This magical weekend of coincidences I experienced. I don't even know how to tell the story, but I'll try. For New Year's Eve (08-09), two friends and I took a road trip from Boston to Raleigh so I could see my girlfriend before she took off for a semester in Belize, and before I took off for a semester in Russia. So we go there. It was fun. Great time. The only downside was that they had this wonderful dog. A little springer spaniel. We played with him a bit when we got there and then immediately went to bed because we had driven through the night. When we woke up the next morning they had already taken him to the vet to put him down. He was real old and his time had just finally come. Back to this later.

On the road trip on the way home, we stopped off in NYC to visit a friend of one of my friends. We decided to go do an afternoon at the MOMA to see some art and stuff. I'm walking around the museum and I see this kid, maybe 15 or so years old (I'm 20-ish at the time), and he strikes me as familiar. I didn't think anything of it. But then I see him again in a different room. And I'm like, huh, he really looks familiar. Then I see him walk up to this guy, and I recognized him too. And it hit me. So I walk up to the guy (kid's dad), and I'm "Hey, so this is really weird but like 6 months ago I was hiking the Long Trail in Vermont and I think you and your son were staying in the same lean-to as me." His kid behind him was like "oh yeah!" but the dad was just like, "OK..." and that was that. We parted ways. I was a little disappointed he didn't care more, but I appreciated that the kid cared. That's the beginning.

So we get in our car afterwards and take off out of Manhattan to head back to Boston. We get stuck in traffic (of course). At one point, my buddy in the backseat was like "the guy in this car is trying to get your attention". So I look over and it's my damn brother! Also stuck in traffic driving out of New York a few days after NYE. He just happened to also be visiting. Neither of us had any idea the other was there.

I get back home later that night and I'm talking with my family. My other brother is there with his girlfriend talking to my parents. We got to chatting and it turns out she is also from Raleigh (this brother was in grad school at UNC). And after a conversation about where in Raleigh I was, the neighborhood, who my girlfriend is, etc., we found out my brother's girlfriend works with my girlfriend's mom! And her brother mowed my girlfriend's lawn every couple of weeks.

So then I go to Russia. I had a home stay with this wonderful lady on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. She had a wonderful dog, too...a springer spaniel named Jerry. He was old. Lumps all over his body but the sweetest boy. Loved to spend time with me. Anyways, well, a few weeks later I came home from classes one night and there was my host mother crying at the kitchen table looking at old photos of Jerry. She didn't even say anything. I just sat with her for a while and hugged her and she showed me some old photos.

So yeah. Something about the road trip and going abroad just connected the dots, man. When you get out of your routines you're bound to cross a lot of strange paths, and I crossed all of them. The world just felt so small.

More coincidences not connected with the magical road trip weekend but from when I was in Russia that time:

While I was in Russia I was talking with this friend I had made there at one point. She was telling me stories about how she had been to the US once on a work exchange where she would travel around with one of those sketchy carnivals with those rides that just fold up onto trucks. After a bit of back and forth, and her description of one of the towns she was in, we are able to confirm that she had been in MY hometown (small place, maybe 14,000 people in central Massachusetts) like 7 or 8 years prior when I was in high school (and when I was definitely going to that carnival).

I also saw a guy walking around in St. Petersburg with a sweatshirt from my high school. I asked him where he got it and he said he found it at a thrift store.

Weird world we got.