I rode a bike from Burlington to Coventry and it rained the whole way

Two hundred and some miles on a steel touring bike with a sleeping bag bungeed to the rack like an idiot. I left on a Wednesday. It started raining Thursday morning and did not meaningfully stop.

Everyone remembers Coventry as the mud. I remember it as the last forty miles, when the traffic had stopped moving entirely and I was passing cars — hundreds of them, thousands — and people were leaning out of windows handing me food. A woman gave me a dry pair of socks. A guy in a Bronco gave me an entire rotisserie chicken. I ate it riding.

That was the most purely welcomed I have ever felt by strangers, before or since, and the band hadn't played a note yet.