Crashing on random couches and offering futons to roving strangers are acts usually reserved for cash-strapped and wayward college-aged travellers. But a number of middle-aged Ottawa residents are blissfully defying this stereotype.

Creating a profile on couchsurfing.org-- an international site that allows you to find foreign sofas to sleep on or to open your home to strangers -- is often the first step for frugal students embarking on the essential post-university "freedom" trip. Created in 2003, the site now has 2.3 million couch surfers, 70 per cent of whom are between the ages of 18 and 29. With numbers like these, couch surfing and hosting has gained a reputation as an ideal accommodation option for thrifty young travellers willing to sleep on a stranger's floor.

But in just over a year, 50-year-old marketing manager Denise Sarazin has let between 35 and 40 travelling strangers sleep in her home.

"I've met so many wonderful people," she says. "I have friends all over the world now. I think my family and friends find it a little bizarre," she laughs.

"Why would you want to have strangers in your house?"

Sarazin, who discovered couch surfing through her now 24-and 21-year-old daughters, calls the act of hosting a "real cultural exchange" and is part of a small percentage of mid-life surfers taking up couch-to-couch travelling, or offering their sofas to strangers.

Sarazin's decision to create a couch-surfing profile and offer to host travellers coincided with major changes in her life.

In early 2009 "I was going through a little bit of a rough time, I guess, with my younger daughter gone (and) my other daughter was saying she was moving out," recalls Sarazin. "I had this empty nest thing going on."

Her first guests arrived in May of that year.

"By July I was getting request after request and I have to say that from mid-July to mid-November there were only two weeks where there wasn't some couch surfer in my house."

For Andrew Marcel, the act of joining couch surfing was also spurred by a life-altering event. After 20 years of service, the 52-year-old was laid off from his job at Nortel last year.

He transformed his misfortune into an opportunity to "do something therapeutic" and embarked on a six-week cross-Canada motorcycle trip, couch surfing the entire time. Marcel stayed with 17 hosts in total, which sometimes meant sleeping on the well-worn sofas of college students.

Since so many couch surfers are between 18 and 29, Marcel's experience is common for those surfing or hosting later in life. Generally there is an age gap -- often an entire generation -- between them and their guests or hosts.

That doesn't bother Sarazin at all. "What I find about couch surfing is it erases generation gaps," she says.

"I've done all kinds of activities with kids in their early 20s. It's just wonderful. Maybe I wouldn't go necessarily on a pub crawl -- I'd feel a little odd -- but there are a lot of things that you can do together."

An avid canoeist, Sarazin often takes guests on the water with her. She also incorporates the surfers into her daily life -- inviting one to a family wine tasting and another to Easter dinner.

"I've really been acclimatizing (my relatives) to couch surfing. Quite often when couch surfers come, they end up meeting someone in my family. I've convinced my parents, who are in their 70s, that they should do this at some point."

Guests at Sarazin's house aren't relegated to the couch. They get their own private bathroom and bedroom, and are often provided with breakfast.

Sarazin herself has yet to stay in a stranger's home, but admits she would give it a try under the right circumstances.

"I'd like to. I have to say though, I'd want to couch surf with someone who has amenities like I offer. I've actually done a lot of couch searches ... but often it's students that literally have a couch ... No thanks."

Marcel says he plans to do more couch surfing, and when he does, he will look for hosts closer to his age. Finding hosts in their 50s isn't always an easy task, but Marcel says he understands why more people in their mid-life don't travel this way.

"People my age like the Holiday Inn experience -- every room identical, no surprises. I don't want the Holiday Inn experience."

Damita Wijay, a 40-year-old couch surfer and host who lives on a farm just outside of Ottawa, has stayed with about a dozen strangers in Canada and India, and has played host to even more.

He says he approaches couch surfing as "an experiment in hospitality" and argues that staying in someone's home, or having them stay in yours, is a richer experience than staying in an anonymous hotel.

"For me, travelling is more than looking at buildings." says Wijay. "It's seeing how people live and (realizing that) even though there are differences, we're essentially the same kind of human beings. We have things to celebrate and things we struggle with."

Sarazin notes that another reason for hesitancy on the part of older hosts and surfers could be a concern for personal safety.

"I have people always telling me: aren't you afraid? ... And I'll say 'no.' As far as I'm concerned, what I love about couch surfing is that it counteracts that whole culture of fear.

"I refuse to be fearful. I think the type of people that naturally gravitate toward couch surfing, they're not a cause for concern for me. I think that they are people who want to meet people. They're interested in a different type of travel experience."

Wijay, too, says he understands peoples' fear, but doesn't subscribe to their worries.

"It can be a good experience to have that fear and go ahead and host someone anyhow, and have that fear transformed," he says.

Though only 7.4 per cent of registered users on couchsurfing.orgare between the ages of 40 and 60, Wijay, Marcel and Sarazin say they've found that there's a mentality that accompanies couch surfers of all generations.

"It defies age category," says Marcel. "It defies social and economic brackets. It is a mindset of openness, it is a mindset of curiosity, it is a mindset of generosity and a trust in your fellow man."

Amanda Shendruk is a University of Ottawa student who says she enjoys finding unique ways to travel and has experienced the many advantages of couch surfing.