During a recent break home from school, a friend and I biked the east coast of Florida. Leaving our car in a Wendy’s parking lot, we began in St. Mary’s, a town straddling the Georgia border, and in eight days traveled 650 miles to reach Key West, the end of the panhandle and the southernmost point of the United States.

My friend, who I’ll call James, had never been down south before. “What is Bojangles?” he asked me. We agreed that Florida is beautiful in December—flat, cloudless, and so warm it feels sinful to have life so easy. The sun is shining, and everyone talks slower, but the real story is our experience with Warmshowers.com, an obscure internet community you’ve never heard of that makes adventures like ours possible.