..(the water was low and slow, and they where still 20 miles from the planned takeout and where ready to get off the river).. They were lucky I was there, it was a long walk to the main road.
I offer to give one a ride back to their truck and in the conversation find that he used to live very near me and sold a motorcyle to my brother in law back in 1975.
sherrill
02-08-2008, 22:35
My wife and were in Ireland doing some hiking around Kenmare and took in a pint in one of the pubs.
It was late afternoon and we and another couple were the only patrons at the bar, and when we found out they were Yanks as well, we naturally asked where we each were from.
The hair on our collective necks rose when we narrowed it down to NC, then "near Raleigh", specifically Moncure, and found out they owned the vacant lot that bordered ours. :eek:
non AT related. i was in an interview this past wednesday. i handed over my letters of recommendation to the administrator who was interviewing me and she quickly recognized the letterhead on one of the letters. she knew my administrator from my previous employer in colorado! they had just spoken via email the same day! I GOT THE JOB! small world indeed! see you all on the trail or letterhead!:banana:sun
StepChld
02-09-2008, 01:05
Comfort, Tx!
Been there many times. Nice town. I lived in Boerne, TX for 8 years.Oh yes, Boerne ...what a wonderful town! Went to Boerne Bible Church for a while. Also had a g-friend whose g-parents lived there in a mobile home park ,a really nice one where everyone had a fenced in yards...across from the Dominion if i remember right. Didn't Boerne have the highest concentration of millionaires back in the '80's?
When the g-friend was in town, we spent many an evening driving around the back roads of Boerne (that's my story at least!);):D
Gray Blazer
02-09-2008, 13:19
Here's my "brush with greatness story":
So the guy holds out the phone and lets me say hello to Socks the Cat.
By the way, I know a little about cats and what they're saying. He had the samething of his mind as President Clinton.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Socks_cat_1.JPG (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/73/Socks_cat_1.JPG)
Would that be Monicat Meewinski??
I have hiked and hiked all around this portion of Rockbridge and Botetourt Co.s VA. (just west of the AT), having lived here since 1990. I was happily married with two school aged children. Life was good.
My husband passed away in '03, my 21 y.o. daughter in '06. I had two surgeries in '06. Life seemed hopelessly busy and unsatisfactory to say the least.
Right after Christmas '06 I met Nessmuk on Yahoo. Nessmuk, who:
1.) was living 2 miles from me,
2.) whose brother did some repair work on my home
3.) who had worked at the same state mental health facility I had, but 10 years later
4.) who ALSO caved and was a diver
5.) who works with 3 men on my block
6.) who was parked at Apple Orchard Falls during bear season '06 when I hiked right by.
7.) worked with one of my favorite former students and with a fellow teacher at my school
8.) is ALSO trained in wilderness search and rescue
These are only a FEW of the 'coincidences', which I honestly do not consider coincidences.
An aside--he said when he read my profile on Yahoo, that he started driving up and down all the roads in our teeny town, looking for the blonde woman who rides motorcycle. All he had to do was ask his co-workers, or even the convenience store clerk. In such a small place, how had we NOT met?
I am so blessed to have found a hiking sweetheart right around the corner. He has made a profound difference in MY small world.
Frau
Awesome story, thanks for sharing it with us!
Would that be Monicat Meewinski??
Close, but as they say, "No Cigar".
Gray Blazer
02-09-2008, 15:59
Close, but as they say, "No Cigar".Oh, no, :eek: LMAO
sloopjonboswell
02-09-2008, 18:54
2 that stick out.
1- im sitting at thomas knob shelter last year while i was on my thru. while im cooking dinner, my roommate from when i worked at noc the summer before rolls right in. he thru hiked in 05 and i had picked his brain in 06 about the trail. mississippi alan, we were both really suprised.
2- last month, a fellow nobo can to visit me here in my new 'hometown.' we go out for a drink, and as we're walking down the street i triple take this girl as she passes by. i called out to her, she turns around, and says, 'pike county?' she was sobo that same year and had met/hung out with both of us in dalton, mass. at toms place. the next night, we attended a reception honoring her for raising $13,000 during her hike for the humane society, and we were all on tv.
turtle fast
02-09-2008, 20:28
I got another one....I had visited a friend that lived in a remote town in Lulea, Sweden going to this tiny state run college in this hamlet not too far from the Artic Circle which most of the school was located underground as winters there were brutal. I had toured the college with my friend and we visited many classrooms underground.....we went to the computer center and had visited with the computer science students....a very small bunch. Fast forward a year, and I was on the University of Iowa's bbs talking to some friends and this guy joined in and was talking with us....his language wasn't perfect so we knew he was a foreigner....he said he was from a small town in Sweden that "we woulden't know"....I saw his web address and recognized that it was from Lulea Sweden!!!! I has keept this to myself and said that I was psychic and that I described to him his school....being in an underground place....and I had started to describe his computer room and even how his chair looked!!!! He was freaking out really buying this stuff....then I told him I was there the previous year and it turned out that I had talked to the guy in that computer room and I was overcome of how small a world we really are!
If some of you 2008 thru hikers are lucky this summer, you will have the privilege of meeting the Premier of New Brunswick and the Governor of Maine on Katahdin this summer, I believe. Then your world will feel really, really, small.
Kirby
What makes meeting those folks a "privilege?"
DuctTape
02-11-2008, 02:47
I'm riding my bike across the country, and stop at a little convenience store near Togwotee Pass, Wyoming. A backpacker approaches... it's Packrat - from the hostel in Glencliff - hiking the CDT. Blister and Mala appear shortly thereafter.
fiddlehead
02-11-2008, 04:33
I had just finished a 28 day circumvent of 3 of the 8,000 metre peaks in Nepal (Manaslu, Annapurna I and Dhauligiri and we were wetting our whistle in a small bar near the end of a road in Pokara (a small but popular town in western Nepal) but one of probably 40 bars in that town.
I walk in and hear someone say: "Fiddlehead! is that you?"
Turns out to be a guy i hiked with on the PCT in the Sierras who i never would've recognized him as he had short hair and no beard this time around.
He had just also finished a 30 day hike in the Himalayas and was staying another week or so. We hung around a lot during that week It's a long story from then on but we have kept in touch the last 8 years since then also.
You never know when an old hiking buddy is going to show up.
I've got some whiteblaze friends or correspondences coming to visit me in another 2 weeks here in Phuket.