At one point a lady stopped her car, rolled the window down and promptly told us: “You need to find shelter now! There’s a storm warning and it will hit us any minute now! You can come to my place, I live a few miles down the road. But get off the road!”
We thought she was overreacting but decided to look for an eave to stand under. As luck would have it there was a school building waiting for us on top of the next hill.
As we were pushing our bikes over the lawn we saw a man already standing where we intended to seek shelter, but the space seemed big enough for the three of us, so we asked if our presence would bother him.
Without hesitation he invited us to share the doorway, and so began a short but sweet meeting of two worlds. Nelson, amish by birth, born as I was in 1972, told us about his life and customs, and we shared with him some travel stories.
Once the rain turned into a mere trickle we moved on with a little bit of a better understanding of the area and the people living there than before the downpour.
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We also learned about an interesting difference between the Amish in Pennsylvania and Indiana: The Amish in Indiana ride bikes, while the ones in Pennsylvania use scooters.