Erin Davies could have stopped at any other hotel, but she didn’t.

She chose a Microtel one hour from where she was speaking at an event the next day in Monterey, Calif.

Davies went inside her room, showered and came back out to her car in the parking lot, where she discovered one of the nearly 400 letters she has come across in the past seven years.

Placed under her windshield wiper, this note read, “Thank you so much for what you just did. You’re probably wondering what exactly it is you did. Being extremely depressed, I was about to go in here and cry my eyes out and hurt myself. But then I saw your car and it made me smile. It was a little ray of sunshine on my cloudy day.”

What is seemingly a rainbow on four wheels, also serves as Davies’ vehicle, a 2002 Volkswagen Beetle coated in the flag symbolizing gay pride with the word “fagbug” plastered across the driver-side and passenger doors.

“Fagbug”  has influenced thousands of people in the past seven years, something Davies said the world needs.

“It’s good to be a part of something that can give people hope in a world that’s kind of dark at times,” Davies said.

The car’s name is a tribute to the incident that happened to it on April 18, 2007, when Davies was a graduate student at Russell Sage College in Troy, N.Y., someone spray-painted the word “fag” and “u r gay” on the driver-side window and hood, respectively.

All of this came from Davies sporting a rainbow bumper sticker on her Beetle.

Rather than remove the vandalism, Davies elected to leave it on the car. She took a stance that homophobia is not just her problem — it is everyone’s.

Davies then made the decision to use the vandalism to begin a two-month road trip, propelling her life as a speaker and advocate for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

That two-month road trip has transformed into a seven-year journey that has led Davies to all 50 states and to the campus of Eastern Wednesday, where she spoke to students at an open house in the Cultural Center.

“She is so supportive of people with all different viewpoints,” said Kyle Workman, a senior English major. “Whether they agree with her or not, she still supports them while working toward a good cause.”

In the first two months, Davies visited 11 states, leading her to create her very first documentary, “Fagbug,” chronicling her journey.

After 365 days of nationwide touring with the vandalism still more than apparent, Davies went for change.

That’s when the new-look Beetle was born.

She took the idea from Fagbug stickers she would sell featuring a Beetle with the rainbow flag on it and the name Fagbug across the side and decided to replicate it onto her real life model.

Then her journey took off.

Her journey eventually turned into 48 states in by 2010 and Hawaii and Alaska within the following three years.

On Wednesday, Eastern students were able to see her second documentary “Fagbug Nation” which told the story of her struggling to get the Beetle to the remaining two states of Hawaii and Alaska.

“It’s astonishing that she is strong to empower so many people, whether they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender,” said Nicole Rosenberg, a senior family and consumer sciences major. “It’s really great to see what she is doing.”

In the seven years she has been traveling, Davies has had 13 more vandalism incidents with her car, whether it be keyed, egged, spit on or mud thrown on it.

Another anonymous vandal also spray-painted “faggots and dykes need to die” on the campus of State University of New York at Plattsburgh.

But the number of positives far outweighs the negatives in Davies’ experience. She has received 381 letters left on her car — only five have been negative.

She once found another letter on her car in Troy.

It read, “I sometimes run past your car when I’m out running. I told myself the next time I did, I would breakup with my perfect boyfriend and tell him the truth — I’m gay. Here goes nothing. Thank you, Fagbug.”

The overwhelming feeling of changing someone’s life even without ever meeting them is one of the experiences Davies said she is most thankful for, even if that means getting criticized by 100 people and only helping one person.

Perhaps Davies also needs to change people’s lives the way she does. At least Workman believes so.

“She has to do this,” Workman said. “If she doesn’t, nobody else will.”

Anthony Catezone can be reached at 581-2812 or ajcatezone@eiu.edu.