“You look like you’re going a long way!”

I was stopped at a signpost alongside the bike path, still about 10 miles out of Eau Claire. A smiley woman approached me, introducing herself as Susan. She made gratifying impressed noises as I filled her in on my trip, explaining that I’d been on the road for almost 7 weeks already, en route to Boston.

Susan herself was on a mission to bike all the state trails in Wisconsin. Each summer she and her husband came up from Florida to spend a few months in their home state, and Susan spent the time traveling from town to town, cruising the rail trails. We spent about ten minutes chatting, and just like that, I found myself invited to stay at their home in Lake Geneva- two renovated train cabooses-turned-tiny house. Yes please.

I hadn’t yet decided on my route from Madison to Chicago; should I head east to Milwaukee then down the lake shore, or cut straight across southeast Wisconsin? Susan and her cabooses decided it for me. I’d make for two long days in a beeline for Chicago, with Lake Geneva as my midpoint.

The ride from Madison was the best kind of ride day: sunny, warm-but-not-too-warm,  with several towns dotting the route to break up the day. The kind of rare day that makes me smug thinking about my friends at work, breathing stale office air and chained to email. After a hairy few miles on a busy highway, I sought route advice from a couple sitting outside a bike/coffee shop (best combination!). I spent the rest of the day cruising easy, working my way southeast along the alphabet soup of quiet county roads.

I rolled into Lake Geneva along a short rail trail, which deposited me straight at the cabooses, still on the remaining rails. “You found it!” Susan was waving from the deck between two cabooses- one for her, and one for her husband Nels. “We’ve been married for 30 years, we don’t need to be that close all the time.” A tiny dog leaps up at the gate, licking me ferociously in a terrible imitation of a guard dog.

Sometimes I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until I feel myself relaxing. Riding all day to stay with stranger is one of those times. Will they be nice? Too nice? Overwhelming? Judgy? Racist/homophobic? Unbearably religious? And at the top of my mind after days of terrible news from the Las Vegas shootings: will they be infuriatingly anti-gun control? I know I am supposed to be broadening my horizons on this trip, but there are days when my emotional resilience is too low to be accepting of stances that are at odd with my worldview. Two months into this trip, I’m having more and more of those days. I needn’t have worried.

Susan has the type of exuberant energy that my introvert self usually finds exhausting. But her joie de vivre is so genuine that you can’t help but be energized too. And Nels, a quietly funny semi-retired talent rep (for Cheap Trick!), is her perfect foil. They show me around the two charming cabooses, letting me in on the secret catchphrase for life in a small space: “Excuse me, can you move please?” I am soon fluent.

The evening is a perfect end to a beautiful day. Yummy spaghetti squash, salad, and banana ice cream. Animated conversation (punctuated by Bella’s yips and jolly “excuse me’s). We even ventured into the gun control topic, lamenting the lack of common sense and open-mindedness that surrounds the issue to the point of stalling any and all action. Full and at peace, I went to bed in my caboose, (generously donated by Nels for the night), ready for tomorrow’s surprises.

As they wave me off the next morning (laden down with homemade French toast and plenty of road snacks), I am grateful to have stumbled into such good souls. I needed the boost of beautiful strangers. Especially ones who shared my dismay at the state of gun control in our country, and who offered their humor, generosity, and warmth as an antidote.