Marion, Ohio

I was at a Speedway gas station digging in my front pannier for my scrub brush to clean the residue of chocolate milk from my water bottle before filling it with water, when a guy who looked like a traveling salesman interrupted me and said, “It looks like you could use this,” then handed me a jar of vitamins.  It was weightier than I would have expected, indicating some heavy-duty pills.

It wasn’t until later that night in my tent that I gave the bottle a closer look.  It was a Bausch and Lomb product with vitamins specific to the eyes.  The recommended dosage was two a day, one in the morning and one in the evening with food.  I’ve never taken vitamins, other than some vitamin C pills that Andrew of Sydney shared with me while we were touring France simply to flavor the warm water in my water bottle, but I was willing to give these a try.  When I opened the bottle I discovered why it was so heavy—it was filled with coins.  There were eighty-eight quarters, twenty-nine dimes, twenty-three nickels and forty-eight pennies—a total of $26.53.  

I couldn’t imagine what he was doing driving around with such a stash in a town without parking meters. Was he actually looking for some charity case to bequeath it to?  I only hoped it wasn’t the hoard of the guy’s child that he had confiscated as punishment for some misdeed.  Once again I was torn between gladness for such goodheartedness, but saddened that I was mistaken for someone down on his luck.  The sight of an old guy on a bike seemingly loaded with all his worldly possessions must certainly pull at the heart strings. Few seem to recognize that person as someone to be heartened by, someone who is still enduring at his age and off on an adventure that is bringing him joy.  

The next chance I had at WiFi I immediately went to Facebook and searched the page of Randy Warren, the cyclist extraordinaire who I dropped in on last March in San Luis Obispo at his training camp for racers.  He had mentioned on his podcast that he was using his upcoming Everesting ride as a fundraiser for The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival started by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.  He hoped to raise $1000. Randy, as a coach, is highly attuned to benefiting others, and as a churchgoer would well know what charity merits support.  I was happy to contribute this minor windfall to his fund, which was already near $800 a week before his ride.  The charity though would only accept whole dollars, so I rounded my contribution up to $27 including some of the random coins I’d picked up on the road, saving a few for the next lemonade stand. 

Everesting is the latest craze among cyclists started by George Mallory’s grandson in 1994 as a feature to honor his grandfather who died on Everest after possibly reaching its summit a few years before Sir Edmund Hillary. It is climbing the equivalent of the height of Everest, a little over 29,000 feet, in one day on a circuit of one’s choosing. The record is seven hours and thirty-two minutes set just five days ago by Lachlan Morton, an Australian who rides for the EF Education First team, who did it in Colorado.

Randy isn’t going for any record, except maybe for his age group (58). He has picked a route an hour from where he has lived in Wilmington, North Carolina the past six years, after having had enough of Chicago’s winters.  He will make twenty circuits of a 6.8 mile course with an elevation gain of 1,453 feet on each at an average grade of 8.1 per cent to reach that 29,000 feet figure, a most formidable effort. It will take him 136 miles. Whenever I go over 5,000 feet in a day when I’m touring I’m wiped out. 

It was tempting to swing over to Wilmington and hand him water bottles, but I’m too committed to this Carnegie quest, plus I have the impending rendezvous with the cyclist I mentioned in my first post of this trip who had bicycled from the Bay Area to Florida to visit his grandfather and then continued riding.  He next visited an uncle in Virginia then headed to Pittsburgh and into Ohio to join me for some Carnegie-hopping.  We’ll be meeting in a day or two.  

I had my first three-Carnegie day in a while after a lone Carnegie the day before in London.  Of the four latest Carnegies London’s was the only one that still served as a library, though I was unable to take advantage of it as it had yet to reopen.  It was a gallant fortress of a building with an unobtrusive addition behind it.

The welcoming sign to Bellefontaine announced that the first concrete street in the United States had been laid there in 1891.  A block of it remains on Court Street right by the Carnegie along with a statue of the man who pioneered it.   The Carnegie Library looks out on the Main Street of this bustling city.  Its original entrance facing the busy four-lane street had been closed off, but it’s front side still radiated its original dignity and nobility with the label of Carnegie Free Library despite its present use as the Logan County Court Center.  One now enters to the side through a large addition tacked on behind it.

Twenty miles to the north through freshly planted fields of corn and wheat the Carnegie in Kenton had  been converted into a dental office of a husband-and-wife team.  I’ve come upon many taken over by lawyers, and others by accountants and realtors and engineers and restaurants and barbers and hair salons, but this was the first in the medical field. They began their drilling there in 2006, taking over from a hair salon that had acquired it for $1000 in 1997 after it had sat vacant for fourteen years and had deteriorated badly.  But it has been fully restored and certainly merits the National Register of Historic Places plaque by its entry.

I went over to the new library a few blocks away.  I had to sit outside to use its WiFi as it hadn’t reopened.  A librarian came out and offered me a cold bottle of water and a pack of juice and some snacks, a sampler of what it distributes to children every day between noon and twelve-thirty.  None came by while I was there.  She said, “It looks like you’re traveling.”

“Yes, I’m riding around to the Carnegie Libraries in the state,” I told her.  

She said this library replaced the Carnegie in 1968 and how fortunate the community was that someone had sunk over $200,000 into it after it had fallen into disrepair after initially being taken over by the Historical Society.

After she went back in a few minutes later the director of the library came out with a book for me and said, “My children’s librarian tells me you’re visiting Carnegie Libraries.  Have you read this book on the Carnegie Libraries of Ohio?”

“I have, but it’s been awhile.  I’d love to give it another look.”

He left it with me and told me to just put it in the book drop when I left.  He also left me with his card, the second person to do so, likewise saying to give him a call should I run into any problems. That makes Janina very happy, as she’s concerned I could wake up in my tent any night with a high fever and need hospitalization.

Two pages of the book were devoted to every Carnegie in the state, one page its history and the other a photo or two.  I read up on a few I was curious about.  I was most pleased with a map indicating them all, so I could verify that I had no more Germantown surprises in store for me.  

The director told me I would be impressed by my next in Marion, twenty-six miles east.  He was right. I had my first spontaneous “Wow” when I caught my first glimpse of its extra ornamentation and sumptuous grandeur.  Rather than a library, it was now a Children’s Museum, also known as an “Explore-it-Torium.”

A mile away in the city’s vast cemetery were the graves of President Harding and his wife under an imposing memorial.  Harding died in office in 1923, part of that long string of presidents elected in a year divisible by twenty beginning with Lincoln who didn’t survive their term.  His wife died a little over a year after him.

While I was doing a little washing at a water pump in the cemetery proper, a retired teacher stopped and told me he had cycled coast-to-coast in 1996, sticking to a northerly route, even slipping into Canada for a while. At last someone who recognized me as who I was.  He advised me I might not want to drink water taken from a water reservoir under a cemetery.  I had already taken a sip to see how tainted with iron it might be.  Not too bad, but it would be water I’d save as a last resort to drink, trying to reserve it for cleaning my Tupperware bowl and teeth and giving my face a wipe. 

It was getting on towards evening.  I could have pitched my tent in his yard,  but he lived twenty miles away and opposite the direction I was headed.   As with many, towards the end of our conversation, he said, “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how old are you?”  I could interrupt the preamble each time and say 69, but I politely let them finish.  After I answered his question I added, “I’ve ridden 63 miles so far today.  I try to do at least 69 every day, so I’m almost there.”