"CONVERSATIONS WITH A TRUCK DRIVER" Somewhere over the Prairies en route from Toronto to Vancouver Amir and I leave together from Toronto Pearson bright and early at 0900 on 9 July 2004. Both sets of parents are there to wish us bon voyage. It’s unspeakably exciting because for the first time in my life, I'm going to travel halfway around the world with only my friends as company! Our Air Canada flight is packed, and the two of us are assigned seats separated by a considerable distance. The plane takes off uneventfully and we soon reach cruising altitude and are free to move about the cabin. The feature film on this six-hour flight is “Laws of Attraction." I’m of the opinion that any movie featuring Mr. James Bond is well worth watching. Sometime during the flight, I get up for a bathroom break. I have this habit of wearing T-shirts appropriate for the occasion, and for this flight I’ve chosen one that boldly announces that I’m a part of the Canadian Chemistry and Physics Olympiads. As I return to my aisle seat, the passenger next to me asks what is the Physics Olympiad. I explain the purpose of my trip, and find out that he is a truck driver from Toronto who is on his way to Alaska for a cruise with relatives. Upon discovering that I’m a physics student, the truck driver asks if he can discuss some of his thoughts about physics with me. It turns out that he has an endless supply of ideas about how to make a perpetual motion machine. Somewhere in each of these ideas there’s a system that, after going through a series of transformations, returns to its initial state to repeat the process. I argue with him in vain that in the real world there’s no completely reversible process, and physical limitations such as frictional effects mean his perpetual motion machine will never be able return to its original state and repeat its actions ad infinitum. Our banter goes back and forth for the better part of three hours, which means I end up watching only bits and pieces of the in-flight movie. Near the end of the flight the conversation itself begins to feel like a perpetual motion machine! I suppose that as a truck driver, there’s no shortage of time to go over such crazy ideas in your head. It beats listening to the same CD play itself over twenty times as you drive from Windsor to Montreal or hearing the same weather reports every half hour. I’m glad he hasn’t thought the physics through too carefully while driving or he might end up in a spectacular wreck on the side of the highway. However, I’m not sure whether he’s actually serious about all his ideas or he’s just pulling my leg. It’s entirely possible he's actually a physics professor going to some conference, who knows exactly what the IPhO is about and decides to give me a hard time!