DJ - Back in the USA. Welcome to the update with Don and Carl at midday on Thursday. The United States truly is a blessed, blest place. I use both blessed and blest to explain the reaction that one has when you return from Asia Minor, Persia and the South Indian continents, the Himalayas, Tibet and Western China to the blest United States. Our houses are huge by global standards. Our country is not densely populated. Highways are orderly. There is a richness about the United States that is apparent in its infrastructure that you immediately see and observe as you reenter after two months of being away from it. So I just share that feeling which many of you who have traveled have also experienced to pause and say thank you God for all that we have and thank you placing me at this place on the earth. There are 5 billion people around the world. Our journey took us to where 3 billion of those people live. The benefit of that experience is perspective and understanding. And for that, I'm very grateful and I would say that that really is the pay off of most forms of travel.

What I thought I would do for this update is do what you do with video tape and that is sort of rewind the word presentation to a week ago, I'd say Thursday and Friday. Things went pretty quickly at the end of last week as we approached Paris and there are a few things I would like to add to the record. Let me begin by commenting about the city of Paris, a city of 14 million people. France, as a country, has 70 million people. France is going through a lot of turmoil, social and economic, maybe that's an understatement because it seems like it has always been going through turmoil. France, after all, is the birthplace of the Rights of Man, as a result of the French Revolution and the Bastille. So much has occurred in modern history in France. But unemployment today is at 14% and there's a lot of unrest which is very evident publicly. The French refer to public demonstrations as manifestations and students on the weekends clog the streets of Paris with parades and demonstrations. During the week, transportation workers march and perform, what we would call, pickets. But the French have the genteel expression of manifestations to describe public demonstrations. The French Franc is currently at 5.5 to 1 to the US dollar and things are extremely expensive in Paris. As you drive across the French countryside, you daydream and reflect about history in this century, World War I and World War II. For my companion Carl, who has made a lifetime hobby of studying both wars, all of the major museums and battlefields of central Europe, it was essential that we paused at the American Memorial in the countryside of France for World War I. Carl can tell you about the debate that raged about the funding for the substantial memorial. It's equivalent to the Lincoln Memorial or the Jefferson Monument in Washington DC. It sits on a high hill overlooking a river valley, which was the scene of a major and strategic pivotal battle in World War I. As Carl explains it, the Americans arrived just in time to deter the Germans from marching into Paris, this being World War I. So Americans have made quite a contribution to France and to the current geography of Europe and that's evident in the history of the region between Reims and Paris. Paris today is preparing for another type of war, the 1998 World Soccer Cup Championship. A brand new stadium has been erected and seats 81,000 people, but it's surrounded by commercial and residential neighborhoods. When you ask, "What about parking?", it's explained that there are only 4,000 parking spaces for this stadium and that mass transit is the norm for people coming to the World Soccer Cup Championships. Police officials from around Europe are meeting this week to discuss hoolaganism. That's the word that's used to describe war and battles that take place in the stands of major soccer events and the police are discussing what kinds of techniques and procedures to use to ward off any serious problems with hoolaganism. As you drive a little further beyond the new World Soccer Cup stadium in Paris, you pass Le Bourget Airport which no longer is an active airport, it's an Air Space Museum. The significance of that place on the earth is that it is where Charles Lindbergh landed when he made the extraordinary flight from the United States to Paris.

The border entry at France and Germany was quite extraordinary. It was extraordinary because there was absolutely nothing that took place. No one was there. It was as if you crossed the border between California and Nevada, or Wisconsin and Minnesota, or Wisconsin and Illinois. No one was at the border of France and Germany as we crossed yet another major waterway of the world, the Rhine River. Truly, we left Germany, crossed a bridge that was also a dam for an electric plant and other than a flag on the French side, there was nothing to indicate that it was a border crossing. That in itself is quite indicative of the current trend of the European Economic Community, EC, or the Euro as it's referred to. Leading up the Rhine River, we drove through the Black Forest with a full moon at early morning hours. At 8-10 o'clock, the moon was still full and out. Fog was very heavy. And of course the roads in Germany are impeccable. There was an incident at the border of Austria and Germany that was indicative of the transition that's occurring throughout Europe as people form attitudes and feelings about the Euro community. We'll have a discussion about Euro at another update. But the incident that transpired was that late in the afternoon, we did cross the Austrian Alps and arrived at the German border and there was a delay in the traffic at a river crossing that demarcated the Austrian German border. There were about a dozen cars in line and the driver of the car behind us got out and after perhaps 5 minutes, walked forward to see what the cause of the delay was. The driver came back, he was from the Netherlands, and said something to the effect of, "Well so much for Euro, they still want to control everything." What he was referring to is that the car at the head of the line was stopped and the driver was carrying on a conversation with the German guard who was posted at the border. Later we discovered, that the conversation was the border guard asking the driver about the history of his car. It seems there is so little to do at border crossings these days that when some of the antique and vintage cars of the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge arrive at the German border, the guards are interested in knowing about the cars. But the man from the Netherlands took it to mean that the Germans were still attempting to control the border when in fact, that was not the case. But it was very insightful in the attitude shifts that is and must take place as all of Europe attempts to come together in a unified economic community, much like the United States, or much like the US and NAFTA with its neighbors of Mexico and Canada.

Austria is picturesque and placid. Cows are in the meadow. The Chalets are where they've always been. Very serious snow in the upper elevations of the Austrian and the Italian Alps. We passed several snow plows keeping the roads open. Well that pulls together the images that we accumulated as we left Italy and Lake Garda on Tuesday and on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as we traveled to Austria, Germany and France.

Well I find myself, being back in the United States, thinking that I really don't have a whole lot to talk about on these updates. I've come to realize that many rely on the updates to either start their day or end their day. And many people say before they go to bed, they listen to the updates. We've become competition for David Letterman and Jay Leno. But I doubt that you're going to be interested in what I had for lunch on each given day in the future, so I thought perhaps what I'd like to do is discuss the re-entry process that occurs when you undertake an unusual adventure and what some of the re-entry realities are as you engage in gearing to a normal pace of life. Because it truly is a process. For example in the area of communication, people are excited to ask how was the trip. And what you have to do in two minutes or less is find the right choice of words to give a satisfactory characterization of the two month experience. Or, perhaps in a media interview, you might have 20 minutes to discuss 15,000 miles of precarious, life threatening, exhilarating and exhausting travel. And then there's the matter of re-engaging with family and helping them to come to understand that changes that may have occurred in either your attitude, your physical changes or your psychological changes. And that is a process that everyone has to go through. There are the body clock realities that any experienced traveler knows. Today for me at 3 AM it seemed very practical to get up and start the day because it was 10 AM body clock time. So a couple of hours of doing some things and then back to bed and a few hours of napping, and in a few days things will get back to normal.

Well, my co-driver, co-survivor as I describe him, I must say you cannot describe our relationship as friends, perhaps I'm too philosophical about that, we certainly are companions, cohorts and kindred spirits, but I think to say that you're friends, perhaps places at risk the notion of friendship. I think somewhere between blood relative and friendship, there is another level of human relationship and that I think is the relationship between Carl and I. Carl has returned to California and has been back in communication with his extended family. I have some articles that I need to get to him, including the small bear that Carl transported around the world for one of his grandchildren and we'll get that back to California and get it in the hands of it's youthful owner. I have some candy cigars from a pretty fancy candy store in Paris that need to get back to Carl. Carl, himself is off to a new experience, a repeat of an old experience. He'll be participating in the Pan American Automobile Challenge and Rally that occurs in Mexico starting this weekend and into next week. He responded to the appeal of a friend who needed his help as a result of a loss of a driver in that event. And while Carl has not lacked for any driving recently over the last two months, he agreed to respond to the need of his friend and he's going to participate, we hope, safely in the Pan American Road Race in Mexico.

Tomorrow, Iran. One of the things that I thought it convenient was to not have to give the Iranian account right away. I also found it useful to have some time pass and I want to admit both of those realities before I present the Iranian commentary. I want the commentary to be objective and thoughtful because the Iranian experience was quite profound and very unique and, as I said before, very positive. But there are things about Iran that require thought before they're said and there are people's well being that should not be duly affected by anything that we might say or do. And so with the passage of time, I think our Iranian report tomorrow will be appropriate and will be on the mark.

So I think I'll stop there and I'll acknowledge that I realize some of you have come to rely and depend on these accounts, but this too, will have to come to an end at some point, but there's some things that we can continue to share and communicate that are relevant to the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge and we'll continue to do so as long as they are. With that, we'll wish you good day from the Midwest of the United States of America where Fall is in its glory on the shores of Lake Winnebago in this city of Fond du Lac. It was very impressive to people in France that as an American, we lived in a city with a French name. Good-bye until the next time, which will be in the next 24-36 hours and our update will concentrate on the seven day visit to Iran. Thank you and good-bye.