It’s a question that is familiar to many of us “Is that a Bike Friday you’re riding?” A welcome question that so often leads to a warm-hearted conversation and sometimes even a life long friendship, However this next encounter is such an extraordinary turn of fate that it seems implausible and it came about through just such a question…
“It all began, as many good stories do, with a bicycle…
About two months ago, I was on my daily, morning pilgrimage: a winding bike ride near San Francisco through the Marin Headlands to the top of Hawk Hill. My ride of choice is a striking, bright purple New World Tourist (NWT), a Bike Friday. It’s a distinctive, foldable machine, and every now and then it attracts a look or two.
As I reached the summit, still breathing hard from the climb, I heard a call from about twenty yards away. A nice, slightly older couple was looking my way. “Is that a Bike Friday you’re riding?” the lady inquired.
“It sure is!” I replied, and coasted over to say hello.
It turned out that they too were “Bike Friday Nuts” (BFNs). They proudly shared that they also owned Bike Fridays (both their bikes are also of the NWT variety) and had used them for international tours. As we started deep-diving into the glorious details of these unique bikes, I mentioned that just a few months earlier, my purple companion had been with me on a trip to Israel.
It was then that the first impossible thread was pulled. The gentleman, Luis, mentioned that they lived in Israel for a period. When I mentioned my college years in Jerusalem over 35 years ago, “Wait a minute,” the gentleman interjected. “I was teaching in the economics department there over thirty-five years ago.”
“That’s the department I was attending!” I laughed.
We stood there, two strangers who had just discovered an utterly improbable shared past on opposite sides of the globe. While Luis was never my professor, he taught at my university, in my department, at the very same time as I was attending school there!
The conversation continued, the energy crackling with the fun of a shared history and this unique, improbable coincidence. It was then that I mentioned that my next big Bike Friday adventure is a cycling trip to the Baltic States, and that my main goal was to visit the ancestral village of my paternal grandmother, a small place in Lithuania with a population of about 3,000 when she lived there in the early 1900s.
The wife, Miriam, asked for the name of the place. “Well, you probably don’t know it. It is this tiny village, and the name is Kelmė, or Kelem” I told her.
The change in her demeanor was immediate and profound. Her eyes widened, a look of astonishment was washing over her face.
“My father’s family,” she whispered, “is also from Kelmė.”
This tiny village, located over two hundred miles northeast of Vilnius in a dense, wooded part of Lithuania – what were the odds that two random BFNs on the top of Hawk Hill would share that exact, incredibly obscure point of origin? I was utterly astounded – and still am.
Then, I followed up with the question that, I thought, would simply cap off a great coincidence. “What was your family’s last name?”
“Krubelnik,” she replied.
It was like a punch to the gut (of the good kind, the surprising one, not the painful variety). Twenty years earlier, between two different work projects, I had some time to kill, so I conducted my own genealogical research into Kelmė. In doing so, I had found an old book about Kelmė (Uprooted Tree) documenting that my own family line, the Friedmans, had married into the Krubelnik family.
This lovely woman, whom I had met solely because we both owned a particular, foldable bicycle, was, in fact, a distant relative. The connection was spurred by an unusual, some would say wacky, niche passion: Bike Friday. This was nothing short of unbelievable.
Fast-forward to yesterday. My beautiful wife and I drove to the couple’s lovely home in Napa to finally compare notes. I brought my family trees, old family photos, and more; Miriam had hers. We spread out the documents and charts, comparing names, dates, and stories.
As we traced the lines of the Friedmans and the Krubelniks intertwining generations ago in that tiny Lithuanian village of Kelmė, I shook my head in disbelief (note, I am still in utter disbelief).
The world is vast, but sometimes, an improbable chain of events can prove just how small (you could say foldable) it truly is.
100% true story!
Best,
Ofer Yitzhaki
San Francisco”
Our thanks to Ofer and Miriam for sharing their incredible story and photos with us. If you have your own story you like to share with us we would love to hear it… Just email marketing@bikefriday.com
