At long last the day had come to take the run on the road. The night before we had enjoyed a pre-dinner reception with Hillary Swank, our guest of honor, followed by a family style get-together at the Salmon Dinner restaurant in downtown New York. Temperatures had been in the mid-eighties all week and the weather forecast called for another sweltering hot day. Brynn and Sean were selected to be on the Today Show at 9:30 in the morning and were picked-up by a limousine service for the occasion. The rest of us, dressed in orange and black, walked the four blocks down 42nd avenue to the United Nations building in full anticipation of the day ahead.
The opening ceremony took place on the UN lawn, a nicely groomed grassy field, bordered on the street side by large deciduous trees, yet dwarfed by the tall skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan, and yielding on the far side to the banks of the East river. Sculptures depicting messages of global peace complimented the United Nations grounds with hundreds of colorful flags of all the nations in the world waving in the wind, as if to bid the runners “G-dspeed”. In front of a sizable crowd of hundreds of supporters, press and curious onlookers, Mary Chervenak, the first global messenger to run, took to the streets to kick-off the ninety-five day long journey around the world. After years of preparation by Jin Zidell and other senior members of the blue planet foundation a long awaited dream shifted gears from the planning phase into the awareness- and fundraising phase.
The runners, one by one had been announced and called-up to the podium and from there, witnessed the moment we had all waited and prepared for. As Mary descended the podium-steps the crowds came alive and sent her on her way. Waiving the baton in the air she ran under the air inflated blue planet arch off into the distance, and out onto the crowded streets of Manhattan. While four of the relay teams boarded their team trucks to travel to there exchange points, team yellow, my team, stayed behind to attend to the media.
At the end of our tour of duty, as we were walking back to the hotel, a dozen school kids from the Bronx, who had raised over $3,000 dollars for the blue planet, ran up to us armed with blue planet tee-shirts and colored markers. Soon we were signing their proud and priced possessions. It was a treat to see their enthusiasm for the cause and it gave us hope, that if kids like them and others all over the world understand the message and call for action, we will be able to bring safe drinking water and save thousands of lives all over the world.
By mid-afternoon we left New York destination Hebron, Connecticut where we will start our run tomorrow morning. For the next ninety-five days, we will run and travel, eat on the go, overnight in different towns and hotels and sleep in different beds every night. We will travel across all time zones, and run a range of elevations from below sea level in The Netherlands, to over 12,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, with temperatures from the low-forties, to the one-hundred plus high-noon summer temperatures in the Mojave Desert, Nevada and Utah. In full anticipation of all of that and more we have begun our journey of hope for those less fortunate on our planet.
The opening ceremony took place on the UN lawn, a nicely groomed grassy field, bordered on the street side by large deciduous trees, yet dwarfed by the tall skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan, and yielding on the far side to the banks of the East river. Sculptures depicting messages of global peace complimented the United Nations grounds with hundreds of colorful flags of all the nations in the world waving in the wind, as if to bid the runners “G-dspeed”. In front of a sizable crowd of hundreds of supporters, press and curious onlookers, Mary Chervenak, the first global messenger to run, took to the streets to kick-off the ninety-five day long journey around the world. After years of preparation by Jin Zidell and other senior members of the blue planet foundation a long awaited dream shifted gears from the planning phase into the awareness- and fundraising phase.
The runners, one by one had been announced and called-up to the podium and from there, witnessed the moment we had all waited and prepared for. As Mary descended the podium-steps the crowds came alive and sent her on her way. Waiving the baton in the air she ran under the air inflated blue planet arch off into the distance, and out onto the crowded streets of Manhattan. While four of the relay teams boarded their team trucks to travel to there exchange points, team yellow, my team, stayed behind to attend to the media.
At the end of our tour of duty, as we were walking back to the hotel, a dozen school kids from the Bronx, who had raised over $3,000 dollars for the blue planet, ran up to us armed with blue planet tee-shirts and colored markers. Soon we were signing their proud and priced possessions. It was a treat to see their enthusiasm for the cause and it gave us hope, that if kids like them and others all over the world understand the message and call for action, we will be able to bring safe drinking water and save thousands of lives all over the world.
By mid-afternoon we left New York destination Hebron, Connecticut where we will start our run tomorrow morning. For the next ninety-five days, we will run and travel, eat on the go, overnight in different towns and hotels and sleep in different beds every night. We will travel across all time zones, and run a range of elevations from below sea level in The Netherlands, to over 12,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, with temperatures from the low-forties, to the one-hundred plus high-noon summer temperatures in the Mojave Desert, Nevada and Utah. In full anticipation of all of that and more we have begun our journey of hope for those less fortunate on our planet.
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