DJ - We welcome you back to this update from Lanzhou City in north central China. This city, which we've come upon on our journey from Peking to Pari,s has a population of 5 million. When you think about the population of Minneapolis and Detroit being quite not that much. The population of Chicago, slightly lower. When you think about the total population of Milwaukee, St. Louis, Indianapolis, DeMoines and Pittsburgh equating the population of just one Chinese city, you begin to get an appreciation for the scale, the order of magnitude here in China. We tell you these anecdotal comparisons to give you an appreciation for what we're experiencing so that by joining us on these update reports, you to can experience our discovery. I describe our arrival here in Lanzhou City as sort of like Gulliver's Travels, the Lilliputians people. The people here are between 4 and 5 feet tall. The door knobs on a very modern, elegant hotel, every bit as comparable to any hotel in North America, are about 3 feet off of the floor level. The doors open from the opposite side of doors in the nothern and western hemisphere. So you see these paradoxes between East and West as you move through this extraordinary culture and society.

We're joined by one of our fellow co-travelers, participants and competitors for this update. I'd like to introduce Burt Richmond who is from Chicago. Burt is operating and driving a vehicle that is quite in contrast of many of the vehicles. It is a French Citroen which is a small volkswagon like car, 2 cylinders, I believe, that contrasts to 8 cylinders in the 1954 Packard that I and Carl are operating. There is in this event a global competition between attitudes and philosophies with regard to the motorized automobile travel. That is to say some people have very large, heavy vehicles. The Packard, for example, weighs 5,000 pounds. Burt tells me that the Citreon weighs 1,200 pounds. So it was in the 1907 and 1908 races. Some people had very heavy machines, some people had very light machines. As we travel on all types of surfaces, elegant interstate highways to absolutely brutal, punishing road surfaces, whether they're asphalt or dirt, the vehicles are exposed to just incredible diversity of driving conditions and so are the people. And this competition is not about speed. We want to deemphasize the notion of a race. This is a competition of initiative, resourcefulness, perseverance and of the tolerance of man designed automobiles. So we've reached Lanzhou City, population 5 million, 25% of our way across China, where we have a 24 hour rest period after 4 days of driving. We're approximately the distance of Chicago or the Midwest to Los Angeles from Beijing City. We're on the Yellow River, one of the two major rivers in China, the Yangtze and the Yellow. The Yellow flows all the way from the Himalayas across northern China, down to Peking and then out into the Yellow Sea. The Yellow river is a distance itself of 1,000 miles. We'll that's an overview of where we are and our circumstances at this moment. We invite Burt Richmond of Chicago to join our update and he has some comments for his friends and family. Burt, good morning to you. It's morning time for us, it's actually nightime for our friends back home. Burt, please share with us your impressions of this incredible journey.

Burt Richmond - Thank you Don. One of the things that is in such sharp contrast in this event is that are very large and very small cars. We have the smallest car as Don said, at 1,200 pounds and 600 CCs, that's just slightly over half a liter. Most motorcycles have an engine size of 750 CCs. We have a totally different approach. Our engine size is half the size of those VW Beetles. So we have to do a lot of things about speed management, weight management, fuel management, etc. I'm going to try to not make this too long, but an update. When we picked up our car at the docks, Don fortunately came to my rescue when we discovered that both of our fuel tanks were empty. That was a requirement for packing them in the container and we actually complied and I think we were the only ones that did because everybody else drove off under their own power. Our ride back to Beijing, almost 2 hours, was very slow and very hot. I've driven this car all over Europe at 65 miles an hour, sometimes 70, and we had a tough time even getting to 48 miles an hour. We spent the next two days rearranging and rethinking the load, repacked a lot of boxes, got rid of a lot of stuff, begged a few people to take some extra tires. Linda Dodwell, our friend from San Francisco, agreed to take a case of oil and oil filters for us and a few other people helped along the way. Somethings that were thought to be necessary were quickly jettisoned and it was interesting that there was a pile that somebody started and by the time of the second day of car reprep, this thing must have been 10 feet high and 20 feet long of stuff that people were throwing out. But we got rid of the excess heat inside the car by putting some duct work out through the sunroof, connected up the road lights, readjusted the timing and basically got ourselves prepared to take on this journey. Everybody was up early the next morning at 5:30, which we've now determined is the normal start for this activity, which means up at 4:30, which if we back that up, pretty much have to eat and go to sleep. We got ourselves underway. We all started numerically. We are car 41, so we more or less know where we sit in the pecking order. Made our way to the Great Wall, which was with a police escort. The good news about that is that we were able to recalculate, or finally calculate our trip rally meter, which is a very complicated computer that tells time, speed, distance, average speed, time to destination, etc. Rich Newman, my co-driver, is having a wonderful time playing with that and his magical watch, which does everything except tell time and altitude. I think it even tells the Dow Jones averages. We got ourselves to the Great Wall in convey with, as I said, police escort. Grand ceremony of bands, typical brass bands, red carpet, in this case, it was a red arch with 4 dancing dragons, many speeches and we were officially beginning the Peking to Paris Road Rally of 16,000 kilometers, which is just under 10,000 miles. By the time I go back and forth a couple of times, I'm sure that we'll get ourselves over the 10,000 miles. We had an interesting day just getting ourselves along the route. One of the things that we had done initially was filled up the auxillary tank and our normal fuel tank and I remember vividly that as the man was filling the second tank, I could feel the rear bumper slide down as the whole car lowered. One of the things I had to do was use up that fuel and give it away and now we're operating on the standard tank. Couldn't get the fuel gauge to work, but we've figured how to use up whatever is in the auxillary tank and then switch over to the master tank that does have a fuel gauge. Getting gas along the way is interesting because, while some of them look like modern pumps that we're use to, most of them only register the quantity of fuel that has been dispensed, so it reads in liters. 163 would be 16.3 liters, but there's no indication as to whether it's diesel fuel, 70 octane, 90 octane or 93. So that gets a little tricky and takes maybe a half hour to get all of that done just for 5 gallons of fuel. Not very expensive, seems to me it's costing us $2-$3 a gallon. This is a country that can provide its own fuel very easily. We had an interesting second day of sort of running out of gas because we got on one of these major highways, toll ways, a brand new road, we were the only ones on it and there were no fuel stops along the way. What we wound up doing is stopping right next to an exit, at this point, we were far behind and we had our own police escort and they took my spare can and me and took me off the highway to a gas station. We filled it up, came back. They insisted in putting the gas in the tank themselves. I put one of my white giveaway hats that has the American Flag, Chicago, the car name, people name and the Peking to Paris rally on it and I gave one of the officers my hat. The other guy looked very disappointed so I opened up our box and gave him one of the hats also. They both put them on and then they insisted that I pose for a photo and the one officer who had his police hat on put that on my head, so now I have two policemen in white painter's caps on either side of me with the car in the background. That was one interesting anecdote. The next day we had a problem. Thought that we were never going to get through this whole thing. The car gradually lost power, it just got slower and at one point in order to get up a modest hill, we had to be in first gear. We got frustrated with that after 40 minutes and pulled over to the side. Richard stayed in the car and I told him to step on the gas and immediately it became apparent that a screw had vibrated loose from these poor roads and had jammed the throttle, or actually it had blocked it. Once we took out the tool box and repaired that, magically, we had a huge 90% horsepower increase and once again, up and running. The car seems to run better in cool weather, because in the morning we can barrel right along and sort of keep up with everybody else, remember this is a car that can perhaps go 50 miles an hour when everything is running right and we were feeling very confident and actually made up a little bit of time. Remember, a rally is a speed, time distance thing. There are check points, etc. We were actually ahead of schedule. We were slowing dramatically whenever there was a major bump or railroad tracks and as we saw how wonderful the suspension was, we sort of went at them a little bit more agressively. Well we finally hit the pot hole of all pot holes that ate our car and there was a huge noise, Richard's door flew open, the rear view mirror swung back and hit the rear door and just became pieces of glass crystal. But the most major thing was the right front wheel and suspension were on the ground. We were now a 3 wheel car. Fortunately, it was the right front wheel so we just kind of skidded in that general direction and parked on the side of the road. And where no one had been, suddenly there were 20-30 Chinese peasants, farmers, I don't even know where they came from, but they came out of the woodwork. We got the car up in the air with our jack. I discovered upon investigation what the problem was. Took off the broken part, it was an eye bolt that had broken on the torsion bar suspension, held it up and I was mumblling about making fire to fix steel and a farmer said, "Yes, Yes" and shook his head. I went with him back to his little village, into his mud stucco house and low and behold there was an arc welder with rods laying on the floor, steel and various pieces of junk on the floor. The floor was incidentally is just the ground, it's just mud or dirt. But he had a grinder and he had a big knife switch on the wall and he plugged in his grinder and reached up, threw the switch and eureka! there was electricity. Image that, electricity in one of these mud huts. We ground the opening smooth. Found something to fill the void. We welded it up. He asked me if I thought we should reinforce the whole thing by welding another piece of band around the end of the eye bolt. I agreed. We searched around and found something about the right width. Between bending it and hammering it and using a vise to shape it, we were able to TAP the whole end of this eye bolt. How did we do all of this conversation? By pointing, drawing in the dirt, shaking heads, but we got it all back together again. I wanted him to come with me back to the car so he could see what his handywork did. He and I laid on the ground underneath the car, put the thing back together in about 15 minutes and we were off. Except now we have a serious lift to the right because the one thing I didn't know how to do, or couldn't figure it out even after reading the owner's manual, maybe it was the sun or the heat or perhaps it was just low brain power, I couldn't adjust the suspension, which in fact, is adjustable. My co-driver, Mr. Newman, suggested perhaps I should just take it a little slower this time. He's still seething about me going too fast in the first place and I got a lecture. He asked if I knew what the co-driver's job was? And I said, "yes, your job is to navigate and tell the driver what to do." And he said, "Right. Don't forget it." And so we went along very slowly. We got to the hotel that night and Johan Van der Laan from Holland and Maurizio Selci, who is from Italy living in London, gave us advice as to how to adjust the suspension and ultimately Johan put on his coveralls, got a special tool out and in 10 minutes he adjusted and tuned the entire chasis except that it was late, it was dark, we were doing this by flashlight at 10:30 at night and it was almost correct, but we were off by three quarters of an inch on Richard's side. We had overadjusted it and the car was too high. Well, we were looking for shortcuts to economize on time. Richard suggested to Johan that we measure the chasis with the two drivers aboard. Well, due to the fact that Richard outweighs me by 50 pounds, ha! Amazing, now the suspension was perfectly tuned to the actual occupants. It just means that Richard can't drive and I can't navigate, which is just fine because I don't understand the computer. So I think it's a good team. As we said, it works. The next day we were off and running and as long as it's cool, everything seems to run just fine. We climbed the 8,200 foot pass. Did it at normal speeds. Passed many cars that were kind of poking along. We passed major herds of two humped camels. I can't remember, I think that's bactrian, the dromedaries are probably the ones that are in North Africa. People were slowing down to look at the camels, but we were preoccupied with keeping forward momentum and kept rolling along. The good news is we got up the hill. Our suspension is adjusted righ, timing on the points, etc. and the engine is running right and yesterday we really felt, while we were in Inner Mongolia, which is where we are now, that we are getting a sense of what rural China looks like. Everybody is very friendly. We are watching people winnowing the wheat. We see them with the long stick with the smaller stick attached to it and they're beating the wheat on the ground - thrashing it, and then they're picking them up in these little round straw baskets, throwing it up in the air and the chase blows away and the wheat stays with it. It interesting that things that we've heard about that took place 200 years ago are still currently in use and as Don said, here we are in a modern city with beautiful high rise buildings, a city nobody's ever heard of, and yet, it's home to 5 million people. Everything is going well. We're having a wonderful time. Stopping to take lots of pictures because, while this is a race, it is also a collection of images, which we will share with all of you at the end. Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed this.

DJ - Burt, thank you for your verbal images and your graphic description of what it's like driving from Peking to Paris. Well here in Lanzhou City as we look out the window, we see the air is gray. This is a city that is suffering from it's success. It's a city that has a skyline like Dallas or Houston and has the economic vibrancy of Peking, but it also is suffering from being the most air polluted city in the world - Lanzhou, China. As a result of that, a very successful Chinese businessman, whose hometown this is, has vowed to tear down a moutain to allow the wind from the North to come into the city and to clean the air out, hopefully. So one of the mountains surrounding this city is in the process of being washed down to try to let more air into the basin of the city. The city is sort of like Denver. It sits in a bowl at the basin of some modest size mountains that surround it on all sides. Our next update in 12 hours will be directed towards the Rogers Elementary School in Marshalltown, Iowa. We'll have Mary and Pat Brooks join us. They're driving a Buick Woody station wagon. And they'll be here to talk to all the school children who are following their activities on the Internet and the Brooks will be here to speak to those children directly by means of the update telephone network. That's this report, we'll see you in 12 hours. We're well, you be well. Thank you.