Team Lynn: The Promised Update

It is really hard to fathom how a single day can have such extreme highs and lows. As each day has worn on, the reality and magnitude of what this project is trying to accomplish is gaining a much clearer perspective. When we explain the motives behind this film to, I am repeatedly astounded by how quickly people comprehend the scope of “people helping people” and our search for the “goodwill of Americans”. It has taken me nearly two days to grasp what mere strangers have in minutes.
To recap the day, we left Fordam University this morning and spent 20 minutes cutting through the jungle that is New York City to Penn Station. After a lot of map reading and question asking we managed to ascertain that the furthest west we could go via train was High Bridge, NJ and proceed to purchase 3 tickets.
After an interesting time being harassed by a very unstable homeless man we boarded the train. Onboard we struck up a conversation with Michelle, a California transplant and the train’s attendant. She promptly found a group of passengers from High Bride that she though might be able to help us on our journey. Less than 30 seconds into pitching our trip we had an extra $200 in hand courtesy of our new, very generous friend, Pamela. Having arrived in High Bridge and happy to finally be out of the big city, we hit the ground running…straight to McDonalds.
After a few miles of walking and following an invitation to leave the Wal-Mart premises, we found our way to a motel. Inside we received some much-needed assistance from the receptionists and a very welcome lift to the nearest bus stop. At the recommendation of the office we boarded a westbound bus to Allentown, PA.
Allentown proved to be a fairly unwelcoming, rather off-putting town and one in which we definitely didn’t want to spend the night. With no busses leaving town we walked towards the highway to hitchhike. Thumbs out and daylight slipping away our chances for a ride looked slim and we really began questioning what we were doing on this crazy trip. Finally a young lady named Lisa picked us up and drove us a few miles down the road to a collection of gas stations. It didn’t look like the best place to hitch a ride so we walked to the nearest hotel. The Best Western was going to run us over $80 a night and we thought could probably find somewhere cheaper, so we set off walking again.
With Little more than a streak of sunlight in the sky or hope in our hearts we stumbled upon an elderly man working in his garage, who later introduced himself as Mr. Kuhns. We were only hoping to camp in his backyard but he and his wife were welcoming beyond belief. We have since had warm showers, a delicious meal, our clothes washed, a history lesson, architecture tour, a place to lay our heads and more importantly new friends with abundant good will. Topping it all of we discovered the name of the town we were in was Kuhnsville, named for our very hosts. What will tomorrow bring?