In 1978, I was 18 and was working as a nurse in a small town about 270 km away from Sydney, Australia. I was looking forward to having five days off from duty. Unfortunately, the only one train a day back to my home in Sydney had already left. So I thought I'd hitch a ride (搭便车).

    I waited by the side of the highway for three hours but no one stopped for me. Finally, a man walked over and introduced himself as Gordon. He said that although he couldn't give me a lift, I should come back to his house for lunch. He noticed me standing for hours in the November heat and thought I must be hungry. I was doubtful as a young girl but he assured (使……放心) me I was safe, and he also offered to help me find a lift home afterwards. When we arrived at his house, he made us sandwiches. After lunch, he helped me find a lift home.

Twenty-five years later, in 2003, while I was driving to a nearby town one day, I saw an elderly man standing in the glaring heat, trying to hitch a ride. I thought it was another chance to repay someone for the favor I'd been given decades earlier. I pulled over and picked him up. I made him comfortable on the back seat and offered him some water.

    After a few moments of small talk, the man said to me, “You haven't changed a bit, even your red hair is still the same.”

    I couldn't remember where I'd met him. He then told me he was the man who had given me lunch and helped me find a lift all those years ago. It was Gordon.

    It was dangerously cold. A few drivers slipping and sliding off the road and back on again had cut deep ruts（车辙）in the mud. And the ruts became frozen solid. The drum of our truck's aging engine worried us.

    Trees and bushes heavy with snow bent to form an icy tunnel. We inched along the scary route as Howard grasped the steering wheel（方向盘）tightly, trying to keep the truck in the ruts. We were now riding through a nightmare with no going back. I kept praying the truck would not quit.

    However, the engine's coughing grew worse. We came to a bumping stop. Hot tears ran down my face. We noticed a small house off in the distance. “I will go for help.” Howard's words ruined my common sense and panic took over. We would take the children — we would walk to that house together!

    But the snow was deep, and our two children, asleep in the cab, were too heavy to carry. My husband convinced me to let him go alone. If no one was home or they didn't answer the door, he would come back and we'd try to hike out to a main road. For now, it was safer in the truck. I wish I could say I have faith, but when he walked away, I was mad at the world.

    It seemed as if hours had passed before I heard a familiar voice and a kind laugh of another man as they approached in the snow. The older fellow invited us to go up to the house where his wife was waiting. Two wide-awake kids moved across the seat, ready for adventure. Their voices and laughter carried in the cold night air. When we finally got close, a cheerful woman opened the door. Warm air and the smell of hot buttered popcorn and chocolate drew us in.

     Relieved, my prayers were heard!

    After a few moments, my passenger started a conversation. It began ordinarily enough: "How do you like driving a cab?"

    "It's OK," I said. "I make a living and meet interesting people sometimes. How about you? His reply intrigued me.

    "I would not change jobs even if I could make twice as much money doing something else."

    I'd never heard that before. "What do you do?''

    "I'm in the neurology department at New York Hospital."

    Then I decided to ask for this man's help. We were not far from the airport.

    "Could I ask a big favor of you? I have a son, 15, a good kid. He wants a job, but a 15-year-old can't get hired unless his old man knows someone who owns a business, and I don't." I paused. "Is there any possibility that you could get him some kind of summer job?"

    He didn't respond for a while. Finally, he said: "Well, the medical students have a summer research project. Maybe he could fit in. Have him send me his school record." I tore off a piece of my brown lunch bag, and he scribbled his name on it and paid me. It was the last time I ever saw him.

    After I nagged, yelled, and finally threatened to cut off his pocket money, my son Robbie sent off his grades to the guy the next morning.

    Two weeks later, when I arrived home from work, my son was beaming. He handed me a letter from my passenger, saying he was to call my passenger's secretary for an interview.

    Robbie got the job. He did minor tasks, unpaid, but he fit in well. The following summer, he worked at the hospital again with more responsibility. As high school graduation neared, Dr Plum was kind enough to write letters of recommendation for Robbie and he was accepted by Brown University. Finally, Dr Robert Stern, the son of a taxicab driver, became OB-GYN chief president at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

    Some might call it fate, and I guess it was. But it shows that something as ordinary as a taxi ride can change your life.

    Imagine jet-setting from Tokyo to Paris, enjoying first-class travel, a four-course dinner and a city tour－all without leaving the ground. This is the future of air travel according to Japanese company First Airlines, which has used the power of virtual reality to create dream vacations.

    Passengers avoid the costly airport transfer, the baggage fees or busy airport terminal（航站楼）－and instead enjoy the privileges of business or first-class travel and an expensive tour of Paris－all while remaining motionless in Tokyo. As well as Paris, First Airlines also offers the virtual destinations of New York, Rome and Hawaii.

    After boarding, guests can settle down for the two-hour flight on their advanced Airbus seat－surrounded by decoration that is modeled on the inside of an aircraft, for maximum realism. There is flight service and VR, foods, music for every destination. Passengers will be served a delicious meal by air stewards, alongside drinks and other desserts. The menu depends on the destination of choice－Manhattan clam chowder and cheesecake for New York and salmon tartar and onion soup for Paris. After landing at the destination, guests can enjoy a 360-degree tour of the destination－all thanks to projection（投影）mapping and video.

    It makes for a supposedly stress-free vacation, perfect for those whose ability to travel abroad is limited by cost or health. Virtual reality is becoming increasingly present everywhere at all times in the world of travel－allowing travelers to appreciate the wonders of the world, all without leaving their house.

    At just 4,980 yen（$ 46）for business class and 5,980 yen（$ 56）for first class－these two- hour flights are far more affordable than their real-life flights. Tokyo citizens eager to experience First Airlines can book a trip on the website, with reservations currently being taken until May 2018.

    As the weather gets colder, we start wearing jackets, and most of us stop thinking about the sun. But the sun's rays can be just as harmful when it's cold and cloudy outside. "Any exposed area of your body can still get sunburned," Dr. Apple Bodemer, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Live Science.

    Whether you spend a day on the slopes, skating on a pond or clearing snow out of your driveway, your face is still getting exposed to the sun's radiation in the form of ultraviolet (紫外线) (UV) light, which can go deep into your skin cells causing DNA damage, according to Bodemer.

    The sun's long ultraviolet A (UVA) waves can cause earlier aging, sunspots and wrinkles, while its short ultraviolet B (UVB) rays are known for causing skin reddening and burns.

    Skin damage caused by UV exposure increases over time. More exposure to radiation contributes to more severe damage, even skin cancer. In addition, snow and ice can also make sun damage worse. They reflect up to 80 percent of UV rays reaching the ground. That means you get hit from both the sky and the ground. And skiers and snowboarders increase their risk of getting sunburned even more because UV exposure increases at higher altitudes.

    "Generally, the biggest factor for sun-sensitivity is how pale your skin is," he said. "But, the reality is that even the darkest individual can get sun damage."

    Luckily, the solution for protecting your skin is simple: Wear sunscreen every day. Rigel recommended using sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of at least 30, and going higher at high altitudes. As a rule of thumb, SPF 30 will block 97 percent of UVB rays, SPF 50 blocking 98 percent, and SPF 100 blocking 99 percent. Whatever kind of sunscreen you use, it's important to apply SPF about once every 2 hours.

    Rigel also suggested sunscreens with "broad spectrum (光谱)"—to protect against both UVB and UVA rays—as well as sunscreens that are water resistant for up to 80 minutes. That way, you can go about your day without it wearing off too quickly.

    One night in 1966, Michael Chapman rushed into a folk-music club in Cornwall, England to get out of the rain, and soon found himself onstage playing the guitar.

    "They offered me a job to play for the rest of the summer. And I've been playing ever since," Chapman says. "I've told that story so many times, but it's absolutely true. If it hadn't been raining that night, I wouldn't be talking to you."

    The British guitar player has spent the 50 years since then on the road. He released some praised albums in the 1970s, but his health went downhill in the 80s and 90s. Like a lot of British artists in the 1960s, Chapman taught himself to play the guitar by listening to American jazz and blues records.

    Chapman actually taught photography, but quit when he was 26 to play music full time. When he was starting out, he was often compared to other British acoustic (原声的) guitar heroes of the time, like John Martyn and Bert Jansch.

    "The fascinating thing about Michael Chapman is that he doesn't fit in with those guys of his generation," says Andrew Male, a music journalist. "He's always- been an outsider. He never moved to London."

    And while he never became part of the London music scene, Chapman was noticed by those musicians. "The 70s caught up with him in the 80s," Male says. "He had a huge heart attack at the end of the 80s that nearly finished him off. When he made his way back into the world in the early 90s, people had forgotten about him."

    But not everyone. A younger generation of musicians in America, including Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and a younger singer and guitarist named Steve Gumi, recently rediscovered Chapman.

    "We wanted to capture Michael's voice and character where he is now. You know, it's a little road-weary, but he still has it," Gunn says. "For me, it was really important to get that right," "He's the right old musician for present times," Male says. "I think the music he makes seems quite in tune with where we're at."