These past couple weeks have been quite a change of pace. On top of the bike racing taking a turn for the better, I've wound up bumping into several old friends from years back. It was nice to see all of them and it brought back lots of good memories. I guess it's not unusual to suddenly catch up with people who you haven't seen in a very long time, but several of them in such a short time was a pleasant surprise. Each of them were an out of the blue occurrence as well and were completely unrelated. I'm not really sure if there is anything of significance in all this, but I just found it interesting in the timing.
The last time I'd had something that ranked in this category was on a day last year when I'd gotten a Chinese fortune cookie at the Super Panda restaurant that said 'You will soon receive an unusual gift'. Later that same day, I was at baseball practice for my youngest son and a lady came up to me and in a shy way asked, 'Do you mind if I ask you your name?' and then proceeded to tell me why. Almost 20 years ago, she'd lost a brother who like me rode his bike all around town just like I had. He had been killed in an accident and not long after that was when she had noticed me riding my bike around. She said she'd seen me all over the region including one time on top of the mountain near Seven Springs about 40 miles from home. What caught her eye was that both her brother and myself had longer blond hair, cut the same way, pretty much the same style rimless glasses and even looked close alike. She'd wanted to ask my name and find out who I was for a long time but never got the opportunity until just then. Several times she'd even turned her car around to try to catch me but by then I was gone. This was over a span of almost 20 years. She also said, the sight of seeing me brought back some good memories of her brother and was kind of comforting to her. She immediately followed this up by saying 'Please, never stop riding your bike'. It's amazing how sometimes you can touch a person without ever knowing or even speaking to them. Losing a sister in an accident myself many years ago, I know what people can go through and sometimes it's little things like this that help us get through the pain of having a loved one wrenched away from long before it was time. It was odd, but that was a fortune cookie message I'd kept even before I'd talked to this other lady about her brother. I didn't know why but maybe there was something telling me this was one to hang onto. I still do have it with me.
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