BIG SKY, SMALL WORLD

Just how big is this sky we all breathe? Well, our entire globe, including everything on and beneath its surface (plus all of planetary history to boot) lies within the one gaseous cocoon, so it has to be fairly capacious. Room enough for almost anything.My very first day at Crystal, meeting new people at every turn, I was shaking the tow pilot’s hand when he said, “I know you!” I’d never been within a thousand miles of here prior to that, so I asked, “From where?” He said he’d come by my old haunt in New England years before on vacation, and I checked him out to rent our 2-33. I looked it up in a retired logbook, and sure enough his name was there. I still don’t remember it, but he does, and that’s what matters.Not many weeks later, swapping tales with a visiting pilot from somewhere up north, I told of a blind spot incident where my primary instructor was seconds from touchdown in a Blanik when her husband planted the towplane’s main wheels on those big broad wing roots. Everyone on the ground watched in horror as he miraculously missed chopping the glider’s tail and/or cockpit, leaving pair of dents in the glider’s skin as he roared away to safety. A yarn like that is vulnerable to doubt, and I expected a skeptical response, but instead my new friend squealed, “No, really? I was there that day! I saw it too!” Whereupon I grew suspicious, and a brief two-way interrogation ensued with each confirming that the other did in fact witness that same believe-your-eyes event twenty some years earlier and hundreds of miles away.Then, also here at Crystal, three more such small-world confluences occurred not many days apart. First, while checking out a Belgian airline pilot who lived in Hong Kong and often laid over in LA, I introduced him to one of our regulars with a similar bio. They got to talking, and soon learned they lived on different floors of the same high-rise way around there on the far side of the Earth.  What are the chances?About that same time, I was briefing yet another ATP pilot transitioning to gliders who’d been a flight instructor in his early days. During our ground session, a staffer happened by and they recognized each other. Turns out they’d worked together at an FBO decades before, but not crossed paths since. So wouldn't you know, today both are active CFIGs here at the Soaring Academy…More? As I was finishing up with a primary student one day, my next victim arrived ahead of schedule. Those two also seemed familiar, but neither could name the connection. Weeks later they still puzzled over where they’d met before, until it came to them both at once — at the other place.  They were members of the same swim team, but neither had recognized the other with his clothes on!Spend enough time breathing this sky, you’re bound to see almost anything.