San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
AIRBNB FOR CYCLISTS.
Coasting in to a residential neighborhood in Davis on a steamy summer evening, we had just begun looking for a specific house address when a friendly looking man on a bike pedaled up to us, as if he’d been waiting on our arrival.
“You must be Lily and Brian!” he said, motioning us back to his home. “I’m Mark!”
We first signed up on WarmShowers.org in the days leading up to an 850-mile bicycling trip through Northern California this past summer. At the last minute, we decided to depart from Davis, but we were loath to add another motel or Airbnb to our travel budget.
Enter WarmShowers, which is like Airbnb for cyclists, but without the cash transfer. The volunteer-run website connects cyclists who need a place to crash for the night with cycling enthusiasts who have spare bedrooms, vacant couches or backyard camping spots. And it’s free.
Today, the site has more than 110,000 members, with a little over half in Europe, 30 percent in North America and the rest spread out in small numbers worldwide. A few countries — Vanuatu, Djibouti, Cape Verde — each have a single intrepid WarmShowers member.
This was our first time as WarmShowers guests. By chance, Mark Tebbutt and his wife, Maria, were first-time hosts.
Arriving at the Tebbutts’ ranch house, we discovered the four of us had different expectations about our visit. Mark and Maria assumed we’d brought gear to camp in their backyard; we were hoping for a room indoors. After some quick negotiation, they set us up in a small spare bedroom and lent us towels and blankets — everything we needed for a comfortable night’s stay.
Once settled in, we got something we haven’t experienced on Airbnb stays in years, as the novelty of connecting with strangers has worn off for hosts and guests alike: relaxed conversation over beers. Our shared love of bicycling and touring made this effortless. We shared trip stories, compared the bike politics of our respective cities and dug deep in the weeds of favorite routes (all the way down to individual turns). Coincidentally, Mark and Maria would almost cross our paths later in our trip; we both had planned rides in Etna (Siskiyou County).
In the morning, Mark and Maria sent us on our way with snacks and good wishes for the road. Riding out of Davis into the flat farm fields of the Sacramento Valley, we had to remind ourselves that we had only just met Mark and Maria, and that we hadn’t paid them for their hospitality.
The experience has changed the way we think about possible bike tours. Perusing the map on the WarmShowers site, each bicycle wheel icon marking an active host starts to seem like a friendly and affordable destination for a future trip.
Ken Francis, a three-year member of the WarmShowers board and frequent host, says instant friendships are a common part of the experience. He hosts guests on both Airbnb and WarmShowers at his home in Long Beach, sometimes on the same night. “With Airbnb, you give them a key, and they’re set,” he says. “WarmShowers guests want to share amazing stories, get some human contact. I’ll take them kayaking. We’re like a family.”
As early as the 1970s, bicycle enthusiasts in the U.S. compiled lists of willing hosts across the country based on ads placed in cycling magazines. WarmShowers emerged in 1993, when veteran bike tourists Terry Zmrhal and Geoff Cashman began organizing and updating the lists and photocopying them for other bike tourists. In 2005, the list moved online and became WarmShowers. Membership has grown every year since.
In the peak of summer touring season, the site gets 160-200 new signups a day, Francis says. One of Francis’ duties is helping vet new members, weeding out spammers and non-cyclists. There are, for instance, other organizations devoted to connecting touring motorcyclists and hikers, and WarmShowers is committed to remaining exclusive to bicyclists. Francis emphasizes that he has nothing against the non-cyclists who sometimes try to sign up but sees WarmShowers’ success as grounded in the built-in camaraderie and specificity of bicyclists helping other bicyclists.
We certainly felt this bond. Soon after our stay, Maria told us that she and Mark weren’t worried about welcoming strangers into their home with WarmShowers. It turns out they were hosting in part to assess the possibility of being guests themselves for a later bike trip they were planning. The leap of faith the platform requires is a feature, not a bug, she says. Guests and hosts “both have to be open and trusting.”
“Anything that brings light to what our transportation options are, I want to help,” says Maria, a founder of Bike Campaign, a Davis bike advocacy group.
Plus, she adds, “Ax murderers don’t tend to travel by bike.”