Webinar: An Evening with Scott Edwards – Bicycling and Birding Across America
September 15, 2020
Naimah Muhammad:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to our program this evening called An Evening with Scott Edwards. We have a lot of registrations for tonight so we're going to go ahead and give it a moment as folks join our Zoom webinar. And go ahead if you'd like and tell us where you're tuning in from in the Q&A box. Awesome. See lots of folks today. So I hope you can get through all the questions that I'm sure you're going to have.
Oh, Athens, Georgia, Maryland, Boston, Canada, Virginia, Nebraska. We have folks from everywhere. Oh my gosh. Okay. Florida, lots of Florida, Brooklyn, Maryland, Missoula. Cool. Washington DC. Awesome. Great. Since we have so many folks I'm going to go ahead and get started. My name is Naimah Muhammad, I'm the public programs coordinator at the National Museum of Natural History. And tonight's program is called An Evening with Scott Edwards, which is part of an ongoing series that we will be offering virtually this fall. So to take us into the evening, I want to welcome to the screen, Helen James, who is the curator of birds in our division of birds. So Helen, go ahead and take it away.
Helen James:
Thank you Naimah. As Naimah said, I'm Helen James. I'm the curator of birds at the National Museum of Natural History. The division of birds at the National Museum of Natural History is an incredible place. It houses a scientific collection with over 600,000 specimens of birds representing the birds of the world. I've known our guest this evening, Scott Edwards, since he graduated from college and he took a gap year that included a research internship with us in the division of birds, and then also some field research on birds. What a delight that Scott decided to stick with Ornithology back then, and that he's accomplished so much in science since then.
Many years later, the tables turned and I actually became a visiting researcher in Scott's lab up at Harvard. What impressed me the most about that experience was the care that Scott took in mentoring the scholars in his lab, particularly the undergraduates. Even when we were discussing complex science, and we often were, Scott always made sure that everything was understandable to everyone in the room. So in short, we're thrilled to host Scott this evening.
While we wish we could be on-site and share our collections with you as part of the programming, we're excited to bring you programs like this one tonight, which continue to inspire and foster our connection with the natural world. So thank you, Scott, for joining us to share your story of the epic bike trip. And now I would like to welcome our host and moderator for the evening, Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of the National Museum of Natural History. So take it away, Kirk.
Kirk Johnson:
Hey, thanks so much, Helen. It's great to see you. It's been six months. We're all working remotely at the national museum and it's been quite a time. We closed the museum on March 14th, it's been six months since then. It's always interesting to see what people do with their COVID time, what happens in this strange world of the global pandemic. And Scott Edwards, he's got the longest title in the world, right? He's the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He's also the curator of Ornithology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard.
But more importantly, Scott was on the advisory board here at the National Museum of Natural History for, I think at least nine years, he's been here the entire time. I've been here as a great advisor for us, helping us understand the importance of science in the wide world. And when the COVID thing struck, Scott had the opportunity of doing something he always wanted to do, which is ride his bike from East Coast to West Coast, and he did it over the course of the summer in 76 days, from June 6th till August 20th.
So we're here to talk about what happens when you let an ornithologist ride across North America on a bike. And with that I'll welcome Scott Edwards. And what we're going to do is Scott will talk for about 15 minutes then I'll have a conversation with Scott for another 15 minutes, and then we'll take your questions for about 20 minutes. So sit back and enjoy Scott Edwards as he bicycles across North America. Take it away, Scott.
Scott Edwards:
Thank you, Kirk. Thank you very much, Kirk. And hopefully everyone can hear me. It's pleasure to speak to everyone and to share my summer adventure with everyone. It was yeah, quite an experience and hopefully you'll enjoy some of the pictures and sounds I have to share with you. You may want to grab a pair of headphones, some of the sounds are subtle, especially of birds.
This is my route going across America. I started in Plum Island, Massachusetts on June 6th and ended up in Sunset Beach, Oregon on August 20th, so about 76 days and about 3,800 miles. The route was a compilation of published routes and a little bit of bushwhacking, if you will, using Google Maps and other electronic applications. Here, I am starting out in Plum Island MA, and you can see my bicycle here. A typical bike trip like this I carry everything for camping. So I've got my sleeping pad, I've got sleeping bag and a tent. I've got lots of tools for repairing the bicycle if I get a flat or something worse. I've got water bottles, started with two, picked up a third along the way. I've got some GPS unit and my phone rack right there, and another pan in the front for food. Yeah. It was a little bit of a house on wheels.
I mostly camped this trip and I'm really glad I did. I ran into lots of really wonderful camp sites, many of which were basically empty, especially during the week. I carried a stove and tent and just occasionally I would hit a hotel. It's nothing like a hotel after a long day of 50 or 60 miles sweating in hot weather. But I really preferred to camp if I could and just really made the trip special. Of course, it was essential that I get a swimming pool at least by the end of the day. And I would choose very judiciously my camp sites, if they didn't have a pool, it was out, nothing like a pool to ease your feet at the end of the day, or a nice, cool river like you see here, the Madison River in Montana.
Here's my elevation route. I thought Kirk, especially being a geologist would enjoy this. Starting in the east, I crossed the Appalachians and I hit a flat spot along the New York Erie Canal area. I crossed over to Ithaca, New York, which took me over quite a few hills. But then as I hit Lake Erie, I hit another flat spot. Quite a long period in the middle was the Great Plains. And this was interesting because as you can see, you're gradually increasing in elevation, but in fact it felt like it was flat for me.
Then I started to increase with the Badlands in South Dakota, several passes in the Black Mountains here and in the Rocky Mountains as well, and then finally hitting the Columbia river basin and the Palouse, which was actually quite a lot more difficult, probably the most difficult two days of the trip in the Palouse in South Eastern Washington. Birds, you came to see birds. And I don't have a lot of great videos of birds, but I can share with you some of the common species that I was able to capture with my iPhone. Here's an Osprey, which was very common across the whole trip. And I was surprised in a way because these birds were surprisingly skittish even when you approached their nests.
Here's a killdeer. It's a tiny little speck on the right side of the screen, but you can hear it I think. Killdeers were ubiquitous, and even in the corn fields where you wouldn't think there'd be any habitat, they were just incredibly ubiquitous. One of the nice birds I ran into was the upland sandpiper, which we don't get in Massachusetts. But you can see this bird here, it's a very enigmatic shore bird, you can hear its wings and whistling song. It was very, very common in the Great Plain states all across the [inaudible 00:10:23].
Most of my birding was by ear. And in this clip, for example, you can hear a Chipping Sparrow, but as you're biking you don't really have a lot of time to stop. And so I would listen for birds as I was moving, and fortunately, I'm able to identify most of them that way. As you can see on the right a pair of Western Kingbirds, these were really the first birds in the west that really told me that I was moving west in my journey.
Saw lots of other wildlife as well. Here's some Pronghorn near Sheridan, Wyoming. This is at the base of the Big Horn Mountains, one of the eastern most ranges in Wyoming. And you can see on this side some white-tailed deer on the same area, very beautiful spot. One of the great things about crossing rivers were the bridges which naturally provide habitat for swallows, in this case, hundreds of cliff swallows. Bridges are a major nesting site for swallows of many species that I saw across the trip.
Now, sadly, most of the birds I actually encountered visually were dead birds squashed on the road. And this, although a bit gruesome or macabre, is simply a sad fact of our highway system. Hundred thousands, perhaps millions of birds are killed every year and are visible on our roadsides, especially when you're traveling as slow as on a bicycle. Species of many different kinds, great horned owls, shrikes, orioles, starlings. So something to keep in mind when you're driving the next time to try to watch out for birds as they're crossing your path.
Rivers were one of the really wonderful themes of the trip. And you can see some of the great rivers that I crossed here. We've got the Merrimack River to the Mississippi and the Illinois River. My favorite river of all was probably the Missouri river, which I followed for several days. Here's some more rivers. Many of these rivers packed with history, of course, the Little Bighorn River near where Lewis and Clark traveled and the Columbia River and Clearwater River, all were rivers that Lewis and Clark traveled along. Here's a nice shot of the Yellowstone River. Again, one of my favorite rivers because I was able to travel alongside it for several days. Just immerse yourself in the sound here.
I think Montana has some of the most beautiful rivers of the entire trip. That's the Yellowstone River near Reed Point. I had quite a bit of exposure to Native Americans, either in person or traveling through their lands. And it was a really great opportunity to show respect for this really important part of our American culture. Here are some of the places where I encountered Native Americans and fascinating stories all over the place. For example, the Meskwaki tribe, which you see an icon of in the lower left in Tama, Iowa, is the only federally recognized native American tribe in Iowa. Of course, as you'd expect, they're much easier to encounter native Americans out west and just had a wonderful experience learning about them and traveling through their lands.
As I mentioned, Lewis and Clark was a major theme. And in fact, the route that I took for much of the second half of the trip closely mirrored their own route. And Sacagawea of course plays an important role here. And it's just fascinating to travel in their footsteps. And it really made you appreciate just how grueling their trip must have been on bicycle, I don't think captured anything of the real hardships that expedition encountered. I should mention that Missouri Headwaters State Park on the upper right, is definitely a place I'd want to revisit. This is where Lewis and Clark discovered the headwaters of the Missouri River, comprised of three smaller rivers, the Jefferson, Madison, and the Gallatin River. And not only is it a very beautiful place, but it's just so packed with history that I really wanted to go back and spend more time.
My trip also had a political dimension. As you can imagine, leaving at a time when there was lots of unrest in the country. And there was just a lot of challenges I would say. I was really struck by a lot of the efforts by local people to express themselves. And so I took that cue and ended up dawning some signs on my own bike. And this added a really nice theme to the trip. I was able to engage with lots of people about Black Lives Matter and other issues, not always agreeing with them, especially since I was traveling through many rural areas, but really added a interesting dimension to the trip.
I also picked up a few signs from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology where I have some good friends. I particularly like the one on the left as a hopeful sign. And the one on the right I put on appropriately on July 4th when I crossed the Mississippi River. It was a nice way to capture the diversity that of course is America. Riding through the countryside with Black Lives Matter signs, it was comical in some ways. I would hope that the cows might even at least pay attention, but hopefully I made some contacts with people on a personal basis.
And here are some of the wonderful people that I encountered during my trip. I can tell you without reservation that Americans are a really, really wonderful and generous group of folks. I can't tell you how much good will I received. In many cases, saving me from utter destruction, whether through a cold bottle of water or just accommodation or whatever, not 100% rosy, but honestly, most of the time, I just had a really great experience. I want to share with you some little vignettes I put together.
Just as you'd be driving across country and listening to the radio, music for me was a very important part of the trip. It really kept my spirits up. You can imagine it can be challenging at times, basically on your own. So I'll just share with you a few final vignettes, which often in the morning I would try to play something mellow like Joni Mitchell here. Later in the day when I was hepped up a little bit, I would spice it up with something a little more lively. And finally, when I was really, really hard pressed and just feeling down and pushed around by all the trucks, I would just have to go all out with some slightly harder stuff.
Anyway, you can see how excited I was when I hit the Pacific Ocean and just having crossed just this amazing country that we are and all its bizarreness and challenges. Some of the best advice I got for the trip, you see here, and that was to eat well, eat lots of fruit and nuts, not to focus on the endpoint and to take each day at a time. That was actually really important. Because you can imagine in the middle of the trip there were days when I just didn't think I would make it. And finally to enjoy myself. I know that sounds trivial, but you often get so focused on just the logistics and the physical aspects of it, you forget that you're in such a beautiful countryside. Here we are on the Clearwater River in Idaho.
And then finally the trip really inspired me to read a bunch of stuff when I got home. Here's some of the things which I'm looking forward to reading. And I thank Kirk for notifying me about the title on the bottom. It's a painful truth that African Americans are not perhaps seen as people who enjoy nature. And part of my reason for reaching out on social media as I was bicycling was to tell the world as much as I could that, yes, we also enjoy nature, and you should expect to see us increasing numbers on the natural landscape. So thank you very much. And I look forward to hearing your questions.
Kirk Johnson:
Hey, you guys. Scott, we're coming on live here. Here we go. Ah, there we are. So Scott, I like birds but I'm not enough of a birder to keep a bird list. And I assume that you have a bird list. You probably have a life list, right?
Scott Edwards:
Well, Kirk, first of all, full disclosure, I'm not one of these type A bird watchers, I promise you. I do have about 50 notebooks before eBird arrives and then I have my eBird lists. Could I tell you how many species I've actually seen across my life? I don't think so. I've certainly had the good fortune of traveling a lot. So it's probably in the low maybe two or three thousands.
Kirk Johnson:
Did you add any new birds to your own personal list on the trip?
Scott Edwards:
Honestly, upland sandpiper, I had never seen very well. And I really got to know that bird in the Midwest. Things like Blue Grosbeak also, I had seen a little bit, but I really got a chance to get to know during the trip. New ones, good question. I don't think I actually saw any new ones, but honestly for me, it's more the quality and not the quantity. So seeing and hearing species that I didn't know very well was just as exciting.
Kirk Johnson:
So mainly sound was a big part, I know that birders like sound as a way of identifying birds, but I watch you writing with your iPhone taking pictures or little films of birds. Did you have any moments when you almost got onto world's greatest oopsies videos?
Scott Edwards:
Yeah. The few clips I took while riding, I was probably going two miles an hour. And I thought about taking a more substantial camera, but you got to make your decisions. I think it's really important for birding to know the calls, and it was just so much fun because of course the bicycle is practically silent. I could hear little species like when I crossed the Lolo Pass in Montana, I could hear the winter birds starting to call or the stellar jays. And it's a really one of the fun aspects of birding that you can hear the soundscape and really appreciate it.
Kirk Johnson:
And the roadkills were they pretty common?
Scott Edwards:
The roadkills were common and it's one of these... I'm sure someone has studied this. It's just one of these least appreciated aspects of our environment. I think a lot of people appreciate, for example, that birds die in the large numbers, banging into buildings and windows, especially during migration. They may not appreciate that our highways are really deadly as well. Not only birds, but lots and lots of snakes, occasional bats and lots of butterflies and other insects. So yeah, that's a problem that we really need to solve I think.
Kirk Johnson:
Did it give you pause yourself? Did you ever ponder you might become roadkill if you weren't careful? It seems like riding a bike on some of those roads a little bit dangerous. Do you have any close encounters or close calls?
Scott Edwards:
I definitely had close encounters. If not with birds then with locusts and grasshoppers. This was actually a very relatively dry year when I was cycling through Eastern Montana, for example. And there were lots and lots of grasshoppers. I have no doubt I knocked a few of those off, but birds, they were able to dodge me. Yeah, that wasn't a problem.
Kirk Johnson:
Some of those roads are pretty narrow. I always worry when I see bikers and I'm driving my car, how close bikers are to the side of the road. It looks like you had some shoulder free riding as well.
Scott Edwards:
Had some shoulder free riding, absolutely. Bike paths are a real gift when you are able to get a few miles in on one of those. And that's another thing, if I were a president, I would put some money towards improving our bicycle infrastructure. I have to say on balance, it's not for the faint of heart taking on some of these highways. You're dealing with lots of trucks and RVs and pickups. I will say that I was really impressed with the skill and generosity of a lot of the truckers that passed me. They would almost invariably pull out to the other lane and give me a very wide berth. I think the RVs and the trailers they weren't as used to pulling their loads and I think were less skilled at passing bicyclists.
Kirk Johnson:
I loved your topographic cross section of North America. And I noted that Great Plains, that long ramp from the Missouri River, all the way up to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, you gained about 1200 feet of elevation over a thousand miles. So it was uphill, but at the rate of one foot per mile. So it's probably was pretty painless in terms of going uphill.
Scott Edwards:
Well, I know you're an expert on that, and I should have put that on my reading list to watch Kirk's amazing series, the Making of North America. There's a lot that I could learn from that. And I made quip once on Twitter that the Hills are easier if you know how they're formed, and that was particularly true. What is it? The Loess Hills in Iowa? Absolutely fascinating. I hadn't even heard of these hills, but they're apparently ex relatively rare and almost of world heritage status. If you just naively look at them, they don't look like much, but in Western Iowa, they're a really important part of the landscape.
Kirk Johnson:
Well, this is the wind blown dust that gets blown south off the face of the glaciers that were there in 12,000 years ago. And one of the amazing things about Iowa is that it contains the top soil that was pushed south from Canada. So as a result today, the agricultural output of Iowa exceeds that of the output of Canada. And that's because Iowa has all of Canada's soil. So you were driving through wind blown dust that had been moved 12,000 years ago south to the delight of Iowa farmers into the sadness of Canadian farmers.
Scott Edwards:
Well, it's just amazing how many things I encountered like that, but I just frankly had not heard of before. And I may not have heard of had I been traveling at 60 or 70 miles an hour.
Kirk Johnson:
Now, as a geologist I would do that trip entirely differently. I would've showed pictures of road cuts and outcrops, and I know you must have passed some pretty sweet rocks on your ride. What was your favorite rock outcrop?
Scott Edwards:
Well, I didn't show it Kirk, but I saw some great assault outcrops on along the Columbia River in Washington. Again, the rivers for me were just a really cool way to see how water has sculpted the landscape. And so, yeah, we got to take a field trip and just do the birds, do the rocks, the whole shebang.
Kirk Johnson:
You would make the simple guide to roadkill birds. Huh?
Scott Edwards:
Exactly. Exactly.
Kirk Johnson:
What was the biggest surprise for you? What totally caught you off guard?
Scott Edwards:
I think the biggest surprise was just how generous people were. And I think that was helped by my traveling by myself. I'll never forget the guy in Wyoming who pulled up beside me at a turn and handed me a bottle of water, which was great. And once we finished talking, I fully expected him to turn off onto the highway where we were docked. But in fact, he turned around on the road and I realized that he had seen me bicycle passed and got in his car specifically to give me this bottle of water. And for me, that's just a typical example of just how... It's a great model I would say, thinking about others and just countless small acts of kindness. And so yeah, for me perhaps it wasn't a surprise, but it was a really nice confirmation that I think Americans as a people are very generous.
Kirk Johnson:
And you had a tremendous amount of time by yourself on this trip. You must have learned something about yourself that you didn't know as well.
Scott Edwards:
That's the one thing my father was concerned that I would get lonely. Honestly, Kirk, I often had to fight for moments when I was really by myself. Of course, when you're riding the bicycle you're by yourself but you're so concentrated on not keeping the cars away or just staying safe. And once I pulled into a town, you inevitably segue into a conversation or whatever. So I was not as lonely as I expected. I naturally missed my family quite a bit. That was tough, I would say but technology these days, I was on the phone basically every night. My wife, Beth, I wanted to tell her all my successes, all my challenges and she was my sounding board, and just really kept me going.
Kirk Johnson:
Were you talking on the phone while you were writing at all?
Scott Edwards:
Kirk, I want you to know that this was a working trip. I participated in many, many Zoom meetings. And you might have heard about the national academy report on biological collections that just came out.
Kirk Johnson:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:31:59].
Scott Edwards:
Well, I can't say I was writing a lot during the trip. I was in on the Zoom meetings for sure. And it's interesting when you're on the road in this beautiful landscape, and the world of work and meetings and discussion seems so, so far away. And now that I'm back in it, I see all the importance of it, but gives you a glimpse of what life could be like without meetings.
Kirk Johnson:
I noticed you were on social media, you were tweeting along the way. Were you tweet writing or did you tweet at night when you stopped every night? How often did you tweet?
Scott Edwards:
Well, I'm really a novice to social media, and I have to say that the museum's own Ian Owens was a great supporter on Twitter. I was really pleasantly surprised that the number of folks that signed on to follow me on Twitter. And there comes a point when you start to think, "Oh my gosh, I have a clientele to please basically with a report every day." And I can tell you, it's challenging to bang out those 47 words or whatever the limit is after a long day on the road. But I tried to include some pictures and keep it light for sure. Yeah.
Kirk Johnson:
So I'm going to pivot now, take a few questions for people who are watching this thing. Linda Keenan wants to know, did any local folks ride along with you at any point in the trip?
Scott Edwards:
I had some really wonderful colleagues join me at parts during the trip. At one point, Brian Carson, a professor at Ohio State joined me for about 15 miles in Ohio. My friend, Jim Bechler from NSF joined me on his motorcycle. He drove up from Virginia. And I passed a small number of cyclists, most of whom were going west to east, the favored direction. And I was also lucky to be able to stay with a number of colleagues along the way, they were real lifesavers.
But aside from those two, not too many folks actually bicycled with me. But I will say I was actually tracked down by at least two folks who were in their cars and stopped along the road, say, "Hey, are you Scott Edwards?" And it's in the middle of nowhere. I remember professor Mike Scott of University of Idaho, who I was a big fan of and who Helen probably knows since he worked on Hawaiian birds. He tracked me down in the middle of Idaho and we ended up having dinner together. So that was a lot of fun.
Kirk Johnson:
That's good. Were you afraid at any time when you were on the road? Did you have anything to be afraid of or were you personally afraid?
Scott Edwards:
In the moment I would say I was startled and just afraid perhaps of when big trucks would come by and then not give me very much path, that was always challenging. There were times I would say when I had a rattling conversation with someone who had their own opinions about Black Lives Matter or the Republican Party or who knows what, some view and often the ways in which they engaged me as an African American, they probably hadn't spoken to many African Americans in their communities certainly, if not their lives. Occasionally those would give me pause such that I would, for example, take down the signs on my bicycle.
There were also times when I was very exposed. So for example, on the top of some of these passes, like the pass coming out of the Black Mountains, it was windy, it was hot. Darn it, there was not a shelter for another 10 miles. And someone that I had bumped into the day before was telling me these horror stories of hail storms and hail the size of golf balls coming down and so bad weather. Fortunately, I didn't run into very much. But that was a source of anxiety because when there's no shelter out there you could get hurt.
Kirk Johnson:
Yeah. Lightning strikes and that kind of stuff as well-
Scott Edwards:
Lightning strikes. Yep. Absolutely.
Kirk Johnson:
Now, all the pictures showed pretty nice weather. I assume you had a few bad days.
Scott Edwards:
Actually, most of the rain was in the east and there wasn't that much of it. So I was very lucky in that regard. Yeah.
Kirk Johnson:
West of the 100th meridian, it gets pretty dry. That's good.
Scott Edwards:
It does. It definitely does.
Kirk Johnson:
Judy Dietrich wants to know, can you talk about some of the unique biomes or habitats you had the opportunity to see?
Scott Edwards:
Yeah, great question. And one of the fascinating aspects for me was watching how the birds scape changed as I moved and watching species come in and out with different biomes. One of the big bios, just like we've given a name to the Anthropocene, I think we should give a name to the thousands of acres devoted to corn crops and soybeans in our Midwest. It is a dominant part of the landscape, and it's fascinating how a few species have adapted to it and made it their home.
Some of the really fascinating transitions I saw were, for example, along the Columbia River, going from the arid east to the moist west and seeing some of the species like Western red cedars become really common and all the birds that come along with that coastal wet habitat, that was really, really fascinating. And then again, the Black Hills, after days and days of dry treeless landscape in South Dakota to see the Black Hills pop up as an outcrop of the Rockies was just extraordinary, just extraordinary.
Kirk Johnson:
Black Hills are an amazing thing. They're east and most expression of the Rockies.
Scott Edwards:
That's right. That's right.
Kirk Johnson:
Probably your first real experience with hills after a long way of going up that slope. Huh?
Scott Edwards:
Oh man. Yeah. And when I saw them in the distance, I was like, "What? I had a bike over those. I don't think so."
Kirk Johnson:
Which road did you come down off the Black Hills on the west side? Did you come down out of Hot Springs or where did you come through?
Scott Edwards:
Well, that's a really funny question, Kirk, because I actually made a wrong turn in the Black Hills and I ended up at a small town called Hill City, which is in the middle of the Black Hills, really, really nice town. I would really recommend it. And then I thought I was going north on this bicycle path and after 15 miles, I realized I was going south. And I ended up coming onto route 16 into Newcastle and Moorcroft in Wyoming. And so in many ways it made sense to do that because my route would've taken me on a beautiful, albeit very, very circuitous route past the Mount Rushmore and other places if only this was a sight seeing vacation, but I was really focused on getting across.
Kirk Johnson:
That road through Newcastle has some really nice fossils on it by the way.
Scott Edwards:
Yeah. Oh, I'm sure. I am sure. No question about it. Yeah. You saw the dinosaurs hopefully in my little videos there.
Kirk Johnson:
Yeah. That was near Rapid City, wasn't it?
Scott Edwards:
It was. Yeah, it was. Absolutely
Kirk Johnson:
[inaudible 00:40:09] propped up by his neck that way?
Scott Edwards:
Exactly. Exactly.
Kirk Johnson:
I have a great question. It appears to be a ringer here, Scott. It says Uncle Scott, did you bring candy? Penny.
Scott Edwards:
Oh, Penny. Hi Penny. How are you? Great to see you. Great to hear your question. I had some serious favorites for candy. I loved good old raisins and peanuts. That was a store word. And I love cliff bars. Often I would just skip lunch entirely and just eat a bunch of cliff bars. And trust me, when there was a store with ice cream, I was all over it. I wasn't about to be as austere on this trip. I figured I earned it after biking so far. Great question Penny.
Kirk Johnson:
Here's one Scott, from the other side of the planet we see USA as deeply divided. How did this trip change your perception of small town America across the political divide?
Scott Edwards:
Wow. I'd love to follow up with that person later on. To me honestly, the biggest divide that I saw was it was not between black and white and it wasn't between Democrats and Republicans, it was between rural and urban. Now, of course, other variables map onto those two. But what was remarkable is just how generous people were and how kind they were. And yet still able to entertain views that I think aren't really supported by the data. This is a whole discussion involving where we get our information from, how trustworthy are our sources? And it's something that I think we need to work on as a country, because there's a lot of misconceptions out there, not just about Black Lives Matter, but just lots of issues. So that's a really good question. Not one that I have wrapped my head around yet.
Kirk Johnson:
Fair enough. This is back to more biking across the country question then. Did your bike ever break down?
Scott Edwards:
Well, in that medley at the end, you might have seen a couple clips of a big fat nail through my tire and then me holding up the nail, it was going fast. I had three flat tires, not too bad. I also had a back break on my disc brakes fall off. Actually, that was the first day of the trip. Fortunately, a friend that I stayed with that very first night, Tom was basically an amateur bike mechanic. And he put on a pair of back disk brakes that I kept for the rest of the entire trip. I think in general, I was very lucky, no broken spokes, nothing more challenging than a flat tire.
Kirk Johnson:
How did COVID impact the trip?
Scott Edwards:
Yeah. That's a great question. I was not personally concerned for myself. I knew I was going to be distant for most people. I didn't wear a mask while I was riding but I certainly wore a mask anytime I went into a store or a campground. And I will tell you that yeah, there are a lot of misconceptions about COVID out there, and there's a lot of areas where they're perhaps not taking it as seriously as they should be. You can imagine many small towns don't see the urgency. They don't see the challenges that big cities face.
And so COVID was a source of a lot of discussions for sure. I will say two places where I saw people really paying attention to it. One of them was on the Native American reservations and in their stores, they took it very seriously. And as I segued from the Eastern Montana, for example, and Eastern Washington, once you hit Washington state, I would say, and Portland, Oregon, people were taking it very seriously. And so there was quite a big variation in how people treated it.
Kirk Johnson:
A couple of people wanted to know what your rolling weight was, and I assume that's how much your bike weighs or what is a rolling weight? Is that a personal question?
Scott Edwards:
Well, as with bird watching, I'm not much of a techie when it comes to bicycles, you and I should have gotten the statistic. I did weigh my bags once I got home, I haven't added them up yet. My guess is that with the bike I bet they came out to probably 90 or a 100 pounds with the bicycle. My guess is that I was carrying maybe not quite that much. I was probably carrying about 50 pounds, that's my guess. So probably a little less than 90, then probably 60 or 70 total. Yeah.
Kirk Johnson:
Ryan Eldridge asked an interesting question. In general, birds and other wildlife can be more easily approached by boat than on foot. Have you noticed whether the same phenomena applies to approaches by bicycle?
Scott Edwards:
That's a really great question. And I've experienced that myself. You can often get very close to waterbirds when you're in a boat. I found with, especially with the ospreys, as I mentioned, I was surprised how skittish they were even when I was on a bicycle. Now, if I was just riding past no problem, an adult would stay on the nest. However, if I stopped in front of that nest, despite the nest being 60 feet in the air, the adult would be off the nest chirping and raising a ruckus. So I don't think the bicycle was that much of a foil. I will say that a lot of the cows and horses that I passed were unusually curious, and I could see as soon as I showed up that their ears perked up, they were following me with their eyes. And I could tell that they were wondering, what is this strange thing on two wheels? And so it was interesting to see how different animals reacted to a bicycle.
Kirk Johnson:
Now I've got two ringer questions for you here, Scott. First one is from your high school biology teacher who wants to know... This is why it could be a ringer question. Who or what inspired you to become an ornithologist?
Scott Edwards:
I must be Rich or Orion. Of course it was you Rich. No, well, as Helen mentioned, I did that internship in college and it was amazing to see... And this of course is at your museum Kirk, and it was amazing to see practicing ornithologists, people making a living studying birds. You don't get that sense from being in classes. And in college I was on the fence, my dad was a doctor and I was probably the only child in the family who had a hope of taking on his practice. But in the end, honestly, it was that year off part of the Smithsonian then I went out to Hawaii before a bit in California helping with research where I changed my major from history of science to biology. And I just said, "This is for me." It was seeing scientists actually working which convinced me that it was possible. Yep.
Kirk Johnson:
Another ringer question. This one was from Jonathan, I think one of your former board members at the museum who wants to know, have you been on your bike since you got home?
Scott Edwards:
Thank you, Jonathan. And it was great to catch up with you in Portland. Really it was fabulous. I have been on my bicycle. I really want to keep riding in a six way, I guess. And I'll tell you, it's hard to ride a bike that's completely light without any bags. I called my bicycle the aircraft carrier because it was literally so heavy. Like an aircraft carrier you have to plan ahead when you break and when you take off. But on the other hand, it had a certain stability to it, which riding without bags doesn't have. So I'm getting used to riding a normal bicycle. Again,
Kirk Johnson:
Here's a person asking about just the dryness and fires and wondering how birds are affected by fires.
Scott Edwards:
Yeah. Great question. There was a small fire on the Oregon side of the Columbia as I was biking past, but it was nothing like is happening now. And so fortunately, my trip ended before these current fires were a problem. There's a lot of mortality of wildlife, especially things that are nesting. I suppose it's a bit late in the nesting season, but you would think that... And honestly, this is an area that probably hasn't been studied very well. You think that most birds could outpace a fire, whether mammals can, it probably depends a lot on how big they are and how fast they can move. And we know from studies in Australia that some birds actually, they think they actually use fire to help them, and they spread it deliberately with burning sticks and stuff to help them forage and to help insects get released from the environment. It's a very good question, but I don't know if we have any accurate numbers on the wildlife mortality from fires. It's a really good question.
Kirk Johnson:
It's hard to measure I imagine.
Scott Edwards:
Yeah.
Kirk Johnson:
Here's a question. Why was the Palouse difficult?
Scott Edwards:
Great question. You could maybe help me here, Kirk. The beautiful thing about roads out west is either that they're going through these intermontane valleys. The big, dirty little secret about Montana is that it's flat, you would see towering mountains all around you, and yet you would barely increase a few hundred feet in elevation over 50 miles. The other thing is that many of the passes that I went over were very gradual, in bicycle parlance they were maybe at most 6% grade, often a lot less than that. And some of the areas in South Dakota, the grade was so mild. You literally felt like you were going downhill even though you were actually increasing gradually in elevation. So the Palouse was a big surprise for me. It was two very hot days, very steep passes. Although the absolute elevation was lower the relative climb was almost as high as what I had done on the passes in the Rockies. And for that reason, it made for two of the most challenging days of the entire trip.
Kirk Johnson:
Those Palouse Hills, the same thing as the Western Hills in Iowa, they're all Loess Hills, which makes this great wheat country, tons of wheat fields out there in the Palouse.
Scott Edwards:
Absolutely. I didn't know they were Loess Hills. That's really interesting. Yeah, they've got some challenges though, they're tough, very, very beautiful country though. A bit of a monoculture of course, with all the wheat, but beautiful in its own way I would say.
Kirk Johnson:
No, it is an amazing country to crash back and forth on, just going through it. There's a couple questions about that. Nora wants to know which state had the best cup of coffee.
Scott Edwards:
Well, I hate to disappoint you Nora, but I actually don't drink coffee. I wish I did because I think I could have used caffeine at a lot of junctures during the trip. I will say that Montana has some amazing huckleberry milkshakes, that was a major bonus. Yeah, there are lots. And I also ran into some really very colorful pubs in South Dakota, just amazing racks of horns all over the walls, got into some great discussions with locals about everything from hunting to the local energy scene, coal and wind power, just really interesting insights into small town life.
Kirk Johnson:
You mentioned earlier that most people do this go from west to east. Is that because of the wind? And did you face a lot of headwinds going from east to west?
Scott Edwards:
And I will say that our common colleague, Jonathan Fink, taunted me before I started this trip and said, "Boy, I'm impressed, Scott, you're going from east to west into the headwinds." Now I've only done this trip once and I haven't done the other direction. But I would say that I had as many tailwinds or at least three quarter tailwinds as I had headwinds during my trip. The worst days for headwinds for me were not going west, but were actually going north on days when the wind was coming out of the north. I remember coming up along north of towns in Montana struggling to make the last seven miles, just this 14 mile an hour wind just in your face.
A lot of winds in the Midwest coming from the south and Southeast, which worked very well. And I actually have a video proof just for you, John. Yeah, because I got a healthy dose of tailwinds, which I was very thankful for. That said, most people do go west to east. I was actually really encouraged by my daughter, Liana, who did a similar trip with a group raising money for cancer about two years ago. And they went east to west. They went from Baltimore to Oregon. So I knew it could be done.
Kirk Johnson:
As a botanist, I'm delighted that you named your daughter, Liana.
Scott Edwards:
Sorry, that I gave what?
Kirk Johnson:
That you named your daughter Liana.
Scott Edwards:
Oh, absolutely. And she is a vine, which of course is what Liana means. And she's a real athlete, loves to ski and bicycle and hike. She's in Burlington, Vermont now. Yep.
Kirk Johnson:
Scott, seem like it was a pretty positive experience. Are you going to do something like this again on maybe a different continent or a different direction or what are your thoughts about long distance bike riding after you did your first transcontinental bike ride?
Scott Edwards:
I met some crazy folks out there. I met folks who basically said, "This is what I'm doing for my retirement." They looked almost like they were in rags, that they hadn't had a shower in weeks, they're almost addicted to cycling. Kirk, it's funny, even after being home for just three weeks, I think a little bit of the edge and the memories have gotten a little rosier. There are definitely some challenging times and mornings when I just said, "I can't do this. I can't get up." And trust me, I'm enjoying the comforts of domestic life. And I'm looking forward to revisiting a lot of these spots probably on four wheels, but I'll have my bike on the back because yeah, it's definitely a great way to travel. And yeah, it's a really wonderful way to immerse yourself in the environment.
Kirk Johnson:
And you'd recommend it for people to do if they have a spare 76 days?
Scott Edwards:
Honestly, it's not a question of strength. I'm not a strong man and I'm also not a speed demon. I'm sure people with the same weight could have done it a lot faster than I could have. It's really more about just sticking with it and not quitting, perhaps more easily done with a compatriot. I think a lot of people that say they couldn't do it, absolutely could do it. It's really just... Honestly, I did a little bit of training 'before the trip,' but it's all about having enough time to cover your distance and just repeating that over and over and over again till you make your way. Yep.
Kirk Johnson:
Well, Scott, it's certainly an inspiration to listen to you. It's something that I've never done. And it seems like such a cool way to see our continent. So normally at the end of a program, we'd say clap and we would clap, but there are hundreds of people listening to you from a distance. And I want to thank you so much for spending time with us and being part of the National Museum and Natural History Program. And thanks also for your tremendous service on our board and for being a cool scientist, because everybody needs more cool scientists, especially pathologists to get out there and roll around over the tops of the roadkill and the side eye birds of the road. Also I want to thank the people that made today's program possible, our donors, our volunteers, and viewers, and stay tuned for future programs that we are going to have here from natural history.
There'll be a link in the Q&A where you can see upcoming programs. And I think Scott, some people wanted to know your book list. So maybe Naimah can put your book list on that thing as well. And after this webinar is over, you'll see a survey popped up asking for some feedback about the program. Please take a few minutes to respond so we can figure out what we're doing well and what we're not doing so well. And I think this was really fun. And I want to thank you so much, Scott, look forward to seeing you in person one of these days as we enter month seven of COVID, but the two dimensional version is quite delightful. So thanks a ton, and we'll see you in the future.
Scott Edwards:
Thank you, Kirk. It was great. Thank you.
