Warm Showers

Caroline and Liz ready to head out for the day

Last night we hosted our first guests via www.warmshowers.org, which is an online hub for pairing cycling tourists up with people willing to host them.

When I first heard about the idea I thought it was cool, but it took me a while to actually get around to investigating it and signing up. Last month I received an email asking if we'd be willing to be hosts and we said yes.

Our guests for the evening were Caroline from Montreal and her friend Liz, from Amherst, MA. They spent the holiday weekend doing a tour from Burlington down to Middlebury;  Middlebury to us here in Waitsfield; and then rounding it off with the trip back up to Burlington via Rt. 2 and the River Road up through Richmond.  They couldn't have picked a more perfect weekend to do a cycling tour around central Vermont; the weather has been incredible and the leaves are quite something.

Caroline and Liz arrived somewhere between 5-6 and we of course availed them of our warm shower and bath, which they gladly took advantage of.  We cooked up some flatbreads and they helped out and we had a nice dinner together. The cool thing is that simply by being cyclists on a trip, we've got quite a lot in common, so it was easy to make conversation.

On Mondays and Wednesdays Nancy and I normally commute to Red Hen together (I turn around in Moretown and double back home). This morning we were joined by our new friends and it offered a nice twist to our routine. It was also cool to share a bit of a trip with them.

I look forward to both hosting folks in the future, but also taking advantage of this cool resource as a cyclo-tourist.  Vive la internet!