I'm talking about Couch Surfing.
What's that, you ask? Well, it starts with this very nifty website where you can sign up and open your couch (or guest bedroom, in our case) for people to sleep on that are traveling through your town. Yep. Strangers.
GASP! You mean, you let people you don't know come and sleep in your house? Aren't you afraid they're going to kill you, steal from you, take your dogs, burn down your house, etc.? Nope. Everyone has to be vouched for and has to register with the website. I'm pretty sure that if there were a serial killer couchsurfing then they would be discovered pretty quickly. Plus, most of the people that are a part of the couchsurfing community are laid-back hippies and do not really fit the typical serial killer stereotype. :) And, sorry for my serial killer talk, I have been addicted to Dexter lately, but that's another post for another time.
Oh, and did I mention that it works both ways? We can also go and couch surf at others' places. I'm trying to get JD to go on a long weekend road trip where we couch surf. We just haven't gotten to that yet.
We HAVE, however, hosted TONS of really cool people: a reporter for the Atlantic who was driving cross-country writing about the recession and how it was affecting the people she met along the way, two guys who were biking across the country, a lady who was biking solo across the country (See a pattern here? We get a lot of cross-country travelers because of being so close to a major highway.), and a couple from Romania. That's just in the last year or so. We've gotten a lot more requests, but because of scheduling conflicts could not make it work.
However, I do not think I've been more excited about a couchsurfing experience than I am about the one we're going to have tonight. These people are our (for a lack of a better word) soulmates. They live completely off-the-grid, in a tiny house (less than 500 square feet), travel the country with their dog, love Jesus, homebrew, and are from Canada. They even spent a year sailing the Caribbean in a handmade boat!! I mean, really! How amazing do they sound? Maybe spending time with them can give us to push towards actually building a container house like we have wanted to do for a couple years.
They're coming this afternoon and are cooking us dinner and then we're just hanging out with them tonight. And I could not be more excited!
I'll post more about the experience in the next few days. But, in the meantime, maybe all of my blog readers will consider couchsurfing themselves. (Hint, hint.) It really is such a worthwhile experience!
