A small world, right?!
My parents were visiting this weekend so we could take my dad on a helicopter tour of Chicago!
Mom, Dad, me, Steven and our friend, Eric. My mom didn’t want to go on the ride, so we asked Eric along!
Just as cool as last time. Still amazed by how close you can get to the buildings. We were waving at people in the Ledge at the “Willis” Tower.
I don’t think I could ever get tired of riding in a helicopter over Chicago. It’s just such a neat perspective! Of course, I would love to fly over other cities, too.
Anyway. You guys heard enough about riding in a helicopter the last time we did it. I actually wanted to tell you about a super odd coincidence we experienced on the ride!
We were talking with our pilot and found out he’s from my home town in Iowa and went to the opposing (better, ha) high school to mine!
Then it got odder. He also went to the same university as me and Steven. He graduated a couple of years before me. We weren’t in the same program or anything, and my university has a lot of students, but! We know a group of the same people, since he lived on their dorm floor!
What are the odds, right?!
I had to text our mutual friend, and he found it very interesting/amusing, too!
Have you ever met a “stranger” and found out you knew some people in common?
I don’t think I mentioned it here, but the runner I chased down in my hood actually has some mutual friends to me!
And, this is not the same, but this whole scenario reminds me of the time that a stranger asked me for directions in Chicago, and it turned out to be my boss (from Iowa’s) wife, whom I had never met!
And… a few more pictures from the ride for you!
Themocracy
This reminds me of not so long ago when I got a random text from my sister “do you remember Jim” and I said of course, why? (I graduated med tech school with him and there were only maybe 10 people in our class) Turns out she was sitting in a meeting with him – he worked at the same hospital she was at. Too funny…the world gets a little smaller every year…
Hey! I read your blog all the time but have never joined in the comments until now. I love the subject of ridiculously unlikely connections, because for some reason this runs in my family. We all have had astronomically unlikely run-ins with folks.
My favorite was traveling to Ireland with my family and renting a house on the coast in a tiny, tiny town. It had one small main street with a few shops and a pub. We chatted with the pub owner and found out that his sister owns a pub a few blocks away from my house back home, in my own tiny town on Cape Cod. By coincidence, before leaving for Ireland I had pre-gamed the vacation by eating dinner at his sister’s Irish pub. When I returned to the US after our trip, I went to the sister’s pub for dinner and chatted with her about how I accidentally ended up in her brother’s pub in Ireland. We both laughed. I was telling her about my trip, mentioned that my flight had gotten in after midnight and she recommended a long-haul taxi service to me and handed me her husband’s business card – and in disbelief I pulled from my purse the very same business card given to me by the driver I’d hired to drive me home from the airport that night. It had been her husband! Small world.
Oh my gosh! I love your story! Super small world, indeed! Do you still go to that pub?!
Thanks for commenting! 🙂
The photos from your ride are amazing. Fun coincidence! We went white water rafting in Reno once, and the guide was our friends college roommate. I love when stuff like that happens.
Wow, it really is a small world. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who I had that many connections to, but I my college was pretty small, so if I met someone who went to my school, it would be very likely that we’d know some of the same people if we overlapped at all. Your helicopter tour looks like it was a lot of fun! I might have to try that sometime. I’ve been on one of the boat tours with my dad, which was a lot of fun.
How cool is that!? Was your mom freaked out by the helicopter? My dad was but my mom convinced him to go when they were in Niagara Falls and he loved it.
My BFF from college met a guy somewhere and brought him back to the house. His last name is my mom’s maiden name and he is from her hometown so of course I had to ask about that. Turns out we aren’t related but our grandma’s were best friends and my mom knows his mom. It wasn’t too weird I guess since my college isn’t far from the town my mom grew up (20 minutes?) but my college BFF wasn’t from that area at all.
Another similar situation was when I ‘met’ a guy in a chat room (I couldn’t really stand him online but we exchanged AIM/ICQ info and would chat occassionally) who I knew went to my rival high school. I became a lifeguard in college and worked with a guy and we became fast friends. One day he asked for my email address and it clicked that he ‘knew’ me from the internet. He also knew my roomies and some other people I was close with.
I became friends with another guy (this guy’s good friend) in similar fashion. We were friends on AIM due to having an acquaintance and after my first day of college I got a message from him asking if I was in so-and-so’s English class and that he sat right next to me!
My mom gets motion sickness, so she didn’t want to join on the ride.
I wonder if people still use chat sites to meet other people!
It really is a small world. It seems like whenever I go some place really far away, I end up running into someone from home.
It is a small, small world. I think of the song, “It’s a Small World”!!!
Ever heard of “six degrees of separation”? I totally believe that.
I have heard of that! Only the Kevin Bacon version though. Ha ha ha.
I love small world stuff like that. My husband and I met online and we were long distance. I was in LA and he was here in Milwaukee. I actually met a lot of people at my church in California that had some odd small world connection with him or with Wisconsin in general. It was weird.
Heh, “Willis” Tower. Whatever that is.
I’ve met people from Ohio all over the place. Last summer a couple offered to take our picture on a random mountain in Colorado, and they were from a town near where I grew up. And once I met a guy at a bar who grew up in my hometown and went to one of the all-boys schools that I had a lot of friends at (because, recall, there were no boys at my school), so we knew a lot of the same people. It really is a small world sometimes!
I love chatting up strangers! Once on a ski lift in Colorado, I talked to a guy who knew my old boss. I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve mentioned I’m from Cascade and the person I’m talking to says, “oh, do you know so-and-so?” and I do because everyone knows everyone else in Cascade.
It is fun to make connections with people!
And that is one of the cool benefits of being from a small town! 🙂
Side note: when my parents were visiting this weekend, and one of the pics from one of our runs came up on my digital frame and they asked who you were (as they did with most people) I had to tell them you were from IA, too 😉
Coincidences like that are so neat! They make me realize how small the world really is. I’m sure I’ve had stuff like that happen to me, but usually I’m just stuck trying to figure out where I know the other person from!
Such a pretty city! A helicopter ride is so cool. Was your mom afraid?
More of a motion sickness thing. Probably a little bit scared, too 😉
Awesome pics. I think you are so friendly u meet so many people
That looks like so much fun. Tell Steven those pics are amazing.
Those photos are fabulous! However, you practically flew over my place and didnt snap a photo of it? You could have at least told me you were buzzing around in your pimped out ride so I could wave to you from my balcony. Rude. 🙂
Ha ha ha! I probably have pics of your place in the photos I didn’t post 😉 I thought about texting you before I went up! Dang. I wish I hadn’t forgotten.
Wow, what amazing photos! They actually made me a little nervous. I think I would enjoy a helicopter ride, but it might take me a few/several minutes to get over the initial nervousness and fear. (I’m sure I’d develop and irrational fear of helicopter crashes based on choppers going down in action movies….)
My friend Jessica and I actually lived in the same dorm in college and didn’t meet until we were at the same [much larger] grad school, which I always thought was a strange coincidence. I even knew her roommate!