As the largest company in the country producing educational school assemblies and school shows, Mobile Ed Productions sends school assembly performers to a lot of places all over the country. Our stalwart school show performers log a huge number of miles every year, and like the Post Office, they travel through every kind of weather and road condition you can imagine. Well, almost...

Many years ago a then young performer joined the company to do our Abraham Lincoln school assembly program. Equipped as he was at the time with a low slung sports car for travel, this young man encountered some difficult sledding on one of Michigan's dirt roads after some heavy rains. He stormed into the office the next day demanding that he never be scheduled again at a school located on a dirt road. The rest of the employees did everything they could to keep a straight face. Of course we continued to send him to schools on all kinds of roads, and, in time, he grew wiser and obtained a more suitable vehicle. Over the years, that young man, as he grew into an old man, continued to travel all over the midwest through blizzards, ice storms, thunderstorms, dirt roads, mountain roads, mud and every other condition encountered in this country.

But neither he, nor any of our presenters traveling to schools in the Midwest, or Texas, California or the East Coast will have anything at all to complain about after this discussion today. None of them have encountered anything at all like this.

In Russia, there is a main highway that travels from the West all the way out into Siberia. Well... it is called a highway in Russia. But don’t start out imagining a modern interstate. Here is a picture of the road in good weather.

The difficulty, as was learned by every army ever to make the mistake of invading Russia, is what the weather does to this “road”.

Here are some pictures showing the condition of the road after some heavy rains.

There... don’t you feel better about your commute now? Don’t those back roads in your neighborhood look a whole lot better? Aren’t you glad you don’t perform school assemblies in Russia?

Geoff Beauchamp is the Regional Manager of Mobile Ed Productions where "Education Through Entertainment" has been the guiding principal since 1979. Mobile Ed Productions produces and markets quality educational school assembly programs in the fields of science, history, writing, astronomy, natural science, mathematics, character issues and a variety of other curriculum based areas. In addition, Mr. Beauchamp is a professional actor with 30 years of experience in film, television and on stage. He created and still performs occasionally in Mobile Ed's THE LIVING LINCOLN