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Two degrees (or fewer) of Milwaukee separation
Whenever I travel, I expect to run into someone, usually a person that I know, from Milwaukee.
Granted, a weekend in a Door County isn't exactly a trip to Australia, but I couldn't have been more surprised to run into the four people I saw between Fish Creek and Sister Bay on Sunday and Monday.
It began as I was just walking down Main Street in Fish Creek. I ran into my old friend and co-worker Sara, who was also up for the weekend. Sara is one of my favorite people in Milwaukee, but we're always too busy to connect. Apparently, it's easier to see her randomly, some 300 miles from home.
The next chance meeting happened over dinner on Sunday at the Bayside Tavern. We had met the bartender, Bill Budelman, in previous years, but this time around it only took a few minutes to realize that he's old friends with my coworker Molly Snyder Edler and her husband, and also knows Bobby Tanzilo from their collective time working at the YMCA in the '90s. And not only that, we discovered that Bill lived literally next door to my friend, Eron, who joined me on this trip, back in the '90s in Riverwest.
Later that night, still at the Bayside, a guy stopped me as I was heading to the restroom. He said, "Hey, are you Andy from OnMilwaukee.com?"
Shocked, I said yes, and he told me that's a regular reader of my work and recognized me from my photo. He even said that he read a blog of mine from last week that talked about my upcoming trip to Door County. He and his wife were kind enough to buy us a drink, and we quickly realized that we knew a bunch of the same people, too.
My final encounter happened at breakfast, at the delicious Carroll House in Sister Bay. As I inhaled my eggs and hash browns, in walked a former co-worker that I hadn't seen in at least 10 years. Not only was it surprising to run into Susie up here, seeing her the same weekend as Sara -- the three of us sat in back-to-back cubicles at Cramer-Krasselt in the mid '90s -- what are the odds?
Again, it's not like I was incredibly far from home, but four random incidents -- particularly the two coworkers -- seemed too weird to be true.
Milwaukeeans travel well, this much I know. But this many sightings in such a short time? Somewhere, Kevin Bacon is smiling.
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mambo | Aug. 31, 2009 at 4:52 p.m. (report)
We rented a Harley in Maui and stopped at a scenic spot overlooking the ocean. When I took off my helmet, another tourist who was admiring the view called my name. It was a guy with whom I graduated high school....34 years before! Hadn't run into him once in all those years, but there he was in Hawaii.
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HayderHayden | Aug. 27, 2009 at 6:51 p.m. (report)
Next time I'll wear my Kevin Bacon getup.
Great to see you in DC, now let's work on MKE!
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ButterBurger | Aug. 27, 2009 at 2:53 p.m. (report)
"Hey, are you Andy from OnMilwaukee.com?"
Isn't that question usually followed by a punch or "you owe me $20!"
Ha!
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Dilbert | Aug. 27, 2009 at 1:31 p.m. (report)
Freshman year of college I went to Cancun for SB and hooked up with a random guy...Only to find out he too was a student at UWM and was in the afternoon session of my accounting TA's class.
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MKE Luvva | Aug. 26, 2009 at 2:01 p.m. (report)
Once while furniture shopping in Schaumburg, we met a woman who not only lived in the same East Side apartment I had lived in, her bedroom -- she had roommates, like I did -- was the same room that was my bedroom. In a further coincidence the father of one of my roommates at that apartment had lived in the same apartment as a toddler.
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