Driving Curiosity

The Science-Themed Roadtrip

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Eight (okay, nine) Ways to Get Curious in 2018

Well, folks, we’re already getting deep into January--the perfect time of year for letting resolutions slip and remembering when the sun would set after 6p. We have agreed to be kind to ourselves, and we’re not big fans of resolutions. We are, however, HUGE fans of curiosity, so we’re thinking of this list as a commitment to curiosity throughout the year. When we have some spare time, we’ll look at this list, pick something, and then get out and do it. Because why not?

1) Citizen Science--the act of regular people getting out there and sciencing with the best of them. Check out this link to find a project near you, or something you can work on remotely!

2) Parks! We’re usually pretty into checking out National Parks (because they’re America’s Best Idea) BUT let’s remember that there are plenty of local and state parks nearby too. Here are some links for Minnesota and New York:

MN DNR

NY State Parks

NYC City Parks

3) Check out a museum! Lots of them have free days, and you’ll probably learn something mind-blowing while you’re there. Here’s a link to the Walker in Minneapolis, and a cool list about free or pay-what-you-wish museums in NYC.

4) We love walking. Sometimes, though, you can land in a walking routine. We get it. So we’re going to try to take more walks, and when we do walk, we’ll be intentional about noticing something new. Maybe we’ll even post what we find on our @DrivingCuriosity Instagram! We’d love to see what you get out and find too! #getcurious

5) Challenge your perceptions. Seriously. Here are some links to items we have learned from, but don’t stop there. Talk to your friends and keep a dialogue going. Get curious, super curious, on this one.

Ta-Nehisi Coates article

A visual explanation of privilege

A guide to intersectionality

6) Open your eyes to new artists and thinkers, especially ones from underrepresented groups. Again, the lists go on and on, but here are some links for (potentially) new music, poetry, and generally other good-doing:

Gaelynn Lea: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

10 Women Immigrants Who Changed Art, Thought, and Politics in the U.S.

15 Queer POC Musicians

Poets to read!

7) Chase the night--This Winter Darkness is the perfect time to enjoy dark skies, wherever you can find them. You definitely don’t need links to do that, but if you’re looking for extra motivation, here are some links to check out.

Where is the ISS?

Celestial Events of 2018

Northern Lights in (Northern) MN

8) Sometimes, though, the Winter Darkness really just provides a good excuse to curl up and watch a lovely documentary. This is a nice chance to practice challenging perceptions AND looking at works you may not have otherwise. Be intentional! Here are a couple lists we’ve referenced recently:

Esquire Best Docs of 2017

Indie Wire Best Docs of 21st Century

The Bonus (And Super Important) Item!

9) Fall En Love With Yourself, because the relationship you have with yourself is the most important one that you have. PERIOD. Yes, one of us may have cried at a Lizzo show in St Paul when she talked about this. This relationship takes WORK, and it isn’t always easy. Lean on our savior, Lizzo, and let her loving lyrics open the door to YOUR hearts. For extra inspiration, here’s a link to us dancing to En Love among the basalt in Craters of the Moon National Monument. 

[drivingcuriosity-blog]

all right people. the fcc vote on net neutrality is on thursday. join us in cooly fighting back. call your congresspeople. visit gofccyourself.com and battleforthenet.com when you visit gofccyourself, follow these instructions: 1. Next to the 17-108 link (Restoring Internet Freedom), click on "express" 2. Be sure to hit "ENTER" after you put in your name & info so it registers. 3. In the comment section write, "I strongly support net neutrality backed by Title 2 oversight of ISPs." 4. Click to submit, done. - Make sure you hit submit at the end! **Copy and share this** #breaktheinternet #battleforthenet #netneutrality #helpus #thisisbananas #callyourrep #getcurious #drivingcuriosity #roadtrip #besties #johnoliver (at United States)

[drivingcuriosity-blog]

Five Ways Witnessing Totality is like Having Sex

“It was how he imagined from the pictures he had seen, but so much more.”

“Waves of excitement and energy coursed through his body, and he struggled to contain it all.”

“You can already feel the excitement long before, and the adrenaline flow in the last moments. Very primal emotions and spiritual experience.”

No, those fine people aren’t talking about sex. Get your mind out of the gutter. Those are all quotes from people who have seen a total solar eclipse. In all the build up (dare we say foreplay?) to this summer’s premier celestial event, you may have failed to notice that totality and the tantric tango actually share quite a number of similarities. Both flood our brains with feel good hormones and provoke a rush of physiological responses. This has not gone unnoticed by scientists or eclipse chasers.  So strap in, because we break it all down for you below in several sexy snippets.

Your first time is unforgettable

Whether good or bad (let’s be honest: bad), you will always remember when and where you had sex for the first time. Same with totality. Witnessing it for the first time is a big deal, partially because, just like sex, no one can really describe how it feels and all the emotions that come along with it. Both totality and coitus primus come with pretty lengthy build ups too. Both involve lots of hoping and planning and require backup plans when disasters like cloudy skies or a partner who can’t find the clitoris strike.

We don’t think anyone would disagree that sex can be life changing, but we have hard data that says witnessing totality is. In a 2011 survey by psychologist, umbraphile, and badass woman of science Kate Russo, 68% of respondents said that seeing totality had changed their outlook on life. And just like sex, one totality is never enough.  

Once it’s over you know you want to do it again

Even if your first time was awful, you probably knew you wanted to do it again. After our first totality experience (which wasn’t awful at all), we knew we had to witness it again. We wanted to feel the exact same sense of awe, to confirm that the otherworldly events of totality really happened. One first time totality viewer described how she “didn’t want to let go of those euphoric moments of totality.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  

And just like some (most) of us spend a significant portion of our lives thinking about, trying to have, and/or actually having sex, some people spend lots of time and energy (and money) chasing totality. Being an umbraphile does require more commitment than sex though. While there’s a total solar eclipse somewhere on earth about every 18 months, they are often in remote locations that require lots of time and travel to access.

Repeatedly yelling ‘OH MY GOD’ is totally acceptable

Audio of people watching totality can easily be confused with sounds of a...more orgiastic nature. Kate Russo sums it up pretty well when she describes “breathing heavily, repeating the same words over and over, mumbling randomly.”  Listen for yourself—our recording from totality features lots of those things. And just like some really spectacular sex, the end of totality can and often does leave you speechless. We’ll tell you this much: You’re definitely going to have to pee by the time it’s over.

Protection is necessary

Listen. There are currently ads on the New York City subway that feature an erupting volcano and warn straphangers about a SYPHILIS EXPLOSION raging in the city. Also, conservative lawmakers keep using our reproductive organs as bargaining chips in some deluded toxic masculinity game. So protection is super important, y’all. Looking directly at the sun is a stupid idea, so until it’s fully covered, you need eclipse glasses. (If you have leftover ones, consider donating them to Astronomers Without Borders.) Totality is the one part of an eclipse you don’t need protection for since the moon is fully covering the sun. And your camera needs protection too. The sun will fry the photoreceptor on your phone just as quickly as your retinas. So strap on your protection of choice—we don’t care if you think it feels better without it.

The white supremacist patriarchy has really messed it up for a lot of people

The 2017 total solar eclipse was a wonderfully unifying experience for a tense country, but it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that warm and fuzzy wasn’t always the eclipse vibe. Notable douchenozzle Christopher Columbus used a total lunar eclipse for evil, because of course he did. When he and his poorly supplied and half-mutinied crew were stranded in modern day Jamaica, Columbus told the locals that the ‘christian god’ had turned the moon red in anger after the Arawak refused to give the men more supplies.

Let’s not forget about women. When the first professional female astronomer and Vassar professor Maria Mitchell planned to view the total solar eclipse of 1878, she had to organize her own expedition. The government was happily funding male expeditions, but didn’t give a flying fudge fart about helping Mitchell. Weird. But like badass women throughout history, Mitchell shrugged and went about her life. She invited five students to join her, and led an all female crew out west for totality. While out there, they gathered data and waved a giant middle finger at the notion that women were ill suited for academic pursuits and incapable of fieldwork.

White supremacist patriarchy: bringing us rape culture, systemic racism, grinding poverty, and a lack of women in science.

Okay people, don’t cue up the D’Angelo just yet. 

There are some key differences that keep sex and totality in their own little boxes. For instance, you’ll love talking to your parents about totality. There also could be a lot of children around when you experience totality, and that’s fun and acceptable. The very precise geometry of a total solar eclipse means that when you get ready to experience totality, you know exactly how long it’s going to last. Umbraphiles keep a very accurate record of how many minutes they’ve spent basking in the moon’s shadow. We’re willing to guess you don’t do the same record keeping for your sex life, but think about it. Could you even guess how many minutes you’ve spent getting it on?

After the 2017 eclipse, our totality total stands at 99 glorious seconds—not nearly long enough. So you will definitely find us in the path of the moon’s shadow again in 2024, excitedly screaming with the crowd, adding our own special bit to the intellectual orgasm that is totality.

All quotes come courtesy of Kate Russo’s fabulous books Being in the Shadow and Total Addiction.

[drivingcuriosity-blog]

Booking Saga, v1: Grand Teton

‘Pick a subject you really like. You’re going to sit with it for four or five years.’

That was the single most accurate piece of advice we’ve been given since we started working on our Book Project a year and half ago. At first, that amount of time seemed ridiculous. But it turns out that writing a book is PROCESS.

And that suits us just fine. We are nothing if not process-oriented people.

If you’ve never done this, you might be surprised that the order of the day is not 1) decide to write a book 2) write that book. It’s actually more like: 1) decide to write a book 2) research similar books 3) do general topic research 4) narrow that research 5) schedule a bajillion meetings with god knows who… 8000) write that book 8002) rewrite that book.

The point is that there is an awful lot that comes between idea and action. That’s especially true when you’re writing a book about a science-themed roadtrip. In that case, you need to have both your science and your travel plans accounted for. You might think the science would be the difficult part— doing research, lining up subject matter experts, deciphering words like ‘interpostzygapophyseal,’ postulating about what David Attenborough is doing at this exact moment, etc. But actually, it’s the travel plans that’ll get ya. 

Early on in our Book Project, we realized that we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to see a total solar eclipse in Grand Teton National Park. Approximately once every 350 years or so, the Earth, Sun, and Moon align so perfectly that narrow strips of the Earth’s surface are cast into complete darkness for a matter of minutes—seeing the Milky Way at noon kind of darkness. This would happen on 21 August 2017, and one place in the U.S. to see this was Grand Teton National Park–we were going to be there.

But first we needed reservations. And so did thousands of other people.

We had been told by an either oblivious or maniacal employee that reservations for all accommodations in Grand Teton National Park for the dates around the eclipse would be available at midnight eastern time on 1 September 2016. Make sure to call then, she said. A lot of people had been calling and the park would fill up quickly. It seemed weird that resort workers in Montana would be up and answering calls at 10pm mountain time on a random night, but we dutifully set a meeting for that night.

We called the reservation number and were told that reservations could only be taken between 8am and 5pm mountain time. On the not-at-all-intuitive website, the dates we needed were blacked out and unavailable, though the days around them were wide open. It seemed like our worst fears were confirmed: we had missed our chance to book. Our stomachs hit our feet.

There was nothing to do but wait for the reservation hotline to open. We could scramble for alternatives when the bad news was confirmed.

The next day, Emily stepped away from smoked trout at breakfast in New York with her mom and Maygen hurried home from dropping a friend off at the airport in Minneapolis. At the precise stroke of the clock, we dialed the hotline from a conference call. Busy signal. We tried again. Busy signal.

It might be a good sign, we decided. What are the odds that Grand Teton’s reservations hotline would be blowing up first thing in the morning on a random Thursday? But, oh god, even if that was the case how many people were calling?

Mothers and smoked trout shouldn’t wait for anyone, so Maygen took the first shift of calls. After an hour and a half of busy signals, it was Emily’s turn to take over. She was at Penn Station (saying goodbye to her mama), but needed to work from home in Brooklyn, which presented a problem. Getting on the subway seemed risky— it would be at least 30 minutes of no calls. So, there would be no getting to Brooklyn. Besides, even if she went home to work…There isn’t much one can accomplish while frantically redialing a number several times every minute.

It was late summer and New York was hot and humid; periodic rain showers and the wafting scent of hot garbage were in the air. It was too hot to move quickly for long, but it was even worse to sit still and let the humidity slowly condense on skin and clothes. So, Emily walked her favorite ambling-with-a-purpose route in the city: Broadway. 

Mostly, the line was busy. Sometimes, though, it would ring and a recording would pick up. It walked you all the way through selecting a type of accommodations before announcing that the queue was full. WHY WOULD YOU EVEN LET ME SELECT AN OPTION? (Even more maddeningly: in the end, those options were 100% meaningless)

When someone finally answered, Emily was sure she was hallucinating. The woman on the other end of the line was so friendly, and so calm, and not at all the harried mess Emily had assumed would be answering the call. 

“Haley, you have no idea how happy I am to hear the sound of your voice,” Emily gushed while taking a seat on a nearby stoop. 

She spastically whipped out her notebook; Haley was going over options and it was note-taking time. A doorman for the building attached to said stoop had other ideas. He (rather nicely) told Emily to move, which is how about ten minutes later, after Haley had carefully explained all the options, Emily came to the part where she shouted her credit card number, expiration date, and security code into her phone while crouched in an alley next to the REI in SoHo. Everyone knows the saying ‘curiosity killed the cat.’ Lesser known, though arguably as important, is the phrase ‘curiosity might lead to identity theft.’     

With confirmation number in hand, Emily stood up and quite literally fist pumped. She honestly contemplated finding a random stranger to high five. 

                                                          * * * *

The good news is that the remainder of the parks don’t have once-in-a-lifetime celestial events happening, so we’ll only be competing with regular summer crowds. The not-bad-but-certainly-stressful news is that there are six more parks to book, RV specs to figure out, and a billion other tasks to sort out. Writing a book is PROCESS.

Total Solar Eclipse photo credit: http://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/

[drivingcuriosity-blog]

Day Five: Leaving the Badlands is Just the Beginning 

Well, we’ve done it. After driving over 1,000 miles, shooting thousands of pictures and more videos than we honestly know what to do with, hiking like we mean it, and dancing like these Badlands can’t hold us, we’ve made it back to Minneapolis. It’s bittersweet to know that we’re back in civilization and no longer surrounded by jaw-dropping natural scenery, but we’re so grateful for the time we spent in the Park and all of the people who helped us out along the way.

It seemed to us that there was only one way to leave the Park-- a good old fashioned dance out. We cranked Uptown Funk (aka Badlands Funk) and hit the road. The drive back involved a lot of guessing games about city populations and memorizing song lyrics to distract ourselves from the suddenly subpar scenery. The wide open prairies certainly have a stark beauty about them, but...well, four days of the Badlands can make just about anything seem mundane.

So what’s next, you ask? The end product of all of these science-themed adventures is a book that will ultimately include trips to eight (EIGHT) National Parks. 

That’s right, Badlands was just the beginning! In late summer/early fall of 2017, we’ll be driving curiously from the Canadian border to the Mexican border along Route 89. During that trip, we will be bringing our unique brand of science tourism to Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, and Saguaro. And of course we hope you’ll join us for the ride. 

Until then, look for science anecdotes, throwback pictures, and dance videos on Instagram to get you through.

With love and science,

Emily and Maygen

Photos from top: Enjoying a final morning tea on the front porch of our cabin; Our process involves a lot of giant post it notes hung up around the cabin, perfumed with Mr. Sketch markers because we are adults; Screenshots of our attempts to entertain ourselves on the way back to Minneapolis; A disappointed selfie seemed like the only way to re-enter Minnesota (it’s nothing personal MN)

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Day Four: Dikes, Bones, and Other Eroding Matters 

When does a 14-hour day not feel like at 14-hour day? When you’re hiking with an astronomy interpreter, finding crazy fossils, getting lost in ancient jungle landscapes, and ending the day at a Star Party…That’s when a 14-hour day doesn’t feel like a 14-hour day.

We started our day with Chuck Schroll, an Astronomy Interpreter in the Park and an all around awesome dude. (”I like to say that I was the first white guy to hike barefoot to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It was 1971 and we thought that kind of stuff was cool.”) 

Chuck took us on Notch Trail, which includes some dizzying ascents and some great views of clastic dikes. ‘Excuse me?’ you may be saying. CDs appear as lines of rock running at odd angles inside of buttes. They are made out of different stuff than the surrounding rock and formed later than said rock. No one knows just how they come to be, but we enjoyed arguing about it like we have some expertise in the matter.

After the hike, we had to let Chuck prep his telescopes for the Star Party, so we went out on our own. We headed for the Yellow Mounds area of the Park, named for the exposed yellow rocks there. The coloring comes from different layers of ancient soils (also called paleosols). They record the series of events that covered the Badlands in a shallow sea and then grew and buried a series of tropical jungles. 

While contemplating past environments is obviously quite a hobby of ours, the hands down (up?) best part was finding a foot long fossil bone sticking out of a stream bed! Seeing something no one has seen in about 30 million years was a goosebump-raising experience to say the least.

The day wrapped up at a Star Party with Chuck and few other Parks employees. Craters on the moon, the moons of Jupiter, Mars, enough stars to make a New Yorker lose their mind… we toasted it all with a glass of rye. 

Photos from top: hiking with Chuck; Clastic dike (look for the line running up from the bottom left) in a butte; Clastic dike in a boulder eroded out of the butte face; Panorama of the Yellow Mounds; A stream running through the yellow mounds, colored with eroded sediment; the fossil find!; Fading sunlight throws crazy shadows on buttes (bonus points if you can spot the CD in the foreground); If you look closely, you can see the outwash pattern where rainwater carries sediment off of buttes; The struggle of trying to take pics together when you are still learning how to use your fancy Cannon camera

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Driving Curiosity, Badlands: The Soundtrack

Tonight we hung out with a bunch of park rangers and telescopes, so the crazy landscape and daily shenanigan shots with have to wait. But throughout this trip, we’ve been punning REAL hard on some of our favorite songs. Check out the originals on Spotify here and see below for snippets of our Badlands versions:

Badlands Funk (Uptown Funk— Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars

Got boots on with my GoPro/ Gotta check this out it’s so pretty

Butte After Butte (Time After Time— Cindy Lauper)

Flash back/ Deep time/ Fossils left behind

[These Badlands] Can’t Hold Us (Can’t Hold Us— Macklemore and Ryan Lewis featuring Ray Dalton)

We’re writing a book/ We’ll hike til it’s over/ So we put our hands up/ Like these Badlands can’t hold us

The Sound of Silence (The Sound of Silence— Simon and Garfunkel)

Like the Simon and Garfunkel song, but the actual sound. of. silence. No cars, no people, no noise, no cares

Fat Bottomed Buttes (Fat Bottomed Girls— Queen)

Hey! We were just some skinny gals/ Trying to be good in bad(lands)

Badlands (Badlands— Bruce Springsteen)

No changes needed. Most of the song seems to be ‘whoa whoa Badlands whoa whoa; which is most of what we’ve been saying anyway

I Got a Bison (I Gotta Woman— Ray Charles)

I gotta bison way over park/ He’s good to eat

Midnight Train to Badlands (Midnight Train to Georgia— Gladys Knight and the Pips)

We’re leaving on that midnight train to Badlands/ Going back to find an Eocene place and time

Dust in the Badlands (Dust in the Wind— Kansas)

New old rock/ Every drop of water erodes the scenery

I Want to Hike with Somebody (I Want to Dance with Somebody— Whitney Houston)

I want to hike with somebody/ I want to write a book with somebody

[drivingcuriosity-blog]

Day Three: The Fossilized Heart of it All 

If you expected the magic to have faded somewhat by day three, this is not the post for you. Any day that starts with a paleontologist, winds its way through almost a hundred miles of open parkland, and ends with a glass of bourbon and a downright spectacular sunset is likely to be a mighty fine day indeed. 

Rachel Benton, the park paleontologist and a gem of human being, graciously chose to spend her morning showing us maps of ancient volcanic eruptions rather than attending to her own important work. Not only that, but then she offered to buzz up the road to walk us around and show how to look for fossils. Those fossils, by the way, are legit EVERYWHERE in the park, just weathering out of the buttes like they haven’t a care in the world. Emily found a snail.

Armed with that knowledge, we left our base at Cedar Pass to explore hundreds of acres of backcountry Badlands. We spent a good portion of the afternoon and evening driving across unpaved roads (Maygen’s arms have, in fact, fallen off) so that we could hike portions of the park that most visitors never see. 

We hung out with way more wildlife than we knew what to do with (at a respectful and legally mandated distance, of course), watched a bison have a bit of a scratch on a picnic shelter, hiked along a stream bed, oogled at rocks laid down by an ancient seaway the dinosaurs may have vacationed near (or at least seen), and honed our volcanic ash layer spotting skills. Through it all, we gained and lost over 6000 feet of elevation; have we mentioned how bananas the effects of erosion are around here? And did you know that over millions of years, what was a basin becomes a highland because of erosion? 

Photos from top: morning meeting and strategy session at the cabin; Maygen and Rachel Benton; dem bison; the absolutely unreal view from Sheep Table Mountain in the southern unit of the park; Sage Creek; Emily very calmly and quietly losing her mind at STM; the view coming down from STM; sunset drive back from the southern unit of the park; a Where’s Waldo shot of Emily at the Pinnacles Overlook 

[drivingcuriosity-blog]

Day Two: Scenic Vistas and Deer Efforts

We made it to The Badlands, and they are something else, folks. If you love insidious erosion, deer, pussytoe, sunsets, and cabins, you should definitely schedule your visit. 

As soon as we got to the park, we both needed a minute to pull ourselves together. AND THEN WE GOT OUT OF THE CAR AND MY GOD, WERE WE WOWED. We continually asked ‘What is this DOING here? Can you imagine being the first person to stumble upon this? Where am I?’  You really can see what 30,000+ years of erosion looks like. We got all up IN those formations (in The Badlands, the parks is YOURS and you really can go anywhere. Also, like Bonnaroo, the park never closes). 

Emily continued her adventures in photography (Want more photos? Check out our insta!) and Maygen discovered a new-found passion for plant identification*. We hiked a portion of Medicine Root Trail and got to enjoy a ton of cacti, grasses, and other flora, along with 8-10 deer that seriously took quite a bit of stalking skills to photograph.

Photos, from top: our in-car reaction/meltdown to The Badlands; adorable park entrance photo; reading up on plant identification; erosion at its finest; just a couple of badass gals and their gear; sunset vol 1; deer efforts; would you like some moonshine?

*If anyone can help us find pussytoe, seriously, please do. We did successfully ID Lambert crazyweed though, so the day wasn’t a total loss. 

[drivingcuriosity-blog]

Well folks, day one is a wrap! Today we took our Nissan-turned-pageant-wagon* from Minneapolis all the way to Chamberlain, SD. We laughed, we sang, we ate string cheese, and we took more pictures than we know what to do with--you can find more on our Instagram page--there is also a link to it in the menu on the top left of this page. 

We also learned some things! Glaciers don’t just flatten a landscape, they can also carve crazy dramatic features when huge glacial lakes burst their dams and sweep across a landscape. The World’s Only Corn Palace apparently has some sort of maintenance measures in place because it’s constantly being attacked by ravenous birds.  Lastly, we’re noticing a dramatic decline in the number of trees as we continue west-- a symptom of past glaciers in the eastern part of the state, and a distinct lack thereof in the western part of the state. (Fertile glacial soils, anyone?) That contrast is sure to sharpen as we cross the Missouri River--the official east/west dividing line in SD--tomorrow. 

Photos,  beginning at the top: smiles in the car thanks to a GoPro; our triumphant entrance into South Dakota; Emily shooting some falls while Maygen shoots Emily and some algae; Falls Park in Sioux Falls, SD; The World’s Only Corn Palace (gift shop was definitely closed); a beautiful sunset from the passenger seat. 

*instead of spreading Christianity, we spread science