DJ - The third day of the great race from Peking to Paris is now complete and the 1954 Packard is in the race but today was a extraordinary day. It was a test of the people as much as the machines. Yesterday we told you about the pounding that the machines took and that pounding produced a lot of problems for many of the competitors today, fortunately, not for the 1954 Packard.

Welcome to Come Along With Carl and Don tonight reaching you from Yinchuan, a city in Inner Mongolia, on the far outer reaches of North China. This city of 860,000 people is near the Yellow River. The Yellow River is wide like the Mississippi. The water is very murky and several days ago we reported that the Yellow River mysteriously had dried up and its size has been substantially reduced as a result of a drought here in Northern China. There is water in the river at the present time however its really very, very murky and does not appear to be a healthy river. We have had a day that I am going to make every attempt to graphically describe for you, what it might have been like if you were here. I have been communicating for thirty years and never have I found a way to capture what happened to us today. It just makes it very difficult to explain, but I am going to struggle and do my very best to tell you about the incredible contact that we had with the Chinese people. I think my struggle is how to explain to you that we came to China expecting to see wondrous things, probably not prepared to see, feel and experience the contact that we had today with the Chinese people. Carl and I estimate that no less than a one half million to as many as one million people stood by the road side on our trip today from Baotou city to Yinchuan in order to wave, to say hello and many instances to touch the car, to touch our hands outside the car window, to throw flowers inside the car, and generally just to be extraordinarily friendly and to welcome foreign visitors as it seems apparent that it is very rare for them to see the kind of machinery in the great race or to see Caucasian people in this part of China. There were three cities that we passed through where we encountered what we have come to call the Great Wall of People. Outside the front windshield of the car as we entered these three cities, a mass of people was gathered on the public street and a cordon was formed to allow the car to pass but the people came right up to the sides of the car, and in many instances the cordon was choked closed by people who just were fighting for position to see the car see the drivers and to see the excitement of the passing of the convoy of the many cars in this competition. My recollection is that there are twenty six nationalities and countries represented amongst the ninety-two cars that are still in the running. We just didn't expect to encounter what I would call the masses of people and there were practically mob scenes in at least the street locations. I do not want to create the impression by using those terms that it was in any way intimidating but quite the opposite. I and other participants have described the fact that we at times were overwhelmed with a incredible sense of joy and humility at the friendship, the innocence, the curiosity of the Chinese people. The location where this has occurred, it occurs to me to describe it as if you have left Los Angles and drove across the Sierra Madre Mountains and came down into the desert basin of Nevada and Las Vegas and when you came into that part of the western United States you encountered millions of people in terrain that is almost desert-like and without trees. Very sparse and not a very colorful place but you discover on the eastern side of the mountains from California down through Montana, Nevada, and South Dakota, the Great Plain states, and the great deserts of the southwest of the United States you discovered millions of people and that's what we have experienced here today in Northern China. I think we were quite unprepared for this experience and we're really going to struggle with ways to describe it. Fortunately, we have captured these occurrences on video and hopefully on the web site we will be able to show you some of the scenes so that you might appreciate the order of magnitude. In addition to the three cities where there were thousands of people we travel today a total of 600km and for a few hundred miles along our route of travel there were people constantly along the highway. In all cities, in hamlets, and villages people came out along the public roadway to watch the passing parade of cars. It was joyous, it was a lot of waving, a lot of shouting hello. It was an extraordinary experience, one that had a great impact on all of us. So that was really the key highlight of today. At the moment we are 1200 miles from Peking, a distance similar of New York to Milwaukee. The remarkable thing about that distance is that as we look at the maps of the rest of our journey across China we estimate that we are 25% into the China position of our trip around the world. That is to say 75% of the land mass remain for us to travel across.

Today has been a very long day, very demanding on people. We started at 5:30 am and completed the day at 6:30 pm, covering as I said 600km. Tomorrow appears to be about a 400km day, heading for a major city in the north central China, called Lanzhou and that is where we will be hopefully reporting from tomorrow. The 1954 Packard is holding its own. It's lumbering along, gliding along and performing as was designed by Carl, Alan, and all those who worked on the car. We want to report to the mechanical boys that the oil temperature is running at 140 just about were it needs to be and the water temperature is 160 to 180 as we run through very hot 90 degree temperatures with humidities appearing to be sort of desert-like in the America southwest. Very, very hot, very, very grimy. A lot of road dirt being gathered but we are quite fortunate we are in an enclosed vehicle. About half of the vehicles in this competition are older style open cockpit vehicles and people certainly have a lot of grit and a lot of determination to make this journey under those conditions.

We told you that car #1, Lord Montagu, had a failure of the radiator system when the fan flew loose from the engine and flew into the radiator and as seems to be characteristic of people take these old cars on journeys. They were able to fix up the radiator and put the car back in service and Lord Montagu who is a leading automobile collector and promoter in the UK as well as member of the English parliament, is back in the competition. Some of the cars today showed the impact of the harsh travel from yesterday. Burt Richmond and Richard Newman who are from Chicago, driving a 1953 Citroen, a small two cylinder French automobile, had a breakage in their suspension system and the right hand side of their car collapsed on to the road surface. They had to scramble and were able to get a metal part welded and get the car back into service. Although it's running at an angle now, they hope to limp in to the City of Lanzhou and make a major repair. The 1949 Buick Woody station wagon operated by Pat and Mary Brooks of Iowa threw a lot of black smoke as it left early this morning from Baotou City and came to a halt. Turns out that the dirt and the grim from yesterdays off-road travel on the village roads for about 30km caused a blockage of the air filter system and had to be cleaned out and as a result the car was able to be put back into service. Two ladies from England who are taking on this challenge, Francesca Sternberg and Jennifer Gillies, had a heartbreak early this morning when their 1964 Volvo Amazon, when the suspension system snapped and they were really quite disturbed by that and the shock absorber system just gave way and have had to make temporary repairs hoping to be able to make permanent repairs when they get to Lanzhou. They have named their car after an American. The American in Gordon Denate who in 1902 went to the UK, apparently promoted automobile racing and the use of the automobile and is quite a well known personage in England. Perhaps not quite as well in the US. And so they have nicknamed their car "Gordon" after this individual Gordon Denate, who is well known in automobile circles in the UK.

Other highlights about today, we have told you about the people just overwhelming us, with their greeting, their hospitality, their friendliness. The people are all very well dressed, it appears that is a very high priority in people's lives to dress well. The living conditions are difficult to describe because they are what they are here, but by North American standards it's probably correct to say there is no housing of the low standard that people have here in China. Most housing is very modest brick or mud type construction. In the cities there are some very modern buildings, so there is quite a contrast between the country side and the cities.

Carl, yesterday we reported had the sniffles and today that has lead to a cold and he is taking care of himself trying to get the sniffles and the cold stopped before it proceeds to far. And fortunately there is a doctor here for us to consult, should any of us need advice on what we might do to stay healthy. The heat, the transition in and out of the air conditioning and all of the bands long travel take its toll. And it is going to be a test of not only machine but of people as well.

Well those are some of the highlights of today. Carl is here resting. I am not sure if he want to say a quick hello, not tonight, but he has promised me that tomorrow that he'll come along and join you here with an update and comment. I think those are all of my main notes for today. I just can not express to you how extraordinary today was. We'll described the day as the Great Wall of People. The day when we encountered the teaming masses of extremely out going, happy, friendly, welcoming Chinese people. As we said we think probably up to a million people that came out along the roads, the highways that we traveled across today. So we certainly feel welcome here in China. We recognize that China is really a very vast place and it's going to take some while to kind of soak this all in and understand what it all means and we are glad that we can report it to you here on our update report. I think I will end there and say that we are still in the competition. We have a par score. Using the golf analogy, that is to say that we have met all the requirements of the varied controls and check-in points along the route thus far for three days. And so we are playing a par rally racing, three days into the competition. We have got a long, long way to go and some more extraordinary experiences waiting for us down the road. Thanks for coming along on this day and we will see you again in another 24 hours. From Yinchuan in northern China, this Don on behalf of Carl saying good-bye.