We started the day with a beautiful sunrise through the mist over the lake. After breakfast we took leave of our kind host and good friend Annie and headed out to the road. We had a busy day lined up...

We met these folks at a local garage on one of our laybies. They were quite happy to hold the torch.

On our way through Springville the local paper stopped us for a brief interview. Thank you so much for helping to spreading harmony!

Our first stop was Orchard Park Boys and Girls Club where the children were waiting for us with their own paper harmony torches and big paintings with messages of welcome and peace.

Some of them were a bit young to be able to guess all our countries, but none of them had any trouble at all running with the torch.

Each one had a turn at running around the gym with it, and each one finished their circuit with a huge smile of delight.

See, being a World Harmony runner is really great fun!

When we invited them to ask questions, one child asked a new question which we haven't been asked before - "How long will it take to have world harmony?" A very good question, but one we couldn't answer.

But we did agree to keep running until it comes. Our thanks to Nancy Herdie for having us visit.

Our next meeting was again at a the YMCA in Cazenovia.

The children were gathered in an upstairs room overlooking the very nice swimming pool. This group was a bit older and they soon guessed all our countries correctly.

Some of the councillers also got quite enthusiastic about the game. The children asked quite a few good questions about the Run, and for the second time today we again heard this new question - "How long will it take for world harmony to happen?"

The whole group, children and councillers, passed the torch from hand to hand with tremendous sincerity.

By now we were all feeling like old friends, so we took a big group photo on the stairs before we took our leave. Some of the councillers have already volunteered to run with us next time - we look forward to it!

The Cazenovia group is an offshoot of Ellicott-Masten Family YMCA in Buffalo, where we had our next meetings.

We met the kids in two separate groups according to their age.

The first group were younger, aged 5-8 years. They were gathered in the gym hall sitting on the gym mats. The echo in the room made it a bit more difficult to have a lot of conversation, but these kids were so sweet and they were very enthusiastic in running laps of the gym with the torch.

We also all made a big circle and held hands while the torch was passed around the circle. Some of them were hugging us as we finally said goodbye.

We went upstairs and outside to meet the second group who were older - aged 11-15.

These big kids didn't have much trouble guessing our countries and we all had a lot of fun together.

They had their own mini relay up and down the playing field, and everyone passed the torch from hand to hand around the group.

Our thanks go to Joelle Rowe for organising these three meetings.

Our final meeting of the day was at the famous Niagara Falls. Members of the Canadian World Harmony Run team came to meet us at the middle of Rainbow Bridge.

Some of them had driven for many hours to come and meet us at this point where our US run touches the border with Canada. They were waiting for us as we reached the middle of the bridge with their own Canadian torch and the two teams switched torches for the run back across the bridge into the US.

We would have liked to go a bit further into Canada with them but this meeting was fairly spontaneous and some of our runners from Eastern Europe didn't have visas to enter Canada.

So the Canadian team very graciously came to them, and what's more they brought with them a delicious dinner from Sivaram's famous Toronto restaurant, Annapurna. Needless to say, our US team appreciated it very enthusiastically!

As if this wasn't enough, our Canadian team-mates had prepared an individual gift bag for each of us. Thank-you for coming so far to support us and for all your enthusiasm and kindness.

I was very happy to see my friend Karnayati amongst the Canadian group. We ran together on the European team through Ireland, Scotland and England back in early March when the snow was still deep on the Scottish hills - we had a happy reunion in the warmer climes of Niagara.

We were also delighted to see two surprise visitors from New York - Ashok and Mayura.

As well as meeting old friends and eating good food, we found time of course to look at the falls and take a few photographs.

On our way our of the falls we met a large group from Ecuador. They were on a 3 month work program in the states and were doing a little sight seeing. Thanks for taking the time to pass around the torch.

And finally, after a busy but satisfying day, we headed back to our campground to the happy discovery that our tents had in fact withstood the earlier torrential rain. Thank you KOA Niagra for giving us a discount.

Phewww...it really was a big day!

– Kokila and Atulya

---

Distance: 52 miles

Team Members:
Atulya Berube (San Diego), Drsalu Gruenstaeudel (Austria), Vladimir Salnacov (Moldova), Mark Collinson (England), Kokila Chamberlain (England), Surya Smolennikova (Russia), Kshetragna Ulanova (Russia), Dima Grygorievski (Ukraine), Sukhada Korshunova (Russia), Nisanga (Bosnia)

Harmonemail:
You can send a message to the runners or read the messages.

Gallery: See more images!

< USA 05 Aug

USA 7 August >