It was August 19th and I was in Boulder, Colorado. I fell in love with Boulder and didnt want to leave. At the same time I was a bit homesick and my birthday was coming up in 3 days. The next major town was Madison, Wisconsin which is a 1000 mile trek through the midwest!

The problem was, I didnt know a single person in Madison and I definitely didnt want to spend my birthday by myself. So i put a few messages up on Tumblr, Facebook, Couchsurfing and began my drive through Nebraska and Iowa.

I arrived in Madison on my birthday (August 22) and received an email from someone who read my message on Couchsurfing. He told me that him and a few of his friends wanted to meet up and take me out for my birthday.

These are people I never met in my entire life! They thought my journey was cool and wanted to meet me. At 7:00 PM, After playing on State street, I packed up my piano and went over to this restaurant to meet my new friends.

We had such an amazing time! They had all these questions for me and they were very open and interesting people. I told them some stories from my 5 months journey. We had a few drinks, ate dinner…

I went to the bathroom and when I got back they surprised me with a cake and candle! I was flabbergasted! Here I was spending my birthday with 6 random people I had just met off the internet and it was one of the greatest birthday’s I’ve ever experienced!

The Moral: The world is filled with people from all backgrounds who are open to new experiences and who want to meet other people. Never judge a book before you’ve read it.