Life's little mysteries

**Michaelaw** · 11-09-2009, 11:43 PM

So I thought this might be a fun thread, a place where we could share things, strange goings on, unexplained events and general weirdness

I'll start.

W hen I was twelve or so I had a plastic battery operated toy Tank that I used to play with in my back yard. The yard was all grass save for a concrete path which went down the side of the house about forty feet connecting to the front yard. The backyard was fully surrounded by a six foot high hedge. The back porch of the house had a set of wooden steps leading down to the yard and was nine or ten feet above the yard. One day I had the tank driving itself across the grass but GI Joe was up on the porch sitting quietly in his orange flight suit. As Joe was an integral part of my imaginary game, I raced up the ten or so steps, grabbed him off the porch and flew back down to the yard. The tank was gone! No amount of hours or days of searching ever revealed where the tank had gone. In a perfectly square twenty by twenty foot yard walled in by a six foot hedge my tank had vanished!

**Mad Aussie** · 11-10-2009, 03:52 AM

Originally Posted by Michaelaw

So I thought this might be a fun thread, a place where we could share things, strange goings on, unexplained events and general weirdness

I'll start.

W hen I was twelve or so I had a plastic battery operated toy Tank that I used to play with in my back yard. The yard was all grass save for a concrete path which went down the side of the house about forty feet connecting to the front yard. The backyard was fully surrounded by a six foot high hedge. The back porch of the house had a set of wooden steps leading down to the yard and was nine or ten feet above the yard. One day I had the tank driving itself across the grass but GI Joe was up on the porch sitting quietly in his orange flight suit. As Joe was an integral part of my imaginary game, I raced up the ten or so steps, grabbed him off the porch and flew back down to the yard. The tank was gone! No amount of hours or days of searching ever revealed where the tank had gone. In a perfectly square twenty by twenty foot yard walled in by a six foot hedge my tank had vanished!

Eagle!

**casil403** · 11-10-2009, 08:54 AM

OK I got one....
A few years back, I made a wedding cake for a good friend's daughter. Didn't like the daughter much (complete Bridezilla) but loved the friend so that's why I did it. For their wedding gift, on each table they had a personalized golf ball with both their names and their wedding date. I forgot to take mine home and seeing as I didn't much like the daughter anyway...no big deal...lol! My friend eventually moved away to the coast a year later and we pretty much lost touch shortly after that.
So one day, a couple of years later, I'm out golfing a par 3 at one of the local courses and I hit my ball far off into a gully somewhere so off I go to look for it. I never found my ball but I did find another ball instead....one of their wedding balls!

**Mad Aussie** · 11-10-2009, 08:59 AM

Originally Posted by casil403

OK I got one....
A few years back, I made a wedding cake for a good friend's daughter. Didn't like the daughter much (complete Bridezilla) but loved the friend so that's why I did it. For their wedding gift, on each table they had a personalized golf ball with both their names and their wedding date. I forgot to take mine home and seeing as I didn't much like the daughter anyway...no big deal...lol! My friend eventually moved away to the coast a year later and we pretty much lost touch shortly after that.
So one day, a couple of years later, I'm out golfing a par 3 at one of the local courses and I hit my ball far off into a gully somewhere so off I go to look for it. I never found my ball but I did find another ball instead....one of their wedding balls!

Well unless they had a 1000 guests and most of them were golfers living in that area ... that's a spooky coincidence!

**casil403** · 11-10-2009, 09:09 AM

80 guests maximum and many were not golfers!

**Bambi** · 11-10-2009, 09:24 AM

No explanation for the truck. Perhaps a gopher drove it away?

the golf balls: unless they were high quality, no one would use them (at least that's what my husband says). However if someone were in a fun tournament they might get used. Also, with a fun tournament it's usually 'best ball' which might explain how it got left behind.

Here's what happened to me yesterday: I was walking the dogs on our usual trail by the lake and I see a pile of feathers. Dogs sniffing but not too interested. My first thought was 'duck' (the bird not the action

). but when I got close some of the feathers had a brown and white 'v' pattern and were too large to belong to a duck. I then say a single raptor talon. No blood, no guts, no body, just the feathers and the talon. I think it might be an Osprey.

Anyway, I decided to head back

**Michaelaw** · 11-10-2009, 01:17 PM

Here’s a strange one. Years ago I had the pleasure of living in Edmonton for a few years. I remember one winter it was consistently getting down to -47 at night, cold enough with wind chill that if your car was not plugged in there was just no way it would turn over in the morning. Every night I would plug the car in but in the morning it would not always turn over. It was so cold that even looking under the hood for more than five minutes was painful! The problem was intermittent, sometimes it would go but most times not. I was so frustrated for weeks I’d lift the hood for a few minutes at a time, curse and swear at the cold before beating a retreat back inside to the warmth. I could not find the problem. One night I had a dream, and in that dream I was under the hood and found a small break in one of the three wires that led from the electrical plug to the engine block heater. In the dream, the break was well behind the radiator where a bit of the cable passed. I woke up in the morning, remembered the dream but couldn’t believe it was anything more than wishful thinking, or dreaming in this case. But I was so frustrated by this problem that I donned my Parka, mitts and hat and headed for the car. It wouldn’t start! I lifted the hood and checked the cable for the break I had seen in the dream, sure enough a complete break in one of the three wires but you’d have to know it was there to find it. I fixed the break and had no more trouble. I always wonder about dreams like that, I’ve had a few in my life and they always remind me that the reality I subscribe to is not necessarily the reality that is!

**Greg_Nuspel** · 11-10-2009, 03:19 PM

This week I rebuilt the pallet changer clamping mechanism on one of our machines at work. After placing the 75 Kilo part back on the machine and loosely inserting the bolts. I went to dial in the component. This involves running an indicator over a machined surface to check it's alignment. Over a 30 inch (76 cm) travel the dial did not move, this shows it was within 0.0005"/.00127cm of being perfectly aligned to the axis of travel. I had to check the dial to ensure it was working.

**EJC** · 11-10-2009, 06:29 PM

Originally Posted by Greg_Nuspel

This week I rebuilt the pallet changer clamping mechanism on one of our machines at work. After placing the 75 Kilo part back on the machine and loosely inserting the bolts. I went to dial in the component. This involves running an indicator over a machined surface to check it's alignment. Over a 30 inch (76 cm) travel the dial did not move, this shows it was within 0.0005"/.00127cm of being perfectly aligned to the axis of travel. I had to check the dial to ensure it was working.

That's not weird it just means you are a good machinist. Now we expect all your work to be within that tolerance.

I'm an aircraft mechanic. I was in the cockpit jump seat riding back from Las Vegas to Calgary 10 years ago. We were flying through thin ice cloud at high altitude. The pilots occasionally turned on lights to check the wings for ice accumulation which would light up the whole cloud around us for a few seconds. We knew from listening to air traffic control there were no other aircraft within many miles of us. A few minutes after one of these checks as our eyes became adjusted to the dark the cloud lit up even though our lights were off. Was it the military stalking us or the mother ship signalling?