DJ - Welcome to come along audio update with Don and Carl from downtown Beijing, China. We're in the Beijing Hotel, right on Tiananmen Square and we've spent the last three days doing the last details on the car and a little site seeing. We went over to Xian to see the terra-cotta soldiers - the 2,000 year old life-size pottery toy soldiers, 7,000 of them that were discovered by accident when they were digging a well one day - very interesting.

We have the car packed adequately with water, supplies, sleeping bags and tents.

We've been very pleasantly surprised by the modernization of China. The infrastructure of freeways, bridges and the traffic flow. One of the exciting things is the ride through Beijing in a taxi cab. Most of them are Volkswagens, Passats, or Jettas. The drivers are very skilled. The traffic flows almost always without stopping except at red lights. With thousands of cars and what appears to be millions of bicycles, the traffic just keeps flowing along without major interruption.

They tell us that 80% of all the construction cranes in Asia and here in Beijing building office towers, hotels, apartment buildings and shopping centers. One of the phenomenons that I saw, that I thought very interesting, was the change from when Narcelle and I were here back in 1980. The amount of electricity, neon lights. But the simplest thing was bottled water. You can buy plastic bottled water on almost every street corner. And it isn't something that is being sold just to the tourists, everybody is drinking this bottled water. And it's iced, ice cold bottle water. When we were here in the 1980s, refrigeration was almost non existent as was electric bikes. It's one of those things where it appears China has moved from the 1890s into the 20th century. Jumping a 117years. We've noticed the youth. Most of the people seem to be in the 30 year old range. Tonight coming in by cab from the fairgrounds, where the cars were parked, we noticed a man pedaling a bicycle with six young men on the back of it. And all six of the men on the back of the bicycle, being pedaled by the seventh man, had cell phones - another sign of progress in China.

At the fairgrounds where the cars were assembled for the last minute detailing to them (packing and so forth), all 96 cars traveling around the world represent as tremendous a difference as the people driving them. Everything from a 1907 America LaFrance chain drive car entered by a Germany Museum to a 1967 Chevrolet pick-up truck.. I'll let Don talk to you a little bit about the different cars and what some of the men have done to the cars in preparation.

DJ - Well this is a celebration of the automobile before the end of this century and America is well represented in the cross section of cars. There are some Ford Coupes, a team of two cars, almost identical, operated by a team from Birmingham, Alabama. The Buick automobile is here. One car entered from Singapore and another from Iowa. The senior company official officer of General Motors' Buick division in Flint, Michigan, Robert Coletta paid a visit to where the cars are located at the Exposition Fairgrounds here. Mr. Coletta had an opportunity to visit with Carl and discuss the automobile industry which Carl has been a part of all of his life. Mr. Coletta is here in conjunction with General Motors announcing that in 1998 they will co-manufacture, here in Shanghai, 100,000 Buick automobiles as part of a joint venture with Shaghai Automotive Industry Group. General Motors is investing, in this project, $1.57 billion and is the largest Chinese US joint venture. The Buick, it seems, has a lot of favorable history in China. Choenli was said to favor Buick and the Buick that he used is part of his museum here in China. Also with Robert Coletta was Rudolph Sleigh, the president of GM China. Buick GM is sponsoring two older Buicks in the competition.

Another automotive experience leading up to the resumption of this trip around the world for me, was meeting Marcel Lejeune from Belguim. On the long 15 hour airplane ride from Chicago to Tokyo and then onto Peking, I had the good fortune of sitting with Marcel Lejeune who is the director of international business for Philips Auto Electronics. He was telling me about the future of the automobile. Two points that stuck in my mind from that several hour discussion: The new redesigned automobiles in the year 2003 will not have carburetors. There is a technical term where the combination of fuel and air will be drawn into the engine and there will be no carburation. And remarkably there will be no cable linkage between the accelerator of a car and the engine. It will be done wireless with electronics. Sounds almost impractical or improbable but the new models for 2003 are being designed with both of those concepts. The automobile undergoes a complete redesign in its technical features every five years, according to Mr. Lejeune. I want to acknowledge and thank him for sending the E-Mail that he did after we met each other and I do hope that he and his wife find their way to Paris, as he indicated that he very well might do when we arrive there in October. So the automobile is creating a lot of attention and a lot of nostalgia and a lot of thought about what the automobile means in the present and in the future.

It's taken a lot of perseverance to get this far in this Great Race, this trip around the world and compliments to my partner, Carl Schneider, and his associates for an enormous amount of ingenuity and planning and very detailed follow-through on the preparation for this event. We have been at this now for about eight months. The car has been undergoing preparation for three or four months, almost on a daily basis, but we had not been leaders in that regard. Others competitors have been at this as longs as a year to two years.

We're just within hours of waking up tomorrow morning at 4:30 for breakfast, to the vehicles at 5:30 and the race begins at 6:00 AM. The race is conducted based on the clock. Each car is given a course and a distance to cover every day and our starting time is a little after 7:00 AM here in Beijing on Saturday morning. We'll then be proceeding to the Great Wall where the Chinese government will be welcoming the competitors and recognizing their unprecedented presence over the course of the next two weeks traveling across China. Much time today was put into reviewing all of the maps that are necessary for a journey of this type, and as you work on the maps, you begin to realize the magnitude of what it is that we're going to not only attempt, but complete by getting to Paris, a distance of 15,000 kilometers across some of the most foreboding land and terrain anywhere in the world. We'll be passing through deserts, we'll be passing through high altitudes, winter like conditions and roads that may not even exist when we get there, roads that are under construction, places where people rarely see visitors or people from other parts of the world. And we're going to make every effort we can to describe and share that experience with you as we go across the course. This is a competition. It's international in flavor. Many of the competitors who do not speak English find being given rules and regulations and briefings in English not to their liking. People here just speak Portuguese, for example. A lot of Dutch and German. A lot of Asians as well. So many, many languages. It's almost like an Olympic event. When asked to describe the competition, we've heard it said that you can think of it as sort of like a golf outing. Every team, every car is carrying a score card and there is a test of skill in driving a car over a pre-described and defined route, with rules of the competition by the organizers who are from England. And so one travels this course against the clock, against the conditions that you encounter and you deal with obstacles and difficulties through initiative and endurance. That is sort of capsule description of this competition.

We understand that one car, at this point, will not make it off of the starting line. It is a 1932 Ford. The engine in the Ford apparently failed, but the team is not giving up. Apparently, an engine is being shipped and they hope to repair the engine and to get underway in time to catch up with the other competitors. There is a slack of four days in the course of the 45 to 50 days of competition in which you could fall behind and still arrive in Paris on time.

We want to give our thanks to the many who have assisted us in getting this far - our friends, our families, our associates. We're very grateful for your understanding and for your enthusiasm of this endeavor. So we're just hours away from the actual event starting. I'll ask Carl to return here to the microphone/telephone from Beijing.

We'll remind you that The Discovery Channel on the Web/Internet has a team of reporters here following the event and in addition to our efforts, you can follow what's happening here through their eyes and through their gathering of information on The Discovery site on the Internet.

Well it's a daunting feeling as we contemplate going to sleep and waking up and getting in the car and actually going out and doing what we have so very much talked about for so very long now. It just seems that it's time to discontinue the talking and the projecting and the speculating and just go out and do it. And I think Carl and I share a commitment to complete what we have started. So I'll say for my part, good-bye for now and we'll be talking to you further down the road.

CS - To all of our friends, family, be sure to follow and maybe send us an E-Mail as we go along. We have the car as prepared as it could possibly be and I have absolute confidence in our ability to overcome any obstacles. As a friend of my use to say, we will endeavor to proceed. With that, we'll close this evenings' update.