Video games lead me to believe that you could just walk into places like gyms or taverns and they'd be full of people who would teach you the ropes at different skills or becoming a pirate or whatever. Sadly modern environments don't promote this, though it did happen to me once.

When I was 18(?) I went to the DMV parking lot to practice the motorcycle license test (painted on the ground). You had to do an obstacle course to get the license. I go the day before the test and there's a bunch of huge biker dudes getting their friends ready and

they see me and wave me over and say LETS GO KID YOU'RE GONNA CRUSH THIS TEST. No introductions. They walked me through the whole thing like it was their plan all along. Thanks huge biker dudes.

actually something like this happened as soon as I got to college! I missed orientation (busy that week of summer) so I had to go to international student orientation. This left me with a week of being in my dorm alone. I wandered around the mostly empty buildings a lot.

One day I came across a guy teaching a class of 5 or 6 people and this is how I discovered Zach Barth and his merry men. Some of you may know the name! He was giving them a small lecture with slides titled "C for fucking noobs" They apparently were on campus early too, and they

liked to get together to teach each other stuff and then play starcraft afterwards. So they were like hey we're gonna play SC soon come back with your laptop, so I did. Zach was very kind to me. He also gave me some laundry detergent in a tennis ball container because I had none.

Zach at the time was determined to invent a game that had shifting rules as you played, called Infinarena I think. Then later Infiniminer. Now many more of course. He kept inviting me to his hangouts but I rarely went because I was shy & dumb, but I'm v grateful that he tried.

I wish there were more ways that people could stumble upon other people working or doing stuff semi-publicly, what I think @context_ing called "working with the garage door up", which is probably the greatest thing about the internet.