Video of the first month in USA

Today was a rather special and significant day in the life of the World Harmony Run here in the U.S.A. for a somewhat technical reason. We finally got our GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) monitoring system up and working. Our youngest, and smartest, team member, Pathik from Maryland, worked diligently for many hours to get this handy little device working. It was so generously donated to us over a month ago by our good friends in Princeton, New Jersey, Tom and Ginny. They also kindly hosted us the first night of our journey, which seems like ages ago. This is the first time in the 19 year history of our run that we have a GPS system. It should be quite helpful in keeping us from getting lost or going astray. We shall see what happens.

Making our way into Helena, we had a stop at the local YMCA to meet with some of the staff there. Unfortunately the children were away on a field trip to Butte where ironically we are going tomorrow to march in the July 4th Parade.

We met with some staff members including John, Kelly, Margy and Raye, the membership director. They made a nice welcoming sign for us in the lobby of their great facility and greeted us outside as the local NBC TV station and the Helena Independent Republic Newspaper covered our travels there.

Lisa Wolf from KTVH-12 was very enthusiastic and excited about meeting our international team. She conducted an interview with Julian, one of our American runners and then filmed us running out of the parking lot in a group. Her dedication to her job and her love of covering newsworthy stories with a positive impact really made for a great experience with the media for us. Unfortunately we did not get a chance to see the coverage but it may show up on their website, in which case we will upload it to our website.

We had a delicious and sumptuous meal at the Golden Corral Buffet Restaurant in the evening due to the generosity of Carolyn, the manager. She gave us a huge discount on all the food we could eat with a tremendous variety to choose from. Valerie, our waitress, was very friendly and efficient as she had to keep up with a very large holiday crowd for dinner. They were very happy when we asked them to step outside and hold the Torch for a photo. It was a good break in their super-busy dinner rush for them.

Staying in Helena for the night, we were very fortunate to have four rooms offered by the kindness and generosity of Iris Smith, the General Manager of Super 8 Motel. They have offered us accommodations quite a few times for which we are very grateful.

In the parking lot of the motel we met members of the Greater Kansas City Harley-Davidson Bike Club who have been on the road for ten days. They were quite interested in our journey also. One of the runners, Rick, even took the Torch and ran a few laps around the parking lot. Admiring their shiny and powerful motorcycles, we took a nice photo with these great new friends of ours.

Even though we could not ride the ‘bikes’ with the Torch for the rest of our trip it was a very nice spontaneous meeting for both us and them.

Arpan and the ‘Globally Positioned’ Team Harmony

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