After a long and beautiful week in the enormous state of Montana, we finally entered into North Dakota. The beauty of the landscape continues there, but the temperature is beginning to soar. It was in the 90’s today with strong headwinds. Tomorrow it is supposed to reach 100 F or around 36 C. The challenge now is to stay hydrated and cheerful as we deal with the elements that try to keep us from our appointed tasks.

We had a great stay at the wonderful Miles City KOA Campsite due to the generosity and kindness of Kevin and Lisa. Larry, the previous owner of the KOA who had helped us out in the past, visited us before we left the campsite this morning. His encouragement and friendship was very uplifting to us. He even offered us some wood that we were needing to repair our motor home door, which saved us time and money. These acts of kindness and friendship are essential and well needed in these times of struggle. We are so grateful to people like Larry and Kevin and Lisa who so selflessly offer their support and kindness in their own way.

The media also has been offering much welcomed support when they take time out to cover our events. The Miles City Star newspaper came out to cover the women’s team running through there this morning. In Baker, later in the day, we also had some new coverage with the Fallon County News coming out to take a photo of Atulya, Kaspers and me running down Main St.

Although in this part of Montana the population is slim, there is still interest and enthusiasm about what we are doing. This gives us much joy and reason to go on, even in such difficult weather. Of course, some people may think we are a bit ‘off’ when they see us running down their streets with a lit torch in such hot weather. But the way we take care of the runner, stopping every mile or two with lots of water and allowing rest time between running stretches with air conditioned vehicles, we know that we will get through even the worst heat. The weather has been relatively dry here though, which makes it a bit easier than it will be in the coming weeks when humidity will make it much more difficult to stay cool.

Reaching Bowman, North Dakota this evening, we were not sure exactly where our accommodations were to be. But due to the kindness of a few good souls we were able to get rooms at three local motels. The 4U Budget Host offered us a room as well as

the El-Vu Motel and Trail Motel. Needless to say, we are always very grateful to the managers and owners of these establishments that give us such valuable support.

As we get further into the Midwestern states and closer to home, we are hopeful that the support and enthusiasm for harmony in the world spreading from person to person will be maintained. This will give us the strength and cheerfulness to keep the flame lit until the end.

We know that as we do this, many people in other countries in Europe, South America, Central America, Asia, Australasia, and many other countries are also adding their efforts to the keep the flame of hope for humanity alive, even as we are seeing some of the challenging and disheartening events taking place around us. The momentum of constant efforts for harmony and loving oneness in humanity will definitely overpower the negativity which tries to dishearten us along the way to a better and safer world.

Arpan and Team Harmony

Towards North Dakota

I had a tough job the previous night, I was in charge of the schedule. We had extremely high mileage today 116M, about 10 per each. But there are some other factors to put into consideration. Kaspars, our Lattvian runner, is suffering from allergy, so he is not eager to do more than 8, Pathik, from DC, the youngest in the team got 5, because we do not want him to hate running after being on the WHR. Prabhakar, from Canada, is our newcomer, and got a little less too, because he might need couple of days to get in shape.

So what could the poor schedule maker say? " Sorry, everybody else, you guys gotta do at least 10."

Arpan's weather forecast was very optimistic the the previous day: "Don't worry, it's not gonna be too hot tomorrow." But unfortunately his vision did not come true.

I could use 3 simple adjectives about this day: hot, windy, long. And now I have pretty much described everything. O, sorry, I forgot about the long uphills. The heat and the wind are the two most challenging elements in our life on the road. Fighting with them takes the most energy.

What is the secret of suvival? I guess the biggest secret we have not realized yet, but we do know some tricks which help.

First of all we take it easy. We are not going to break our 2M records on such a day. We have to think the many days which are still ahead. Of course we drink a lot of water, always put suncream on and eat a lot of icecream.

But the greatest help comes from other people: teammembers encourage each other, cars honking when passing by and see a crazy guy with a torch. And also from You, dear interested reader, who are following our life on the web. We know that a lot of people are with us everyday in their hearts. With all this help it is easy to maintain joy and keep running.

In the evening we got another surprise: mosquitoes. But very luckily we did not have to camp out, we got 4 nice hotel rooms.

To put a crown onto this day Anja (with my humble assistance) made a great German pancake dinner. The runners were quite satisfied with the dinner and so were the mosquitoes around us. Everybody being happy we returned to our complimentary rooms to collect some energy for the next hot day in ND.

Even if it was not the most exciting story to read that was all that happened to us today.

Linda Zay

Hungary

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