DJ - Welcome to the "Country of God's Heroes and Civilization". That's the sign that greets when you arrive in Greece, from where we report to you on Sunday evening with the update with Carl and Don. We had a very hard day of driving 10 hours through mountainous terrain here in Greece so our plan to communicate has been delayed by the pressure of traveling and keeping up with the route book and the expectations of the schedule. We apologize for the delay and hope it hasn't caused any anxiety. We're well, although we are beginning to get anxious to complete our journey. Everybody's getting a little bit weary as we near the 40 day mark, I believe we're at 38 days at this time.

Here's a geography question. What countries border Greece on, what I believe is, it's north border? We'll give you the answer before we complete the update. And Carl will be along in a few minutes to give his report.

We're presently at a seaside and fishing village called Kamena Vourla, which is on the Aegean Sea, 180 kilometers from Athens, or Athinai, as the highway markers say. We've driven today 10 hours, starting out in Thessalonika, which is a city of one million people, also on the Aegean Sea coast. As we mentioned earlier, some 36,000 square miles of beaches and shoreline are part of the country of Greece. Greece also has the largest shipping fleet of the world and tomorrow we'll be going to one of the key ports in Greece, Patras and make an overnight crossing of the Adriatic Sea to Italy.

We mentioned briefly, but we didn't go into any detail that there was a prize giving in Istanbul, a very nice dinner celebration that was hosted by the DEDEMAN Group of Turkey, who are the sponsors of the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge visit to Turkey. At the prize giving there were five prizes. Two that we'll report to you at this time. One was for the official leader of the competition and that at this moment is a 1940's Willys Jeep driven by two competitors from Great Britain. The second prize was given for the team that was described as dealing with difficulty and adversity and hard luck. That was the 1954 Packard operated by Schneider and Jones. So it was great fun for us to each receive a trophy on behalf of the sponsors of Turkey and the officials of the Motor Challenge from the Governor of Istanbul and the founding Patriarch of the DENIMEN Group, a gentleman who is 92 years of age and the company currently is managed by his very capable son.

Our travel today has taken us through parts of Greece that it's not very likely that tourists get to. Access to the interiors of these many countries that we're visiting was one of our motivations for making this arduous trip. We've had experiences that one would never think possible as a result of the routes that we've traveled. We've learned here in Greece, for example, that it's harvest season and what we did not realize, and what you may not know, is that Greece has a very significant cotton crop and a tobacco crop as well. For our farming friends, they use John Deere farm equipment here. They have 9000 series combines with cotton picking heads on the combines. So there's a lot of green tractors here in Greece and a lot of significant agriculture. One of the other production agriculture items is grapes. We took time to stop along the highway and buy a quantity of fresh grapes. The grapes were huge, about the size of a half dollar, full of juice and just absolutely delightful and delicious to eat. White grapes right from the field here in Greece.

Carl is standing by with his comments, observations and update. I'm going to hand the communications device to him so he can give his report.

CS - Thank you Don. This has been a very interesting day as we drove across the agricultural areas. We drove into an area where there are 24 stone monolithes of such huge size that some of them would be larger than Mt. Rushmore. On each one of them a monastery has been built sometime in the last 500 - 600 years and the tenacity that it would take for the monks 500 years ago to climb to the top of these stoned mountains and build their monasteries out of brick is astounding. When you consider they had zero electric power, steam power, gasoline power, the building of something like that is almost mind boggling. It would seem to be almost as difficult as driving a 6,000 pound Packard over the Himalayas. At any rate, we've had a great day in Greece. Tomorrow we skirt Athens, head to Patras and get on a ferry over to Italy and up the Italian boot. We've having good meals, good food, Greek salads with cheese, olives and tomatoes. We're starting to enjoy some of the site seeing that's available to us. I think that's enough for now. Don.

DJ - Our mountainous travel today took us directly at the base of Mount Olympus and around a mountain range very comparable to the road conditions in the French and Italian Alps and mountains similar to the Smokey Mountains of the Eastern United States or some of the mountains in Idaho and the state of Washington and Oregon. So it was a very intense day of the Motor Challenge - 10 hours of operating the '54 Packard, which responded well to varying road conditions, unpaved roads, as well as paved roads, climbing up and down the mountains made for some pretty challenging driving conditions.

Some news about the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge because many are interested in how the event is progressing. A number of competitors who fell behind or who had to leave because of mechanical failure or because of personal health have returned. The spirit of people continues to amaze everyone from the officials to the competitors. Hermann the German, as he is affectionately called, has returned from German. Hermann came down with pneumonia in China and his car, a 1907 LaFrance, experienced mechanical problems so he had to retire, as the British say. But Herman met the competitors at the border of Turkey and Greece as has rejoined the competition and the drive. The Cohens from Vancouver, British Columbia were operating a Stutz M Lancefield coupe and in China it also experienced severe mechanical problems. They have returned with a car, a 1930's Bentley, which they had stored in London. They drove from London to here, beginning for them in Istanbul and have rejoined the competition. The late 1940's Buick driven by two men from Singapore had major engine repairs performed and after falling behind a few days, the Buick is back in the competition. Bob Coletta, the senior managing officer of the Buick Motor Division in Michigan, will be happy to hear that - that Buick is once again represented. And one of the competitors had a personal health problem and had to return to London to have the health matter attended to and has returned back to the competition. So, some enormous commitment and personal effort on the part of so many people who want to see this through to its conclusion no matter what adjustments they have to make in order to succeed at accomplishing their goal.

We want to finish up with acknowledging receipt of many E-Mail communications directly to us here on the route. I'm so pleased to hear from my wife Terri who is out in Colorado Springs attending a conference. Our daughter, Mary Jones, in South Bend has sent yet another E-Mail and it's really fun to hear from Mary. Greg Luther from Denver is in contact, as well as Chris King from Lakeland, Tennessee, who says that what goes on in their life is running in squirrel cages at the workplace. They really wish they could be out here on the Peking to Paris Silk Route with us, but they have to stick to their daily squirrel cage. Izzy Masters, who is a friend of David Wilks' in car number 83 is in contact, as well as Crissy Janzen from Wisconsin and Rick Freund from Wisconsin. Don Klein sent us an E-Mail and we thank him for that and finally, Dave Beck of the Wisconsin Presidents' Organization has been in touch and tell us there is a lot of interest in our journey on the part of our many friends in WPO.

Well there are 11 million tourists who visit Greece each year. There are only 10 million residents of Greece, 5.5 million native Greeks live outside the country. Our friend, Teddy, who is a competitor and is from Greece and a physician and surgeon here tells us that hard economics over the last 20 years caused many Greeks to leave the country, but they say they always return and think fondly of Greece.

Well here's the answer to the geography question we asked, which was, "What countries border Greece?" We went down a mountain range that separates these countries from Greece as we entered Greece from the Turkish border. The answer is Bulgaria, Albania and Macedonia border the northern border of Greece.

We've yet again had to delay our commentary on Iran and it is our intent now on Sunday evening to do it first thing tomorrow morning, 12 hours from now. To summarize, we're 180 kilometers outside of Athens, or Athinai, as it's called here locally. We'll be proceeding across Greece to the Adriatic Seaside where we'll, tomorrow night, be on board all night a sea ferry that will arrive and bring us to the shores of Italy and yet another country on our journey. We're well and we thank you for joining us on this update. On behalf of Carl, this is Don saying so long from Greece.