Short and shy, Ben Saunders was the last kid in his class picked for any sports team. "Football, tennis Cricket — anything with a round ball, I was useless." he says now with a laugh. But back then he was the object of jokes in school gym classes in England’s rural Devonshire.
It was a mountain bike he received for his 15^th birthday that changed him. At first the teen went biking alone in a nearby forest. Then he began to cycle along with a runner friend. Gradually, Saunders set his mind building up his body, increasing his speed, strength and endurance. At age 18, he ran his first marathon.
The following year, he met John Ridgway, who became famous in the 1960s for rowing an open boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Saunders was hired as an instructor at Ridgway’s school of Adventure in Scotland, where he learned about the older man’s cold-water exploits (成就). Intrigued, Saunders read all he could about Arctic explorers and North Pole expeditions, then decided that this would be his future. Journeys to the Pole aren’t the usual holidays for British country boys, and many people dismissed his dream as fantasy. "John Ridgway was one of the few who didn’t say, ’You are completely crazy,’" Saunders says.
In 2001, after becoming a skilled skier, Saunders started his first long-distance expedition toward the North Pole. He suffered frostbite, had a closer encounter (遭遇) with a polar bear and pushed his body to the limit.
Saunders has since become the youngest person to ski alone to the North Pole, and he’s skied more of the Arctic by himself than any other Briton. His old playmates would not believe the transformation.
This October, Saunders, 27, heads south to explore from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back, an 1800-mile journey that has never been completed on skis.
【小题1】The turning point in Saunders’ life came when ________.

Mr. Smith works in a factory. There he drives a truck. He’s tired all the time. When he comes back, he’s always busy and doesn’t want to do any housework. His wife is a doctor and likes to keep all the things clean. So she has to do all at home. She usually goes to work from Monday to Friday and has to do all on weekends. All her friends know about it and sometimes they come to help her.
It’s Saturday today. Mrs Smith tells her husband to help her do some housework, but he says he has something to do and goes out early in the morning. He leaves a lot of dirty clothes at home. Mrs Smith doesn’t go to work but she doesn’t feel well. So she doesn’t want to do any housework. After breakfast, Jo, one of her friends, comes to see her when she’s sitting on a chair.
The girl finds the rooms are dirty and she asks, “Don’t you clean your rooms today, Mrs Smith?” “No, I don’t.”says the doctor. “Why don’t you wear your glasses?” “Then I will think the rooms are still clean.”
【小题1】What does Mrs Smith do ?