Our drive to Beijing took over 12 hours. It was a 500k distance but the real problem was the truck traffic. We were gridlocked for five hours in the middle of the night. We locked the car doors and all dozed as best we could. In the meantime we had gotten word that we were the celebrities for a Dow press conference in Beijing, expected to be ready at 9am, and appearing with a Chinese Olympic Gold speed skater named Yang Yang who has set multiple world records. We never got to the City until 10:30 and we were exhausted. However, we rallied and were so glad we did. The event was absolutely wonderful. The Dow people treated us like gold, first to a wonderful Chinese lunch and then to a tasteful presentation to the press. The conference was held in Chang Puhe Park and we all appeared on Chinese television.

After the event, the public relations person in charge arranged for us to get massages at the Dragonfly Retreat Center. These were the best massages of the entire trip. Brad's wife joined us and then we all went out to dinner before retreating to our hotel for some sleep.

The City of Beijing is cultured and beautiful with a smorgasbord of restaurants. It is however besieged by traffic and very polluted. The Chinese government has been working on incentives to get its citizens to reduce emissions and traffic to try and clean the air. China is a very complex society consisting of 55 minorities. Not all speak the same language and the country is still Communist. Despite that and with the exception of the media the citizens are free to make money and basically do what they want, sort of a "Communist capitalistic" society as team member Mary put it. Mary, who is a U.S. Dow employee, was with us for the conference today.

I always get a kick out of sayings and expressions in these foreign countries. One that tickled me here was our guide calling American food "West food." Then there are the road signs. On the steep downhill coming in from the mountains north of Beijing the warning was for "serial downgrades."

Team Silver is going to the Great Wall tomorrow before we run out of Beijing tomorrow night from Tiananmen Square. After that it's off to Japan where I was born at the base of Mt. Fujiyama so many years ago. Right now I am feeling my age and drinking lots of water.

Water is life. Pass it on!