Columbus, Ohio

Scattered throughout Columbus, capitol of Ohio and it’s most populous city with more inhabitants than Cleveland and Cincinnati combined, were “Black Lives Matter” signs, including on the home of Nikki, daughter of cycling friend Harold in California, who arranged an overnight stay for me.

There were blocks and blocks of boarded up windows on High Street, the main commercial street through the city where Paradise Garage, a first-rate bike shop I sought out, was located.  I was in need of new tires.  I had set out figuring I still had a thousand miles on the front tire I’d been riding since Belém, Brasil and that Columbus would be a good place to replace it a thousand miles into my ride.  

Though Paradise Garage, which took its name from a renowned New York disco, had been vandalized, it still had plenty of tires to choose from.  Only a few of its bikes had been stolen, one of which they’d already repossessed from a pawn shop. The bikes they were sorriest to lose were those left by customers to be repaired.

The looters had spared the Carnegie Library, a monumental building constructed from a $200,000 grant, considerably more than the usual small-town $10,000 grant.   Just below the roofline was etched “Erected with funds donated by Andrew Carnegie and dedicated to the advancement of learning.”  Below it was the Latin phrase “Bibliotheca Fons Erudionis” (The library is a fountain of learning). Though “Open to All” was inscribed over the entry, in these times it was open to none.  There was no notice of any potential reopening, just a phone number for homeless assistance.

Nikki and her partner lived just a mile from the library and the capital building a couple blocks over in the old German part of town in one of its many original red brick homes.  

Their yard had a patch of grass for my tent.  The early German settlers brought beer-making with them.  Columbus was an early brewery town, though none remain.  I had my best night of sleep in the quiet residential neighborhood well away from any main thoroughfare.

Both Nikki and her partner Kurt teach at Ohio State, she in environmental psychology and he in economics.  Amazingly, one of his doctoral students (Peter Nenka) had just completed a dissertation on Carnegie Libraries—“Knowledge Access: The effect of Carnegie Libraries on Innovation.”  He was able to determine that towns who received a Carnegie Library in contrast to those who didn’t had eight to thirteen percent more patents in the twenty years after a library was built.  I am eager to read his paper.  It can be found at Peternencka.com

Thanks to the virus Nikki and Kurt were still in Columbus.  If not, they would have been traveling or possibly back at Nikki’s parent’s home near Anaheim, not far from Disneyland.  Growing up Nikki had a yearly pass to the amusement park and has the fondest of memories of all the time she spent there.  Her favorite visit though was returning two years ago.  She had been eager to revisit the park again this summer, but that’s not likely to happen.  Both she and Kirk landed visiting professorships at Stanford for this fall and winter, but those are very much in jeopardy too.

We talked into the night on their patio over a superb vegetarian lasagne, featuring onions, French-style.  I had been eager to hear about her summit of Kilimanjaro seven years ago, the gift she requested from her parents for earning her PhD at USC.  I had heard about it from her dad when

I visited him a year ago on my California Carnegie-Roundup and also from her uncle Bobbie in Chicago, who gave a slideshow of it at a Chicago library.  

As it would be for anyone, it was a proud accomplishment.  Her summit photo with her dad and uncle is featured on her computer.  But it somewhat cured her of backpacking, as she doesn’t like to be dirty.  She brought along a huge stash of wipes to clean herself with every night.  The guides were most attentive.  One tied her shoes for her every morning despite her best efforts to do it herself, a service neither her father or uncle were rendered.

Kurt had adventures to share as well, both as a touring cyclist and as an economist.  He went to Alaska one summer on an economics project while he was an undergraduate at Cornell to research the earnings of commercial fisherman on the most distant of the Aleutian Islands.  Nikki was surprised to learn that only three of the hundred fishing boats, many of which come up from Seattle for the bonanza, had a female among their four or five member crews and wasn’t willing to accept that the work was too hard for them.

Kurt had the prowess to figure out how to close a Bowie knife I had found along the road and was happy to take it off my hands. I was also able to leave him and Nikki three bungee cords and a hefty screw driver and  a neckerchief I had recently scavenged along the road as offerings for their hospitality.  

Just before Columbus I added two more Carnegies to my collection, the first in Delaware twenty-five miles due north.  It was a premium example with columns and a dome and “Carnegie Library” and “Free to All” inscribed on its facade and National Register of Historic Place designation.  But it was no longer a library, now serving as the offices for the County Commissioners.

Halfway between Delaware and Columbus the town of Westerville offered a classic Carnegie on the campus of Otterbein University,  a Methodist college with 3,000 students founded in 1847.  The library had been converted to an administration building, but retained all its luster.

My ride to Delaware from Warsaw was through more Amish country.  I shared the road with horse-pulled buggies and was passed by a woman in skirt and bonnet flying by on an ebike with a heaping full basket on the bike.  There was no mistaking her extra power, something that was a little more subtle in the days before when I’ve twice been passed by men of my vintage on mountain bikes pedaling with very little effort.  They all look like they’re enjoying themselves and that’s the point.

I at last came upon a McDonald’s that allowed dining in.  It was in Mount Sterling, but it was only an aberration as the next two I stopped at still only allowed takeout, forcing me to eat my dollar special burrito outside sitting on the ground.  That allowed three people, including an older black woman, to offer me money, which I was able to decline, as well as the offer of someone in a car in the drive-up window line who asked if he could get me something.  I take no offense, just gladdened by the goodwill.  I was heartened that one of those offering takeout-only service allowed me access to their self-serve drink machine so I could fill my water bottle with ice, the first such opportunity I’ve had.  It is a glimmer of hope that normal could be returning.