The Kindness of Strangers

We have had so much kindness from strangers it is absolutely unbelievable and world affirming. People we have never met before have given us free food, let us stay at their places for free, bought us meals, cooked us dinner, fixed our bikes and driven us around to show us wonders we would have otherwise missed out on.

As Sophie already mentioned we were given food by some fellow hostel-ers. But since Pigeon Point and the issue with the bike we were fortunate enough to bump into Wyatt. Wyatt let us stay at his place, hang out with his friends, do laundry, use WiFi and helped us out in every way possible so that we had a fab time in Santa Cruz. I’m not sure we’ll ever get to repay Wyatt, and in fact all the people that were round there. We loved the stories from Tony, the hospitality from Mimi, the puns from Mike, the chats with Desmond and Lis, the proper tea from Wendy and the cycling advice from Beau; those folks in Santa Cruz were just plain brilliant. Thank you.

But it didn’t stop there. We met our next Warm Showers host and had a beer with Colton and a walk round the town. It was great to break the ice and it made it all the nicer then we finally arrived in Monterey, it felt like visiting old friends. We also, really randomly, bumped into one of other hostel-ers from Pigeon Point in the Post Office. We had a brief “oh my, what are the chances?!” moment before Sue invited us to go to visit the Red Woods in Henry Cowell State Park. As a brief aside, Red Woods are massive; but these Red Woods are skinny compared to the Giant Red Woods in the Avenue of Giants, it’s a shame we’ll miss them, but we were told these we some of the tallest. It was such a beautiful area and we spent about 4 or 5 hours just walking around and for a wee bit we even had a tour guide to highlight some of the more interesting bits and tell us some history of the park.

And finally there was the amazing Paul at Rock Lobster. He was the one that diagnosed the issue with my bike in the first place, pointed out a place to eat and suggested free WiFi at the library (without which we wouldn’t have met Wyatt, which meant we wouldn’t have bumped into Sue and Beau wouldn’t have made route suggestions). But when the part finally arrived from good O’Blighty he helped me fit it and didn’t charge me a bean; I couldn’t believe it.

Coming off my bike really annoyed me (mainly because I shouldn’t be coming off my bike; Thomas W K Passmore be better!!!) but I am so glad I did. That one little mishap really highlighted the wonderful nature of people and that, if you are open to it, there is tremendous good in people.