I was on a National Express coach from Newcastle to Edinburgh, years ago, and a couple stops in this guy stows a mountain bike in the luggage compartment, gets on the bus and it’s pretty full so he ends up sitting next to me.

We chatted for the whole trip, he was telling me about how he’d just spent the last couple of days biking across the country, it was just a really nice pleasant encounter with no awkwardness or anything, which as you can imagine since I’m on Lemmy is not a normal occurrence for me.

At one point I started to feel travel sick, which I think freaked him out a bit at first, but I’d come prepared with some minty sweets to keep it at bay which I of course shared with my new friend.

He got off the coach before we reached Edinburgh, and I remember sitting there watching him retrieve his bike and wave up at me to say goodbye, and I realised…we never even introduced ourselves. Like, not even first names. And I don’t know if it was the mild delirium of the travel sickness but I was just hit with this wave of existential realisation that I’d never see this person again ever in my life.

It wasn’t a romantic thing or anything, he was just canny and it’s weird we didn’t exchange any info!

I think about National Express Bike Bloke on a fairly regular basis. Hope he’s had a happy life.

I was about 13 at the time and on a family vacation. My parents were in a store shopping and I was bored so I went to stand outside. I’m standing out there and this very old, very fat, very short man (he looked a lot like Danny devito) walks up to me and says “Aren’t you just the cutest.” He then pinches my cheek and walks away. I’ll never forget him.

I was 18 and riding on a train in Salt Lake City in 1999 or 2000. There was this girl with her friends on the other end of the car and she was knitting. We made eye contact and she smiled. My friend urged me to go talk to her but I was too intimidated.

One of those “what if” moments…

I was a teenager at Wendy’s with my parents and some homeless looking hippy ahead of me turns around and says “don’t ever change” lol well I guess he was somewhat accurate ahahah!

A homeless man held the door open for me at a pizza place. He didn’t ask for any money or have a sign or anything. Just made himself useful, presumably in hopes that some of the customers would show him an act of kindness in return. It was the first time I gave someone money. He also took a q-tip out of his pocket and somehow used it to relight a half-smoked cigarette out of the ashtray.

When i was fourteen and on vacation in sardegna,on a boat trip with my family i saw this girl i absolutely fell in love with. Never talked to her, never saw her again. Still remember her face.

I once saw this stranger almost trip in public and then look around if anyone saw it.

I did and I will always remember. I think about you every night.

I saw a stranger riding a bicycle along the gravel trail surrounding the reflecting pool of the Lincoln Memorial in DC. He was kitted out like a tour de Francer and was riding way too fast for being in a crowded area. So inevitably some tourist steps into his path. Instead of hitting her he threw the bike to the ground and launched himself over the handlebars, landing with a perfect shoulder roll. He dusted himself off, asked if the tourist was alright, and zoomed off into the twilight with his bicycle.

So he perfectly diffused a dangerous situation that was entirely of his own creation. I’ve never known exactly how to feel about that random dude that was simultaneously super talented and super irresponsible. I’ll never forget that random ass dude and his midlife crisis sprint bike.

I was working at a grocery store, stocking food in the freezer aisle. Along comes a customer, passing by on the other side of the waist-level coolers that divide the aisle in half. She’s unremarkable: middle-aged, white, obese. Indistinguishable from the thousands of other customers I saw in my years there.

So this woman passes me, just looking at the frozen foods. And there, hanging on the back of her shirt, is a lizard. And not just a common garden-variety lizard, but a bearded dragon.

A live adult bearded dragon is just chilling on the back of this customer’s shirt as she does her grocery shopping.

Just. What.

I had so many questions. But I was a socially awkward teenager so I said nothing and never saw the lizard lady again.

I went on a summer camping trip that involved driving through miles of desert in middle of no where USA. There was no water, fuel, or anything for at least 500 miles in any direction. Especially no traffic. Our van came upon a car stranded on the side of the road, two twenty something guys desperately trying to flag us down. We were kinda wary because they were acting off, and we were all women But no way could we leave them, that would be a death sentence. So we told them to climb up in the cargo bay, gave them water and told them we’d drop them off at the next town. A couple hours later they sobered up and explained they had gotten lost coming back from a summer road trip, driven until they had run out of gas. Four hours later of 100 plus degree temperatures and no other cars they had gotten overheated from the sun and had made the monumentally dumb decision to drink the tequila they had brought as a souvenir because it was the only liquid in the car. We took them into town, replenished our water and went on our way. I think about how easily they could have never run into anybody out there before it was too late.

Riding my usual dedicated paved bike trail route the last Saturday of Sept 2021 at 8pm. I see a group of e-bikes about a half mile in front of me and decided to see if I could catch and pass them. I reeled them in until I was within 100 yards, when I see lights moving in ways they shouldn’t with a mix of head and tail lights. Long story short, wear a helmet all the time on a bike, especially when you’re riding with your kids. Their helmets are not the only ones that matter. I will never forget the look that 36yo mother gave me from between the paramedics trying to stabilize her just before she died.