During the 1970s my research in Edinburgh continued to examine the role of the circadian system in photoperiodic time measurement, using both Nasonia vitripennis and Sarcophaga argyrostoma. In Sarcophaga I investigated the role of light as an entraining agent for the pupal eclosion rhythm, to use this information in an analysis of photoperiodic timing, assuming that the overt system (eclosion) was a good measure of the ‘hands’ of the photoperiodic clock. Without going into too much scientific detail, suffice it to say that this procedure identified a short light-sensitive phase lying toward the end of the night, almost exactly as predicted by Pittendrigh’s ‘external coincidence’ model (see above). In a very wide range of complex light cycles, it was found that this phase landing in the dark led to long night (short day) effects resulting in diapause, whereas illumination of this phase led to short night (long day) induction of continuous or summer development. In hindsight it was perhaps fortunate that the properties of the pupal eclosion rhythm in Sarcophaga were so very similar to those for the ‘photoperiodic oscillator’; in many other insects, including some studied later in my laboratory, this was not the case making such an analysis more difficult. The parallels between eclosion and photoperiodic diapause induction in Sarcophaga were reported in a major paper (1978) in the Journal of Comparative Physiology. In Nasonia vitripennis I also found that daily light cycles could be replaced by daily temperature cycles (or thermoperiods), given in complete darkness, to control the induction of diapause or development.

The flesh fly, Sarcophaga argyrostoma.

In the summer of 1976, because I did not go to Ecuador, I took the opportunity of another trip to the United States partly to boost sales of my newly published book, Insect Clocks. I combined this trip with visits to see old colleagues and to discuss research. I thus flew out to Baltimore via Boston to see Phil Sokolove, by then at the University of Maryland. Their welcome to me included a visit to an open air opera late at night – which although delightful was rather difficult because of my jet lag!  The next day we travelled together by train to Philadelphia to meet Sue Binkley and Shep Roberts at Temple University, before I flew west to San Francisco, and then to Monterey to visit Colin Pittendrigh. By 1976 Pitt had moved from the main Stanford campus to take on the Directorship of the Pacific Grove Marine Station, an odd choice perhaps for a Drosophila chronobiologist but the University recognised that the marine station had fallen on hard times and badly needed expert guidance. Pitt met me at Monterey’s small local airport and we drove up to their house in the hills above Salinas.

From San Francisco I took to the road, having invested in a Greyhound bus 100-day ticket before my departure. This proved to be one of the best investments I ever made and confirmed my love for the Greyhound bus system which I had first experienced a few years before. The first stretch was up through northern California, across Oregon, to Seattle, Washington to see Jim Truman and Lynn Riddiford who had moved from Harvard to the University there. Of course, at each of the stops I made, we discussed Science. But in the Zoology department in Seattle I also met Rebecca Twigg, a cycling world champion who was then working as a technician in Jim’s laboratory!

After a day or so in Seattle, Jim put me back on a Greyhound bus. Since by now it was the Labor Day weekend and everybody was on holiday I settled down for a five day trip across the western United States to eventually visit Mike Menaker at Austin, Texas. The first stage (taking two days) was a long overnight journey to Salt Lake City, where I got off the bus to find a suitable motel. The third day’s travel was across the Rockies to Denver where I again broke my journey at a motel.  The fourth and fifth days were then passed in a bus through Amarillo, Texas, and all the way down to San Antonio. The Greyhound bus station in San Antonio was not particularly salubrious in the wee hours of the morning, but I survived the experience to travel on to Austin later that morning. By the time I reached Austin the Labor Day weekend was over and Shirley Menaker met me and took me over to Mike’s department.  Although most of my American friends thought I must be mad undertaking such a long journey by road, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and, as will now be recounted, had a few adventures on the way.

1976 was the United States’ bicentennial year. Almost every town we passed through - large or small - was decked with bunting, and many had street processions. Halfway across Wyoming the bus stopped for a nocturnal coffee-and-hamburger stop at a diner in a very small town. The diner was at the front of the town’s roller skating rink and the entire population of the town seemed to be going round and round as though in a trance! On two occasions I was ‘picked up’ by (fairly) young women. The first sat down beside me and asked me if I thought that she had ‘thunder thighs’. On the second occasion, I was asked whether I was a ‘male chauvinist pig’. Apparently she had heard me speak, mistook my accent for that of an Australian – and her sister had married an Australian who, in her judgement, was such a creature. One certainly meets interesting people aboard a Greyhound bus!

I would have been quite happy to continue by Greyhound bus all the way from Austin to New York, but time was now running out and I had to take to the skies in order to meet my flight from New York back to the U.K.

I was back at Pacific Grove the following year for the 1977 Summer School on Chronobiology, organised by Colin Pittendrigh. This very successful event became the prototype for several later summer schools, including a series of European schools organised by Serge Daan, Günther and Gerta Fleissner, and me (see later). The summer school in Pacific Grove lasted for six weeks with students, many of them becoming the ‘leaders’ of chronobiology in later years, from many American and European Universities. The teachers came from a similarly wide range of institutions and generally stayed for a week or so while their part of the course was being considered. Students attended lectures and worked in pairs on research projects. The summer school kicked off with Pitt giving 13 hours (!) of lectures on the circadian system in Drosophila pseudoobscura, a uniquely valuable experience for students and teachers alike. I stayed in Pacific Grove for five weeks and gave a series of lectures on insect photoperiodism.

On a social level the summer school was also a great success. On one memorable occasion we had a barbeque on the beach with whole salmon being grilled on an open fire. Suddenly, around the point came a rowing boat propelled by Jürgen Aschoff bearing a large sign “Just arrived from Germany”!  It was here that I also became acquainted with M.F. Bowen, one of Steve Skopik’s students (and hence a scientific ‘grand-daughter’ of Pitt’s) who in 1983 became a research collaborator at Chapel Hill.

At the end of my stay in Pacific Grove I flew back to London to meet Jean and the boys who had come down from Edinburgh and were staying with her mother in Sittingbourne. We then drove off to spend six weeks in Tübingen almost entirely this time as a family holiday. We had arranged to exchange houses with Wolfgang Engelmann, and his wife Sigrun and children, and we managed to meet them at Dover as they came off the ferry. An exchange of house keys then occurred, and we crossed over to France. It was during this stay in Tübingen that we heard the momentous news that President Nixon had finally resigned after months of impeachment procedures following the Watergate scandal.

At about this time we bought our two elder boys bicycles, mainly for them to get to school. Robert became quite enthusiastic about cycling almost straight away, but Michael was less enthusiastic probably because he ‘came off’ his bicycle going down Auchendinny hill!  As for me, the bicycles re-awakened my dormant interest in cycling, and Robert and I went on a short tour through the Scottish borders. I became an enthusiastic ‘born-again’ cyclist, and Robert went on to become a very competent time triallist (but that is his story, not mine).