I'm no wildlife expert, but I've noticed that moose have a curious habit of wandering into urban areas more so than other large, wild animals in the Northwest.

In recent years, we've seen moose trotting along Spokane streets, sunbathing in a city park, breaking into a home, canceling recess at Colbert Elementary School, and hurdling fences in the Spokane Valley.

With a strong tail wind, 62-year old Darby Roach and his best friend Mike Mann, cruise into Airway Heights on two wheels.  If you've driven Highway 2 in the past three days you may know who I'm talking about.  They're the two guys on loaded down bicycles, with the sneaky smiles and gusto of young men on an adventure of a lifetime.

Roach and Mann are on a mission to first bike across the United States and then the world.  The pair left Wenatchee Sunday morning and arrived in Spokane Wednesday night. In all, they've logged about 140 miles so far. Their goal is to get to Boston by the end of the Summer.  From there, Roach will fly solo to Europe where he plans to spend the next 3 years seeing the world. From the narrow streets of Paris to the snow covered peaks of Chile, Roach plans to pedal every mile of the way. 

What? Is he crazy? Who would do such a thing? All questions that ran through my mind when Roach told me about his ambitious goal. To understand this wild dream, you have to understand the wild man on the bike.  I don't think he'll mind my choice adjective, he raised me after all.

Hypothetically speaking, if a nearby star were to go supernova, it could eventually reach our blue planet and rip apart our atmosphere. Complex life would cease to exist. That scenario is unlikely says Dr. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, professor of astrobiology at Washington State University. That’s one of nine of possible ways Earth could meet its doom, and there’s only so much we can do about it.

His new book, “Megacatastrophes!”, co-written with David Darling, explores scientific realities we face and how we can simply be aware of them.

First and foremost, Schulze-Makuch and Darling are scientists. They ignore the pop culture paranoia of zombie apocalypse and the ominous Mayan calender. Schulze-Makuch even says that scenario is nonsense. The two writers discuss the realistic scenarios humans face from asteroid impacts, nano-technology to global pandemic.

“I’m not the prophet,” Schulze-Makuch said. “We look at different scenarios and we basically prioritize how dangerous it is and how disastrous it would be.”

Would the scenario result in a million dead or even a billion dead? Schulze-Makuch says a pandemic tops the list with diseases like the Spanish Flu or Black Death. With passenger flights crossing oceans and country borders, disease has no boundaries.