I’m a fan of cosmic coincidences, the moments you almost can’t believe are actually happening, because had you arrived or left a minute earlier or later, you’d have missed the whole thing.
Two happened to me back to back on Sunday morning.
I had driven from Claremont to Los Angeles to walk the picturesque loop around the Hollywood Reservoir. I recommend it: You have good views of the Hollywood sign and can walk over the scenic, William Mulholland-designed Hollywood Dam of 1924. And through a fence I saw deer, munching on grass just feet away.
Trudging uphill back to my car afterward along the Lake Hollywood Drive sidewalk, suddenly the woman jogging downhill in my direction exclaimed “Hey!”
It was one of my best friends, Adriana Chavira, a former newsroom colleague in Ontario who now lives in North Hollywood. She’d just finished a hike up the Wisdom Tree trail in Griffith Park and was heading back to her own car, a block from mine.
What were the odds? L.A. suddenly seemed like a small town, where you might routinely bump into people you know, even though in my case I can’t know more than a dozen.
Even stranger, Adriana and I had each been on the opposite sidewalk before crossing over, she because her car was parked on this side, me because of slow walkers ahead of me. If just one of us hadn’t made that switch, we’d never have seen each other despite being in the same place at the same time.
It made me wonder how often I’ve missed people simply by being on the wrong side of the street.
The amazement hadn’t worn off a half-hour later as I walked toward a patio seat at a frequent weekend hangout of mine, Silverlake Coffee.
Just as I was about to sit down, the man at the next table, who had a confident voice, was saying to his coffee date, “I live in Claremont. It’s a pretty easy drive out here.”
So startled was I that, abandoning my usual reserve, I interjected: “I live in Claremont!” We determined we live a few blocks…
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