DJ - Welcome back to the update with Carl and Don. We resume our journey Around The World, which had a 10 day rest and hiatus since our last update and we thank you for allowing us to catch our breath. We're breathing heavily right now because we're about to board here in Chicago on an airplane that will take us to Tokyo and then on to Beijing. That trip will require 32 hours of travel, leaving the Midwest and the United States at midday on Friday and arriving late in the evening on Saturday in Beijing. The cars have arrived at the Port of Xichang on the coast of the Sea of China and are ready to be claimed and processed through the Chinese customs procedure on Monday.

A lot of news events are swirling throughout the region that we'll be traveling, between Peking and Paris. I'll give you an example of what some of those are. The weather is quite active. There are three typhoons currently in the early stages of winding up throughout the Southeast Asia region. I'm unable to tell right now what implications that might have, but one would anticipate that the weather will be quite changeable. The El Nino effect which is the warming of the South Pacific sea waters is believed to have substantial impact on all of Asia and China, as well as North America. So we'll be talking about El Nino. There have been drought conditions in parts of China and that has reduced their corn crop quite substantially. Estimates are by 20%. However, in other parts of Asia, there have been extensive Monsoon rains, such as in Pakistan where 103 people have lost their lives in the last two days. The worst hit cities and villages are in province of Punjab and the news reports are coming out of the city of Lahore, which is one of the cities we're expected to visit and stay in for a couple of days on the trip from Peking to Paris. Reports today say that record Monsoons fell during the last few days leaving at least 15,000 people homeless, drowning livestock and damaging crops, at least a 10,000 acre area. Again, that's in Pakistan. There is a current border feud between Pakistan and India and active military activity over the dispute involving the state of Kashmir on the north border of India and Pakistan. Meanwhile in New Delhi, banking activity across India came to a standstill as nearly 1.3 million bank employees went on a two day strike protesting the establishment of local area private banks. The bank employees are seeking a ban on non-banking finance companies from accepting deposits from the public. So all of the banks in India are closed as a result of this strike by 1.3 million employees of the banking industry of India. The weather in Beijing is hot and humid. However, in the Himalayas the transition time between the Monsoon and winter is underway and the temperatures are near zero degrees Fahrenheit at night. Well we're going to be seeing up close and very personal many of these conditions and circumstances on our journey which is about to begin here in the Midwest.

For my co-driver, Carl, the journey began yesterday as he traveled from the west coast of the US to Beijing. We want to report to you the amount of communications inner activity that we have had with our many friends and family. 3,400 calls have been made to this Around The World update report and our computerized digital Internet web site, which contains the story of the Around The World adventure has been visited by 8,400 Internet users. And this week, we had a surprise development when one of the major search engines for the Internet, called Yahoo, chose our web site as the Site of the Day and we received contact from people from 52 countries from around the world who visited and learned about the beginning of our trip in New York on July 15th and the vision that we have to complete in Paris on October 18th. We're leaving on this trip with most things in good order, but not all. There are setbacks as you go through life and as we go on journeys. One of our setbacks is that the UPS postal courier strike in the United States caused a delay in the transfer of our Route Books which have all the details of our travel. And those Route Books have been hung up and lost in the UPS system and we're leaving without them. We're hopeful that they'll arrive in time that they can be sent on to Beijing, but we just can't let that stop us. But it would be nice to know where we're suppose to go once we get underway and those books contain all the briefing details prepared by the British organizers.

Well the next time that we speak, it will be from China and that likely will be in the early part of this coming week. We're about to begin a trip that's very hard for your imagination to even comprehend what's in store for us. We do have a lot of confidence that we have the support of our friends and family and with that, it makes a journey like this more meaningful and even possible. Thanks for joining us at this time and we look forward to an interesting adventure, a lot of learning, a lot of experiences and we're very pleased that you're interested in coming along with us and sharing those experiences. So good-bye until the next time.