DJ - Good day from Carl and Don on the road in China from Peking to Paris. Our update today reaches you from the most improbable location that I can personally image. This is my first attempt, and I hope a successful attempt, at communicating to family and friends and the communication's network with the use of a voice transmitted satellite telephone call reaching you from remote China. Carl and I are here together and we're going to talk about our location, the conditions, the events of today, the status of the pro rally competition and tell you a little about our car and the incredible use of this satellite telephone. We're going to try and do that in a period of 8-10 minutes.

First, let me describe to you that we are currently 2,200 kilometers from Peking. That, to give you some focus and point of reference, is the distance from LaCrosse, Wisconsin to Eureka, California - the Mississippi to the Pacific - a distance of about 2,000 miles. Our location is at an elevation at the moment of 10,580 feet. Today we went up and over a range at the beginning of the Himalayan and Tibetan Plateau, reaching a height of 12,000 feet. We're camping out tonight overlooking the largest body of water, an inland lake in China, a lake called Koko Nor. Our circumstances at the moment are that it is beginning to snow. We had an incredible change in our circumstances from when we last spoke to you. At our last report we were in the grimy, polluted city of Lanzhou, China and for several days we have been under gray skies. We have learned that life in China is affected by the polluted air and that to have a sunny and clear day is a rather unusual circumstance, given the amount of industrial pollution, not just in some cities, but practically across major regions of the country. Now here's Carl with his comments.

CS - Hello to friends and relatives. Unbelievable! We're at 10,500 feet in the Himalayas with a snow storm coming down. Just had a great meal cooked by the local Chinese. It's getting colder. Some of the cars haven't made it up to this height - it looks like there are 5 that have failed, but just 15 minutes ago, Herman the German came in with his 1907 Americo La France. I think everybody is happy to see him because he has such a good sense of humor.

I should say something about the car and how well it's been running at this height. Alan should be proud of the fact that we haven't had any heating problems - the car is running quite cool. Just a little adjustment of the carburetor for higher altitudes and put a little more air in the tires. It's running very smooth. Tomorrow we have to get up at 4:30, have breakfast in the tent and then head on up into the higher elevations of Golmund. Golmund is the big trading area and it will interesting. We're going to be spending the night there, but in a hotel. Back to Don.

DJ - At the moment, 4 cars have retired from the competition and everyone is feeling the effects, mechanically, of the stress of this journey. We just completed Day 5 of the road rally competition and today we had to give up 26 minutes to the course, so our score at the moment, we have no penalties, but we're 26 minutes behind where ideally we're suppose to be on the course route.

Our circumstances at this location: We are at the bases of mountains that are snow covered. We overlook the lake of Koko Nor which is 150 miles long and 50 miles wide. We ask someone along the line to do some research and look up and see how this lake in northern China compares with the Great Lakes, for example, of the United States. How many square miles or how many acres of water are in one of the largest Great Lakes, probably Superior, and how it compares with this lake, Koko Nor. If you're able to find an answer, we invite you to put the answer on the Guest Book and the E-Mail of the web site (www.newyorktoparis1997.com).

We're speaking to you be satellite telephone. This voice is being transmitted 100,000 miles from this very remote location. We're 500 miles from the nearest populated center. The voice is traveling to the Indian Ocean to a satellite and then downlinked to Australia, unlinked from there to Vancouver, British Columbia, and then transmitted by telephone lines to the United States. This is our first mobile satellite telephone communication. It is really quite an extraordinary technology. Reports indicate by the end of this decade, 8 million people will be relying on satellite telephony for communications. Currently satellites are being launched by Motorola, under the name of Iridium and by Telemusic, which is a joint venture of Mr. Gates of Microsoft and Mr. McCall, one of the founders of the US cellular telephone industry.

We've seen our first yaks here today, high altitude cows. We've had wonderful encounters with the Mongolian Chinese, who are residents of this area and who are mixtures of Perkamen heritage, along with Chinese. The setting just couldn't be more improbable and more stunning and it is a privilege to have access to this region and to participate in this event under these conditions. That concludes my update for this period of time. We're doing well. We're going to have to climatize and adapt ourselves to the high altitude circumstances as we are now rise to a higher level. Here's Carl once again.

CS - I did want to add that the Chinese civilian government seem to really appreciate the 1954 Packard convertible we're driving. It's the right color for China. The hood ornament on the car is a very graceful swan. Most of the Chinese think its a Peking Duck. We have some good laughs on that one. The car is running, as we said, very fine and we expect to be in Paris on October 18th. Here's Don to say good-bye.

DJ - Best wishes to everyone. We're doing well. We're very excited about this communication development. We'll leave our satellite telephone on and if friends want to call us here in the next hour, we welcome receiving incoming telephone calls or faxes. Our office can help you with what those numbers might be and how you might go about making such a call. It's actually remarkably easy. We have a designated phone number for both telephone and fax and we have our unit turned on. We'll be going to bed here in another hour and a half. It's late in the evening here. It would just be incredible to receive incoming telephone calls and/or faxes. Probably we should limit it to telephone voice transmission. We don't have the fax machine connected at this moment. We'll end this report. We're just excited about being able to make this connection. We're proceeding on and things are going well. Good-bye from a 10,000 feet elevation overlooking the Lake Koko Nor, the largest lake in China. Thanks for joining the update with Carl and Don.