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A YOUNG GIRL TRAVELING ALONE could raise a few eyebrows in surprise, if not in concern. I mean, if it's midnight and you're trying to look like you fit in with the burly regulars at the truck stop that you're in, and the man behind the counter asks you if you're old enough to be drinking coffee—well, that could be inviting trouble.
      Two weeks after meeting Madame Cora, I was in Florida, with time to kill before the next bus arrived to take me to my next destination. I stuffed my backpack into the station locker, and started walking around the city. A couple of hours later, the bus station was nowhere in sight. It was getting dark, and the streets were frighteningly empty. A cab drove by and stopped at a corner. I ran up and asked for directions.
      "You're pretty brave to be wandering around downtown at night," he said. I smiled and shrugged, explaining to him that I was on my way out of town and needed a ride back to the station. He looked at me up and down, like he was sizing me up.
      "Well, walking is no way to see the city," he said, finally. "You look like the adventurous type, so if you'll take the chance, you can sit with me while I take passengers."
      Nobody knew where I was. I was traveling alone, a girl barely above five feet tall; he was a big black man, the proverbial stranger you're not supposed to take candy from. I shrugged and climbed into the passenger's seat.
      "My name's Johnny," he said, offering his hand. "I'll just make a quick drive through Taco Bell, and then I'll show you the city."
      He laughingly refused my offer to pay for his dinner, and as we drove up to the take-out window, he sang to the bewildered waitress, "I can't get no/ Satisfaction." Needless to say, I liked the guy.
      He took me around Jacksonville and through some of the suburbs on an impromptu tour. The harbor at Jacksonville Landing; the railroad tracks that were home to hoboes; his apartment building from where he could sometimes watch manatees play in the water.
      "You're like this person who, if you hold out your hand, birds will come to perch," he said, and I laughed off his flattery.
      "No, really," he suddenly turned serious. "Sometimes, this isn't going to pay off. You'll get hurt. Life will bite."
      We finally drove up to the Greyhound station, and I gathered myself to go. Before I got out, I told him, "Yeah, but if I kept my guard up all the time, I'd never have gotten into your cab, and we would ever have been friends."
      He grinned as I got out of the cab. "Hey! Stay cool, okay?" With that, he took off, while I waved to him from the empty street.
      I wasn't carrying anything by way of defensive weaponry: no guns, no knives, not even Mace. But I was armed, even when I didn't know it at the time. A rule of the road: If you're nice to people, they'll be nice to you. It saddens me to think that common decency is so uncommon that it can disarm people by surprise. Still, given a choice, I choose kindness as my defense. It's the only weapon that doesn't hurt you, too.

TRAVELING BROADENS YOUR HORIZONS, it is often said. In those two months, I followed tourist trails, too, and saw places whose pictures go into books and postcards. But there are stories from the road that aren't told in books, pictures of people that will never make it into postcards. And there is an incredible beauty in that, too.
      Backpacking, running the streets, visiting the "wrong" side of towns, witnessing moments from other people's lives—there's vert little glamour there, but it clears the mind. You step away from your own life for a while, forget yourself for a moment. But when you return, you will find that you understand yourself a bit more.