Julie and Bodie, her favorite golden retriever and the most zen-like dog there is
Maybe Matt and I should go out and buy a lottery ticket, because the numbers seem to be in our favor right now. We had a crazy Karmic connection in Carmel, California just a couple of days ago that just might go down as one of the best stories of serendipity that we’ve ever told.
Our stop into Carmel started out pretty normal. We reached the Safeway at the South end of town at 12pm, after 31 miles for the day, and we settled into the café area inside. The best Safeways along the way are those with the in-house Starbucks and the café area, as it allows me to have my coffee fix, and allows us somewhere to sit and eat, check email with the free wi-fi, and still be able to see our bikes just outside the café windows. This Safeway in Carmel had all of that, so we sat there for an hour and a half before even considering leaving.
As I was packing up our food, I heard a voice that seemed incredibly familiar, and I looked up to see the profile of a woman in the Starbucks line, about 50 feet away, that looked just like our second cousin, Suzanna. I thought to myself, “No way is that Suzanna. We’re in Carmel and she lives near Lake Tahoe.” But I went with my gut and asked Matt if he thought it was her. He wasn’t sure, so he walked up to the side of the line to see if it was her without creeping her out in case it wasn’t. Once he was close, he realized it was her, waited for her to finish ordering, and she saw him standing there out of the corner of her eye and erupted in surprise of seeing him. “We’ve been looking for you up and down (Highway) 1!”
It turns out her husband Tom, has been working in Carmel and she was there for a brief visit, and also needed her coffee fix for the day at the Safeway Starbucks. They had just driven up and down the coast this past weekend for a family visit, expecting to see us bicycling on Highway 1, but they weren’t sure of our timeline.
After we all caught our breath in amazement that we happened to run into each other at a Safeway in a town that none of us lived in, while we were taking an hour and a half break during our coastal bike trip, and after we hadn’t seen them for over 4 years, we realized that there was no way we were biking further for the day. Suzanne gave us directions back to their place in Carmel (the only unfortunate part of it was that we had to go back up a hill that we had just cruised down), and we surprised Tom later that afternoon with our presence. We stayed with them that evening, walked around the town and on the beach with their golden retriever (and quite possibly my favorite dog), Bodhi. All night and even the next day, we kept saying, “I can’t believe this happened!”
It’s definitely one for the books that we’ll always look back on in amazement and wonder at how all the stars aligned for us to meet up with them for such a crazy karmic connection against all the odds.