Decided to do my last remaining make-up coop shift on a Friday night, just to see what kind of people work there on Friday nights. They called themselves losers and, as expected, were all super nice. One girl, who was new, was from New Zealand, and there was also a talented-and-gifted program math teacher, with gauges in his ears and covered in seaman tattoos, he got his masters degree and became a teacher after spending his first life in the Navy, and another couple, who worked the same shift together, biked from Seattle to here in 9 weeks last summer.

Their takeaways – go around North Dakota because roads there are super dangerous (oil boomtowns and extremely high crime) – they did so – but the rest of the country was wonderful, and the overwhelming majority of people they encountered unexpectedly warm, friendly and repeatedly going out of their way to help a pair of cyclists from NY – and it didn’t matter to them one bit that one of them was black.