Armand Young is traveling cross-country -- by foot -- for all the usual reasons: to promote bamboo, good Samaritanism, and firefighters and police.
Come again?
Young, a San Diego man, set out from Los Angeles in April 2007 to walk all the way to New York City. His walkabout is a public promotional effort to support random acts of kindness while honoring fallen firefighters, police officers and soldiers, particularly those who died during the 9/11 attacks. Oh, and to inform people about the benefits of bamboo, which he has used to build houses.
"I cut this bamboo pole and said, 'I'm going to walk across America, changing lives,'" Young said. "All my friends started laughing at me, but I was like, 'You know, I'm serious.' So I sold everything I own, and I started walking across America."
His trip so far has taken him from L.A. to Philadelphia, where he stayed Saturday night. Young took a load off at the Crowne Plaza Hotel downtown. He hopes to finish the journey on Sept. 11 at Ground Zero in New York, where he'll leave his bamboo pole - now filled with American flags signed by people from across the country.
Young asks people he encounters for signatures on the bamboo pole he carries. In exchange for letting them sign, he asks petitioners to perform a random act of kindness. He says he has collected at least 250,000 signatures -- along with flags with police and fire badges.
"Every signature is a promise to commit an act of kindness in the next 24 hours," he said.
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He has received the support of companies from Subway to Wal-Mart to Quicksilver, which gave him much-needed walking shoes. He claims to have fed hundreds of families and helped thousands of Americans he has encountered or encouraged find jobs. Young creates videos of people in need for his Youtube channel, "Bamboothewalk" -- videos he uses to draw support from those who are able to provide it.
Though Young has taken breaks during his trip -- to mourn his mother's death and to get married, for example, and also to perform lots of do-gooding. Now he's on track to appear in New York City by September 11 and deliver his totem to Ground Zero.
"Why can't people in their own community do this?" he said. "Why does it take a guy walking across America to put it in everybody's hearts?"
