PRESS REPORT
Calgary Sun	August 06, 2003
Travellin' duo collide again
By NADIA MOHARIB Calgary Sun

FOURTH ENCOUNTER...Richard Gregg, left, and David Adie, are friends who met during trips around the world. Gregg has been biking in foreign nations for 13 years and haws bumped into Adie three times.

The third time was a charm, and now two world travellers who keep meeting by chance have hooked up in Calgary for a fourth--planned-- reunion.

The Englishman and the Calgarian first met 10 years ago on the Great Wall of China, and have since encountered each other in Japan, Australia and now Canada.

Calgary runner David Adie met Richard Gregg, a Brit who is biking around the world, on the Great Wall, while Gregg was taking a break from his travels.

That was Sept. 13, 1994.

By chance they met again about a year to the day later in Japan, where Gregg was still pedaling and Adie was running.

"There was this tall Englishman, again," Adie said yesterday.

"I told him if he ever came to Canada to give me a call"

In the mid '90s they met a third time in Australia.

"But I didn't see him face to face, I was running east to west and he was riding north to south, we just missed each other," Adie said.

"I don't think there are coincidences, I think you meet people ... and the reasons will unfold," Adie, 44, said.

"He is one of the people you meet and know for a lifetime."

Adie, who is putting his pal up at his Calgary home this week, found Gregg has a passion for speaking to seniors and sees it as no coincidence that his friend will be speaking at a home his mother lives in.

"We keep being in the same place at the same time and it just happens to be fortuitous as much as anything," Gregg, 39, said.

"In Australia we didn't actually meet, he just happened to be there at the same time.

"I was trying to find him for ages on Internet searches and had just found out he had been in the same country and had run coast to coast and kicked my butt there."

The pair planned to meet again in Calgary--although the Brit didn't travel here specifically to see his friend, but as part of his global travels.

"Sometimes, whether you call it karma or a higher power or whatever, things seem to happen for the good," Gregg said.

"He's one of the most inspirational people I've ever heard of, let alone met ... I knew I was planning on coming to Canada and thought this would be a great guy to meet again."