San Francisco

All the glow that embraced me after biking over the Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning after camping in the Muir Woods five miles away evaporated in a flash when I walked out of the Carnegie Chinatown Branch Library less than an hour later to discover my tent and day-back had been filched off my bike. Never before in tens of thousands of miles of biking all over the world and leaving my loaded bike outside of grocery stores and libraries and museums had anything ever been stolen off my bike, though a thief had been thwarted in the act in South Africa.

This was bad, but it could have been a lot worse. My guardian angel may have had a lapse, but at least  he/she thwarted the thief from stripping my bike of all its gear or detaching panniers containing items that would have been a bigger loss. An REI in Berkeley will have the most crucial of the stolen items—the identical tent I have used for years and that I replace every three or four years and the duffle I use to put all my gear in for plane or train travel that was becoming tattered. 

I have plenty of replacement day-packs back in Chicago.  That is something I can do without in the days to come. I’ll need a new duffle though for my train trip back to Chicago from Phoenix.  The day-pack was just a repository for the duffle and a few stray items—soap, a strap for my handlebar bag, a few plastic bags, a stash of shoelaces for tying items and a stack of license plates I had collected, six, all of California except one.  I’ll surely find more in the miles ahead, but probably not another from Oregon.

Looking further at the bright side of the theft, besides being able to replace worn items with new, I was spared ten pounds of weight riding up the devilishly steep hills of San Francisco, as I spent the rest of the day tracking down Carnegies, including one in the distant suburb of South San Francisco. The hills are brutal with grades of twenty per cent and more. I’ve endured small doses of comparable grades in Iceland and France and elsewhere, but never an all-day steady diet of them. If I were a local, I might know how to circumvent the worst, or minimize their frequency. I did eventually learn when I saw a steep ramp ahead, I could try going over a block or two to avoid it, but that didn’t always work.

I wasn’t wallowing as deeply in misery as I might have from the horror of the theft and the non-stop horror of the climbs, as I had the pleasure of meeting up with someone who has been reading my blog and had offered me a place to stay. He discovered the blog when, as he approached fifty and thought he ought to become more of a serious cyclist than he was, he googled “old people riding bikes.” He discovered an article about ten cyclists who were up in years from around the world who were still going strong. I was among the ten.

When Luke went to my blog he was most happy to see I had cycled Taiwan, as he is Taiwanese, though he immigrated to the US when he was five years old, over forty years ago, and hadn’t been back until a few years ago when he placed his mother, who was coming down with Altheimers, in a nursing home, which was much cheaper than in the US. He returns a couple times a year to visit her, even though she doesn’t remember who he is. He hasn’t seen much more of his homeland than Taipei, and would like to repeat my circuit of the island when he gains freedom from his job as an electronics engineer. He likes his work, but he’s knows there’s more to life than that.

What he would most like is a several month sabbatical to take off on his bike and travel as I do. It will be a new experience, as he has never camped. He’s acquired a tent, but has yet to put it to use. We talked like old friends. He had the easy-going, gentle, kindly, self-assured manner characteristic of so many of the Taiwanese I met while biking the perimeter of the island.

He’s a few years from breaking away, as he has two teenaged daughters he must get through college. He’s been a long-time motorcyclist, but now feels the lure of the bicycle. He recently rode the Marin County century, an annual group ride, with a friend and is ready to take on touring and was happy to pick my brain. He said he had never contacted anyone cold through the Internet, but thought he knew me well enough from the blog to reach out. We were both glad he had.

He grew up six blocks from the Carnegie Branch Library in the Richmond neighborhood, just south of the Golden Gate Bridge, never knowing it was a Carnegie until now. Like all the Carnegie Branches here, it had no portrait of Carnegie, nor did it acknowledge his beneficence in any way. We arranged to meet there at four. I was late, as I confused its address of 351 Ninth Avenue with 351 Ninth Street, six miles away. I was running late anyway as I encountered more demanding hills than I anticipated returning from the library in South San Francisco, down near the airport.

Any time I go astray can be frustrating, but it always allows me to see things I might not otherwise. Confusing street with avenue took me through Golden Gate Park past Kezar Stadium where the 49ers used to play. A Nancy Pelosi Drive bisects the vast and picturesque park. There was an area designated for learning to ride a bike. No one was, otherwise I would have had to stop to watch.

Our evening together was a fine capper to ranging all over the city visiting five of its eight Carnegies, saving three for the next day. The first was the Golden Gate Branch, a magnificent white stone building on a steep climb from the bay. It had bands of ornamentation just under its roof and several feet above ground level and over its entry and around its windows.

It was just two miles to the fateful Chinatown Branch on a busier main thoroughfare that made the thief all that much more daring. But he/she was quick about the theft, snipping the two bungee cords that tightly held the stolen bags, leaving behind the sleeping bag that was also tied down. It was twenty-six steps up the curved entry to the library. A new entrance had been added to the side with an elevator. There was a large selection of material in Chinese and was largely staffed and patronized by Chinese, one who spoke to me in Chinese when I tried the bathroom door and found it occupied.

I next went to the Main Library in the impressive Civic Center with a domed city hall comparable to a State Capital building. The library occupied a full block across from the city hall and a large park. It was swarmed by the homeless in all manner of disarray with all manner of paraphernalia, making it look like a mob of refugees. I didn’t dare leave my loaded bike to go inside, so I couldn’t confirm that this Carnegie had been greatly modernized. It wasn’t until later I learned that the Carnegie was across the street and was now the Asian Art Museum, which I will have to return to.

Then it was cross town to the Presidio Branch, set back from the quiet residential street it was on with a mini-park in front, adding to its luster.

 My route to Sunset Branch took me through a neighborhood of picturesque vintage homes. A sign forbade tour buses and vans with more than eight passengers. It must not take much effort to get a municipality to post “Don’t” signs. In another town I saw a sign on a busy narrow road forbidding left-hand turns into someone’s driveway, as it could back up traffic interminably.

The Sunset Branch was an even grander temple than the first three I had visited. It listed names of authors engraved one on top of another in two small sections—Irving, Bancroft, Parkman, Stedman on one and Lowell, Bryant, Whittier and Bryant on another.

Then I took a long foray south to South San Francisco riding on Highway One while it was broken up by stop lights through the urban proper until it turned into a veritable superhighway. Then I had to do some improvising around the hills until I got on Hillside Boulevard, which took me to within a mile of the library. It stands on a hill overlooking Grand Avenue, earning it the not unjustified nickname of the Grand Library. It had an inoffensive addition to its rear and plaques inside and out acknowledging its heritage. Besides Carnegie it paid tribute to a school teacher who went around the town on his horse acquiring signatures on a petition to Carnegie. The displays included a photo of him on his horse. This was the only library of the day with the Carnegie portrait.

The long ride back into the city included a stretch on a bike path hugging 101. When I ventured off it back on city streets, cyclists taking advantage of the city’s huge fleet of motorized bikes for rent flew by me in the early rush hour. It was disheartening to reach 351 Ninth Street and not see a library there.  A kindly receptionist in an insurance office allowed me to use her phone to call Luke and let him know I had confused Street with Avenue and was six miles from him and the Richmond Carnegie, where he awaited me. 

I’d had an equally disheartening moment two nights before when I arrived at the Jack London State Historic Park north of Santa Rosa right at dark to discover it did not offer camping and that a night watchman was on duty to make sure no one camped surreptitiously as I otherwise would have. The graves of London and his wife are on the premises, where he constructed a large trophy home that burned before he could move in, bankrupting him and leading to his death a year later in 1916.

He must be spinning in his grave whenever some hobo type is turned away from his shrine. The guard told me there was camping at another state park five miles away. It was already dark. I might have attempted it with a full moon, but there was a trophy house under construction half a mile away that I was able to camp behind. I set my alarm for 6:15 to be gone before the workmen arrived. I was gone by 6:45. One early arrival sitting in his pick-up drinking coffee let me be.

My early start allowed me to gather up five Carnegies before my six-Carnegie day in San Francisco. The first was in Sonoma, a gem with the town’s Central Park all to itself. It was now a visitor center.

Petaluma’s much larger Carnegie was now a museum. “Free Public Library” adorned its facade. I stopped in the city’s visitor center to ask about a bike route to San Rafael twenty miles away down 101.  The two elderly ladies were Carnegie enthusiasts. The museum had recently had an exhibit on all the Carnegies of California. They had to study a detailed map to find a way for me.

It was partially on back roads and partially on recently constructed bike paths along 101. Fortunately it was well-signed and even though being quite complicated I was able to find my way. It took over three hours though. I was hoping to do it in under two hours leaving me the possibility of reaching San Francisco that night. But with three more Carnegies to visit, I fell just short, ending up in the Muir Forest.  The San Rafael Carnegie sat on a hill and had had an addition.

It was just two miles on a direct route to the Carnegie in San Anselmo. Its facade was graced with “Pvblic Library” just above, “The Gift of Andrew Carnegie.” It’s well-polished wooden floors and book cases looked as shiny as when it opened in 1914.

I had some climbing to Mill Valley and a final climb up the residential street to its Carnegie, a red-brick building now someone’s home hidden by trees. I could see a man standing in one of the large second floor windows on the phone. The Golden Gate Bridge was less than ten miles away, but it was too late to attempt it, so I turned onto Highway One and backtracked a couple of miles and camped amongst the eucalyptus trees before my incursion into the sprawling dangerous metropolis.