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The Idaho Board of Education in the 1970s defined “high school” as grades 9 through 12, and required every student to take two years of science to graduate. One year was Biology, and the other was Physical Science. Normally, you took Introduction to Physical Science (IPS) in your freshman (grade 9) year, and Biology 1 in your sophomore (grade 10) year. If you failed one of them, you had to repeat it.This wasn’t a huge problem for many years in my town. We had a Primary School (grade 1), an Elementary School (grades 2 through 6), a Junior High (grades 7 and 8) and a High School (grades 9 through 12). If you failed IPS in 9th grade you just took it again.And then they decided to build a new high school on the other side of the river. At that point they reconfigured the grades: the elementary school was now 2nd through 4th grade, Middle School took over both the old junior high and high school and was now grades 5 through 9, and High School was grades 10 through 12. If you failed IPS, the school would have to bus you back across the river to attend last period IPS, and then you’d be released for the day. It didn’t work.The school board decided to launch a search for the best high school physical science teacher they could find who was willing to move to a city of 2500 people in North Idaho. They found one, hired him for a huge amount of money, and explained that not only would he be teaching physics, chemistry, and geometry, he would also be teaching the remedial physical science class he had to invent. (He was also the volleyball coach. He taught school in my district for 20 years and won the state championship 18 times.)So he sat down and thought, “what can I do to motivate people who really, REALLY don’t want to be in a science class to pass one?” He came up with ducks. He spent all summer thinking about what’s science-y about a duck. There is quite a bit…he even taught the chemistry of a cooked duck. To motivate them to learn, he bought carving knives and pieces of logs and had the students carve wooden ducks. (And some of those wooden ducks were really good!) Naturally, he also worked the science of wood into his classes. If the students didn’t pay attention and do their work diligently for the first half of the class they couldn’t carve ducks the second half. And he arranged with the local chapter of the conservation group Ducks Unlimited for them to have their annual banquet at the end of the school year, and all the General Science students were invited to bring their wooden ducks to display.This teacher ALSO did a “physics of surfing” - he was from Southern California and surfed all his life until he moved to Idaho - block for the Physics class.

The craziest rental car situation:I knew I wanted to explore America, and the world, at a very young age. Through decades of relentless road trips, I finally made it to every U.S. county. This was probably the most difficult of all my bizarre travel goals!The road trip rulesPurchasing the DeLorme software changed everything. The most efficient digital atlas I’ve ever seen provides every single road, no matter how remote or unpaved, in the entire United States. The GPS is so efficient it will track your vehicle in the most remote regions, and even worked when I sailed to Antarctica!Along the way, scouring every corner of America on my travels, I developed some rules to make it more interesting.Rental cars: I have to accept whatever rental car the company gives me, even when it’s not what I reserved.The loop: If I’m not embarking on a road trip from my hometown, I fly to an airport somewhere in America, rent a car, and drive in a minimum 3,000-mile loop, zigzagging throughout as many checkpoints as possible.Shortest path: I must set the DeLorme software path to “shortest” rather than “fastest” so that we’re forced to use some crazy backroads on the most direct route and really explore America with the element of a little danger.The storyIt was road trip #435 for me during the spring of 2006 when I flew with a friend to Salt Lake City, planning on an exhaustive search of everything relevant in Utah, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, and the southeast corner of Oregon. These extraordinary itineraries are the only way to see as much as I’ve seen in a lifetime, and it is absolutely thrilling.This region has some magnificent mountains, and even in spring you’ll find snow and ice, plenty of mud, and some crazy off-roading for sure! I intentionally rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle to navigate the impending craziness, a full-size SUV advertised by Budget Rent a Car as a Chevy Tahoe or similar (below).When we landed at Salt Lake City and proceeded to the Budget counter, they informed me that the only car left was a Ford Mustang (below). I explained the types of roads we were going to be navigating and suggested they might not want me driving a convertible sports car on a dirt road in the ice and snow. I mentioned that I intentionally rented an SUV. They replied, “There’s nothing we can do about it. Just take the Mustang.” In the mountains? In the snow? You’ve got to be kidding me.I’ve had a lot of rental cars that weren’t what was promised on the Internet, but this was ridiculous! So, we drove that Mustang all over that part of America, even on a road for logging trucks where we slowly crept over boulders fit for a Jeep. And yes, we eventually got stuck on a muddy, snowy forest road many hours from civilization. Remarkably, it’s the only time I’ve ever been stuck on an American road trip, despite other close calls.But we made it out and lived to tell the tale.

The answer is yes, but not necessarily in the way you would expect. You won't see hundreds of Chinese citizens walking around downtown Vladivostok (unless they're on vacation), nor will you hear much Mandarin spoken on the street. But China is increasingly integrating Russia's east into its own economy as a source of raw materials in a way that even Vladimir Putin cannot control.Here's a good example: Until 2006, most high-quality wood harvested in Russia's vast forests was exported to China as whole logs (known as roundwood), where cheap local labor turned it into furniture, flooring, and other finished goods to be sold at a heavy premium in the US and Europe. Russia's federal government placed a tariff on the export of roundwood in 2006 to encourage the growth of the domestic timber processing industry. Not wanting to pay the tariff, Chinese processing companies simply moved their facilities into Russia.I visited a Chinese logging facility in Russia in 2011. It was a professional operation, with several hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment and about 20 workers, located off a muddy dirt road about 20 minutes outside of a major Far Eastern logging town. It was also completely illegal - located in the equivalent of a national forest. The workers, all Chinese as far as I could tell, fled into the woods as soon as we arrived. At least a half-million dollars of prime hardwood lay stacked around the premises. After about 15 minutes, a Russian-speaking Chinese boss arrived and told us we should leave "to avoid problems" (even though we were on public land). We did.This is a great deal for the timber company - they get high-quality wood processed by Chinese laborers instead of Russians (who would demand higher wages) and exported with no tariff. Corrupt local officials benefit from bribes and kickbacks for overlooking a log mill hidden in plain sight. The losers are regular working folks, the Russians who cut down the trees illegally and the Chinese laborers who sleep in shipping containers through the Russian winter.You see this pattern repeated with nearly every industry in the area. Powerful "fish mafias" control the flow of high-quality seafood like salmon through Russia to China (or, in the case of king crab, to the US: Searching for the Russian Crab Mafia). Russia's federal government, itself a petro mafia, rushed to agree on a price for Russian gas sales to China in the wake of US and European sanctions in May 2014.Culturally, China also has a heavy influence on the region. Locals are proud of their connection to the world's rising economic power and view China as an important ally. Many work in industries that benefit from Chinese investment. They speak a few words of Chinese, visit cross-border towns on vacation, study at Chinese universities, and drink Tsingdao. I once took a friend from Vladivostok to eat at a Chinese restaurant in Idaho and he reacted with disgust to his lo mein.Some people (like the NYT: Why China Will Reclaim Siberia) speculate that China will try to conquer eastern Russia. Right now there's no need - China's getting everything it could possibly want from Russia at firesale prices.