True Story! Ever experience something like this?

Along the theme of "divine intervention" we have going here - I have 2 stories to share.

In 1996, an old friend that I grew up with and went to college with called me up from his new home in Texas and told me that he had an extra ticket for several events at the Olympics in Atlanta and asked me if I wanted to go. Of course I said yes! He only asked that I rent a car big enough for 4 people and that I pick him up at the Atlanta airport.

So I get all excited and everything organized, planning to allow plenty of travel time (I was shooting for getting to the airport 1-2 hours early). The day I was supposed to leave, everything that could go wrong went wrong. The friend who was supposed to take me to pick up the rental had an early morning meeting so I was an hour late getting to the rental car company. No real problem yet because I had plenty of time built in. When I got to the car rental place (was using one of the cheap ones) - they had lost my reservation and didn't have any unreserved 4 doors. After 45 minutes I looked over the desk and pointed out that my name was there on one of those reserved cars- it was just very badly misspelled. Now - I'm a little worried but I head off in a run. I stop by AAA to pick up my maps (for the younguns' on the board - in the days before MapQuest, when going to an unfamiliar city you could call AAA and they would have little packets with Maps and directions for everything you needed waiting for you). So at AAA I ran in, they gave me the packet, I got about 5 miles down the road and realized they had given me someone else's maps - so I had to turn around and go back. My day was not off to a good start. So I hit the interstate, pushing the speed limit as much as I dared. Things went pretty well until I hit Charlotte. I hit the worst road construction traffic I have ever seen. The traffic jam went from Charlotte,NC until almost Greenville, SC. By this time I am very late. I called my friend's voicemail several times expecting him to call me on a layover - but I never heard from him. By the time I got to Atlanta - I was in afternoon rush hour. Finally, I made it to the airport almost 3 hours after my friends plan was supposed to land. Still I had not heard from him. So, I am trying to find a parking place and figure out what to do and my cell phone rings. My friend's first plane was delayed by a couple of hours and he was running too hard to make the connecting flight that he didn't get a chance to call me. He was worried that I had been sitting at the airport all that time. So he got his luggage and still in rush hour traffic traffic we made our way to the hotel. Naturally, the hotel messed up our reservations. After much ado at the front desk, we got it all straightened out. We had tickets for a ceremony that night - but by this time this had been one long, frustrating day. The other 2 of this group had flown in the previous day from Oregon and had been going all day - and still recovering from the time difference. So, we decided to skip the cermony that night. We figured we'd go to bed early and get an early start in the morning since we were going to early events.

The next morning as everyone was up and getting ready - someone had the TV on watching the news. The ceremony that we skipped is the one that was bombed.

OK - enough for tonight. I'll add the other story tomorrow.