Biking and Birding for 18,000 Miles with Dorian Anderson

0:01I just rented a bicycle and I biked the five miles to where the birds had been seen the day before and I saw them. And as I'm riding back, I was like, man, that was a lot of fun. I've definitely chased rare birds all over the country and kind of all over the state before, but this feels really different. What's different about this? And it kind of registered that it was the bicycle.

0:21Dorian Anderson:Dorian Anderson was more than a decade into a career as a neuroscientist and geneticist when he had a wild idea. In 2014, he left a prestigious lab job to embark on a year-long birding trip around the U.S. His goal was to see more than 600 species. Instead of using cars or planes to get from one location to another, Dorian opted to ride his bike. He ended up pedaling almost 18 ,000 miles around the country. As he traveled, the trip grew into something much more than a birding project. It became an unforgettable adventure that deepened his connection to nature, strengthened his newfound sobriety, and completely reinvented his life.

1:08Dorian Anderson:I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.

1:21Dorian Anderson:Dorian Anderson, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm really excited to talk to you. You have this really impressive academic career, Stanford, Harvard. I want to get into that, but I'm just curious. You birded as a kid. Were you always outdoorsy? Where did you grow up? How did you get into birding? So I grew up in suburban Philadelphia. I lived downtown in Philadelphia in kind of the concrete jungle for the first five or six years of my life. And when I was six slash seven, we moved to Chestnut Hill, which is kind of this ritzy area of the city. But all of a sudden we had a backyard. And as you can tell, I'm very high energy.

1:55And so my mom would kick me out of the house and lock the door and be like, dinner's at seven o 'clock. You're out until then. And so I'd be stuck in the backyard. Like, what the hell am I going to do with myself? And besides throwing rocks at the commuter train that ran behind our fence, I just started to notice birds. And I'm like, what the hell is this red bird? And what is this blue bird? And so I found some binoculars and my mom bought me a bird book. And I just started kind of looking at everything that was in the yard and getting super stoked to know, well, is that a house sparrow or a house finch?

2:22Or is that a Carolina renter or a house red? And I'm a geek. I'm a geek at heart. And so I needed to know what everything was. And so I just got totally sucked into this on my own. My parents thought I was insane, which is partially right. But it just kind of kept me busy. And then my mom kind of, she met this woman in her gardening group. And the woman's like, oh my God, I have this bird obsessed husband. My mom was like, oh, I have this bird obsessed son. And so they're like, ah, problem solved. So I got hooked up with this dude. And this guy turned out to be Robert Ridgely, who is one of the foremost experts on South American birds.

2:52So he would take me out birding each weekend. So he was kind of my birding mentor because my parents were completely ill-equipped.

3:00Dorian Anderson:Okay. So you also went to a birding camp as a kid just quickly. I didn't know that that even existed. Yeah. It's where all the cool kids went. I promise you. It was like all the ballers were at. So yeah, I went and hung out with, I don't know, 10 or 12 other bird-obsessed kids when I was 12 years old. And it was awesome. I was the youngest person there. I was such a hot mess. But it was like the first time I'd birded with people my age. And so I did that for four summers in a row. Do you remember the first bird you saw that just really hooked you in? So a lot of people have what's called a spark bird, where they're out in their yard and like a pileated woodpecker comes and lands on the tree and they're like, what the hell is that giant woodpecker?

3:34It looks like an ivory build. And they go in and look it up. I don't have a spark bird, so to speak. I think that there's some things about my personality that I'm very curious. And I also like categorizing and listing and accounting. And so keeping track of everything that I see in every county and in every state is therapeutic for me. It's my way of kind of imposing a bit of order on an otherwise chaotic world. And I think that in this technological age and in this time and point in the 21st century where so much is known, like the whole world is mapped. There's never going to be the first person to sail to South America again.

4:09There's never going to be the first person to round the Cape of Good Hope or the Cape of Good Horn. There's never going to be a new island discovered. I think that there's something very basic, something very animalistic about going out into the natural world and looking for things and searching. Like, I think that we've lost this in the human capacity where like searching these days is getting online and looking something up. It's not going into the world and physically interacting with everything that you see. And so it's awesome to walk outside and see all the birds that live in your neighborhood and appreciate them for their life histories and their beauty and their behavior.

4:42but it's even more exciting when you walk outside and you find a bird that you know shouldn't be there. A good example of that is a dusky warbler. I found a dusky warbler when I was living in Los Angeles. Dusky warbler is a bird that usually lives in Europe and you walk out there and you're like, oh my God, I've got this thing in front of me that like nobody else around here knows about. I found this amazing bird. It's like you found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in that respect. And so you get that feeling periodically. Sometimes you find something that's rare within your county. Sometimes you find something that's rare within your state, and sometimes you find something that's lost from the other side of the world.

5:16And that's just like the best feeling in the world.

5:22Dorian Anderson:Birding was an endless scavenger hunt that Dorian could do every time he went outside. And it was a perfect outlet for his energy and curiosity. In his late teens, though, life pulled Dorian in other directions. He went to college at Stanford. and like some kids who are suddenly free from parental supervision, Dorian was distracted by partying and booze.

5:49Dorian Anderson:You were a big birder all through growing up your childhood, but then there was a time when birding wasn't part of your life. Just curious what pulled you away. Was it just being, you know, a teenager or an adult, young adult? I think there were several things. I think the first thing was once I got to Stanford for my undergrad and I really delved into the world of molecular biology, I was so enthralled with how cells function that I kind of forgot about the organismal side of the spectrum. So that was part one of the story. Part two of the story is I started getting hammered my junior year of high school and I fell in love with alcohol like the first time I got drunk.

6:25And after that, it was just like one blackout after another. And fortunately, I just tell people I'm good at school. I was just able to get through high school without any problems. I went to one of these like high-powered prep schools in New England. And even once I got to Stanford, I was just good at school and I didn't have to do a lot. And so I got wasted all the time. And kind of one of the things I realized is that if I wanted to go and do organismal and evolutionary biology, that meant sitting at a field station in Ecuador where there were no drugs, no dance music because I got involved in DJing and no girls.

6:57And I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be in a city. I wanted to party. So my birding interest evaporated while I was at Stanford. I spent all my time. I spent some time studying. The rest of my time, I spent drinking beer, playing ultimate Frisbee, and doing research in my lab. And then when I left Stanford, I kind of figured I'd go get a PhD, but I went and lived in Boston for three years, and I worked at Harvard doing molecular embryology. So I spent three years doing that. And then I went to NYU. I specifically chose NYU because I had a great program, and it was in New York. And my drug and alcohol problem had gotten so bad that it was like, I never have to drive.

7:29So I joke with people that I kind of got a PhD, and my PhD was in developmental genetics and molecular cell biology. But I kind of got that PhD in the background of partying, figuring that I could go on and be a college professor because academia tolerates eccentric people like me. As long as you can produce data and you get the job done, there isn't the same like buttoned up bullshit that you have to deal with in these other professions. It's personality and results and that's all that matters. And I could do those things. So birding just evaporated from age like 17 to 30.

7:59Dorian Anderson:How did you decide to, I mean, you were really high functioning, alcoholic, which I think it's tricky for people who are really high functioning to get sober. Did you have a rock bottom moment or what made you decide to, you know, maybe not party as much as you were? Yeah. So I didn't, I didn't have a rock bottom moment. Um, I was in a very, I was in a relationship that I thought was very serious. Uh, but I wasn't taking it seriously because I was still lying to this woman. Every time she'd go away for work, I'm like, Oh, I'm just going to launch around and get some work done. I'd go on these like week long benders.

8:30And I eventually got caught one too many times. And I just kind of, I had this like emotional breakdown where I was like, I just, I just lost the one person in the world who loved me more than I love myself. And that was, that was tough. I mean, that was, that was a soul searching moment. And so I hadn't lost my job. I hadn't been kicked out of school. School and job at that, at that time were kind of the same thing because I was a paid graduate student. I beat the hell out of myself. My health had taken a hit. I had alienated some friends. I angered my family, but fortunately I was good enough at science that like I skated on a lot of shit.

9:03Had I not had the success that I had at every academic level, people would have pulled, people did pull me aside, but at the end, they kind of had to shrug their shoulders and say, well, what can we do? But it wasn't until I lost this woman that I thought like, damn, I need to do something. The math kind of clicked in my head. I had done all the wrong things. I had driven drunk. I had put myself in so many compromising positions, both like physically and legally. And I like eked through and I just looked at the math and I was like, I can't keep doing this. I'm going to lose it all if I keep doing this.

9:32And so that was ultimately what motivated me to go and get sober when I was 30.

9:40Dorian Anderson:Getting sober gave Dorian his life back, but he threw himself into his career with the same drive that had fueled his addiction. He was publishing research, working in prestigious labs, and building an impressive resume at places like Harvard and Mass General. Outside the lab, he started going on long runs. Eventually, birding re-entered the picture. The time Dorian spent outside gave him joy and a connection to the natural world. One day, a small adventure to find a rare bird left him feeling so energized that it sparked his wildest idea yet.

10:22the genesis of the idea dates back to 2012 um i was working as a postdoctoral fellow at mass general hospital and harvard medical school in boston and in the wake of hurricane sandy this very rare bird called a northern lapwing showed up in nantucket and uh i had to go see this bird for my north american life list which is kind of a collection of birds i've amassed over my over my lifetime. And so I orchestrated this complicated plan in the wake of the super storm to drive to Hyannis and then take a ferry out to Nantucket. But there was no transportation on the island at that time of year. And in the wake of the storm, so I rented a bicycle.

11:03And the guy's like, if you're crazy enough to ride your bike out here in the wake of this effectively hurricane, I'll rent it to you. So I rented this bike and I biked the five miles to where the birds had been seen the day before and I saw them. And I biked back to the ferry after celebrating my victory and got on the ferry. And as I'm riding back to Hyannis on the ferry, I was like, man, that was a lot of fun. I've definitely chased rare birds all over the country and kind of all over the state before, but this feels really different. What's different about this? And it kind of registered that it was the bicycle.

11:32And so I started thinking, well, has anybody used a bicycle to pursue birds in any kind of formalized context? Are there bike birding clubs? Are there bike birding field trips? And then there's this crazy project called a big year, which birders often undertake. And I can explain that in a second, but I said, has anybody ever done a bicycle big year? Because that would be the coolest project ever. If, if somebody were to do that, um, I should just tell you that a big year is this year long scavenger hunt whereby a birder, uh, tries to maximize the number of species seen within any given geography.

12:08So some people do a County big year. Other people do a state big year. Some people do country big years, and some people even do world big years. But up until I showed up on the scene, people universally relied on planes, trains, automobiles, boats, chartered helicopters to get to places where they could see birds that other people couldn't. And there's a very competitive aspect to this. And so the genesis of this trip was this thinking that I don't have a lot of money and I don't like the associated environmental degradation that flying around the world or driving across the country or renting a helicopter causes.

12:42So a bicycle would solve for both problems. A bicycle would allow, would level the playing field on the money and also kind of take out the petroleum-based emissions. So that's the genesis. It's a long story.

12:52Dorian Anderson:I love this story. And also thank you for explaining what a big year meant because I just thought it was always country. I didn't know that you could have a big year just in a county or a city. So you have this experience right near Hurricane Sandy. You see this bird and it flies into your life. Like the metaphor of that is just absolutely so beautiful. but you have all these things going for you. You know, you're this big research fellow and you decide to leave it all to go chase birds. Like that on paper or telling your parents must've been kind of a hard thing to say. Yeah, I mean, the decision, so the Lapwing story episode, whatever you want to call it, happened in November of 2012.

13:31And this idea immediately germinated, like, as I said, on the ferry ride home. And I kind of kicked it around to my then girlfriend at the time. and she kind of laughed it off. She's like, that's kind of cool, but you're not ready to leave your career in science. And I wasn't, like I still, there was still meat on that bone, so to speak. But as my research kind of fell apart through no fault of my own, it just, the negative results kept coming in. The data was really ambiguous. It wasn't pointing to anything interesting. And I had this choice. Do I restart with a second postdoctoral project, which could be another five or six years of time invested?

14:05Or do I leave now and do something different? But then to think about surrounding the academic side of my existence, my being, my personality, my soul was gut-wrenching. And as my research crumbled, eventually my girlfriend, now wife, sat me down. She's like, this idea is really good. And if you don't take this bike trip now, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life. You need to do this so that you can experience something beyond the lab. You need to do this so that you can see what else is out there. And so she gave me the strength to quit my job. I don't know if I would have been able to do it without her.

14:46And it's funny. It's funny. Every time I tell this story, I end up in this same state of like bawling my eyes out. Like whether it's in public or on a podcast. But I mean, this is the woman that I ended up marrying because she understands this. And it was a big risk for her. When people go off and do big ears under normal circumstance, the only threat is really to their bank account. It's not to their body when you're flying around and driving around. For me to propose with no cycling experience besides biking to and from frat parties drunk at Stanford and my lapwing chase on Nantucket, no cycling experience beyond those two adventures in air quotes to then propose this 15 ,000 mile year long bird pursuit around the country was insane.

15:34But she has this like trust in the universe that I didn't have at that moment that she could surrender me to the open road and that I'd come back a better person and hopefully come back alive. But it was a huge risk on her standpoint as well. So yeah, I mean, there was a lot that went into this. I mean, leaving my career, leaving my girlfriend, leaving my identity, like going and doing something so nutty and crazy and potentially dangerous to go look for birds. And what it was, it was like this, I needed to kind of reconnect with the bird obsessed child that I had left when I got involved with alcohol and when I got involved with academic science.

16:14Like I needed to reconnect to that like wide-eyed child. And that's kind of what the bike trip, I don't want to say promised, but the opportunity that it presented.

16:32Dorian Anderson:Every year, Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard program proudly donate$2 million to the REI Cooperative Action Fund. The fund supports hundreds of nonprofit partners that are creating a more equitable outdoors for everyone. You've even heard some of their stories on the podcast. In addition to supporting the REI Cooperative Action Fund, Capital One and REI have partnered on the REI Co-op MasterCard, bringing card members excellent card benefits that inspire more outdoor adventures. Find out if you're pre-approved for the REI Co-op MasterCard with no risk to your credit score. Go to rei.com slash MasterCard dash podcast to learn more.

17:14Dorian Anderson:That's rei.com slash MasterCard dash podcast. Terms apply.

17:29Dorian Anderson:When Dorian Anderson took off on his big year, his goal was to spot 600 types of birds. He'd been in the birding game for long enough that he had a sense of exactly where to go. There are regions in the U.S. where you can see species that are typically only found in other countries. For example, you can see European birds on the East Coast, Central and South American birds in Texas, and you can often see Asian birds on the West Coast. Doran sketched out a path that would largely take him along the outer edges of the country. He set off from New Hampshire on January 1st, 2014 and ended up biking through 28 states.

18:11Dorian Anderson:How many miles did you ride about a day and then total? So when I originally did this, I could run 10 miles on demand at any point. And so my calculation was if I can run 10 miles any day at any point, I can bike 40. And so I thought that over the course of 365 days, I would bike about 15 ,000 miles. Well, that was an underestimate. And I ended up biking about 18 ,000 miles, which if you then divide that by 365, it ends up being almost exactly 50 miles a day. So that's what it ended up being. Unlike a traditional or a pure cyclist, I spent at least half of my time birdwatching. So if I had ridden to Junction, Texas to look for Blackcap Vireo, I had to spend the morning hiking around looking for Blackcap Vireo.

18:59And then once I found that bird, then I could get on the bike and ride the 60 or 70 miles to the next town.

19:03Dorian Anderson:Where did you stay? Like, it'd be expensive to stay at hotels every time. But it sounds like you just did a lot of different things. So yeah, at the outset, I relied a lot on friends. I had a good social network in the Northeast. So I was able to find places to crash a lot. Once birders got wind of this project, they're like, oh my God, this guy sounds insane. I have to meet him. So birders would contact me from all over the country being like, hey, if you come through here, you're welcome to stay. So it kind of snowballed. were finding lodging at the outset was a bit difficult. But once more and more people found out about the project, more and more offers came in.

19:35And I'd be remiss. Also, my wife, then girlfriend, now wife, her name is Sonia. Sonia has always worked in corporate travel. And Sonia had a pipeline to some higher-ups at Best Western. And they kind of have branded themselves as the environmentally responsible hotel chain brand. And so she went to them and said, hey, look, my boyfriend is about to do this. And it's this green eco-adventure. and you guys are branding yourself this way, put your money where your mouth is. And they said, we love this idea, this is great. So they kicked me 6 ,000 bucks to use at their hotels. I think I spent 58 nights with Best Western.