Warsaw, New York

The first set of Carnegies in New York as we biked along Lake Erie came in pairs, two south of Buffalo and two north.  There were just forty-four constructed around the state, four of which are no more, but a great bounty of sixty-six in the five boroughs of New York City with all but eight remaining, making New York one of six states to have had more than one hundred along with Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio and California. I was starting virtually from scratch with New York, as I’d only been to two, one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn, while I’d been to virtually all of the others in the century club.

The first on our route along thickly forested Lake Erie came in Dunkirk forty miles south of Buffalo.  It still served as a library though it wasn’t allowing anyone to use it in these times.  It was more on the grand scale, dating to 1904, early in Carnegie’s library-giving when that was the trend. Not being able to soak up the typically luscious wooden interiors of these century old libraries is becoming more and more of a letdown.

Our ride north continued to give us glimpses of the lake and it’s rugged shoreline.  Beaches were few and paltry.  The beach at the Erie State Park was closed due to high waters.  The only one we spotted further on was just a sliver and more rocky than sandy.  Before we reached the next Carnegie in Lackawanna, just south of Buffalo, Chris suffered the first of four flat tires on the day, all on his well-worn rear tire.  

After another at the Lackawanna library we knew it was time to find a bike shop.  The Lackawanna Carnegie had reopened on a limited basis, but unfortunately our Friday afternoon visit was at a time it was closed.  It was nestled in a pleasant green space with room for a small addition to its rear.  If we had gone in and lingered, we would have been extra perturbed to come out to a flat tire.  Instead, Chris realized it right away after we had circled the building finding a water faucet, but not an electric outlet.  

It was three miles to the nearest bike shop on the south side of Buffalo.  It had only been in business two years and wasn’t carrying any of the better brands of tires.  They recommended Rick’s Bike Shop on the north side of the city six miles away.  Chris bought a tube, which he needed two miles later when he punctured the tube I loaned him.  It started as a slow leak but after the second time we stopped to inflate it, it went entirely flat. We were getting a little worried about making it to the shop before it closed at six.  But that was the last flat of the day, so we made it with thirty minutes to spare.  

We instantly knew Rick’s was the place, as there were dozen of tires hanging from the ceiling and rows of bikes and a couple boxes of old bike parts on a bench by the counter.  Rick’s is an institution, founded in 1898,  the second oldest bike shop in the country.  This wasn’t its original location, but it still reeked of history and had a staff of bike diehards who were most welcoming.  We were lucky to have had all those flats to bring us here, just as we were lucky for the flat that led to us camping with Andrew.

The shop didn’t have a Schwable in Chris’ size that we were hoping for, as the one on his front wheel still had plenty of wear remaining even after 9,000 miles, but it had the heavy duty Vittoria Radonneur I had purchased in Columbus.  And it also had a first-rate Topeak mini-pump, much better than the mini Chris had been struggling with.  It took so much effort we had been using my pump for the six flats he’d had the past two days.

Even though the shop was bulging with bikes, it had only two new ones for sale, as all the rest were repairs, along with a handful of used bikes.  It’s stock was depleted because they are selling bikes fast and unable to buy new ones with production slowed down in China and Taiwan, where most bikes are manufactured these days.  They started the year with 200 used bikes in their basement and only had about a dozen left.  They are continually monitoring Craig’s List and other internet outlets for bikes, but they are usually gobbled up as soon as they are posted.  

We asked about the possibility of camping in any of the state parks north of the city.  No one knew of any that offered camping or even forested areas for stealth camping.  All advised us to be careful, as bad dudes might get us or cops on the alert for undesirables.  They clearly didn’t have a touring cyclist’s mentality, as Chris found a fabulous forested area with his various google map searches fifteen miles away.  

But first we stopped at the Carnegie in North Tonawanda, now the Carnegie Arts Center.  It was a modest design, set in a residential neighborhood with an expanse of grass around it.  Back on the four-lane road along Lake Erie a guy in a pickup somewhat gruffly told us there was a bike path on the other side of the road.  We gratefully thanked him, but he still called us “assholes.”

Along with doing all the navigation, finding bike amenable streets and roads with little traffic, Chris also monitors the weather.  It was supposed to start raining at two a.m. and continue most of the next day.  The guys at the bike shop said not to trust any weather forecast for the area, as the wind patterns fluctuate over the nearby lakes Erie and Ontario, making predicting the weather impossible.  Still, we made a point of pitching our tents on high ground.  The rain did come at two, but it was just a light rain and stopped at 7:30, our usual departure time.

It was ten miles to Niagara Falls, the town and the cataract, where another Carnegie awaited us.  The Falls came first.  A sprawling state park connects a pair of falls, the lesser American Falls and the mighty Niagara.  We were happy to be on our bikes as there was a lot of distance to cover in the park.  If it weren’t for the virus, it would have been mobbed, so we could easily navigate the paths on our bikes.  The few visitors were mostly foreigners, though no Chinese.

A hearty wind blew the spray of the cascading water at us.  The best vantage is from Canada, but with the border closed, we had to settle for what we had.  The closed border also denied us a Carnegie Library in Canada’s town of Niagara Falls as well as a hundred others in Ontario.  I had hoped to return to Chicago via Ontario, and Chris too wanted to continue on through Canada, but there are no plans to open the border until at least the middle of July.  

The Carnegie in the US town of Niagara Falls was just a mile away on Main Street.  It stood alone in silent majesty with no other buildings nearby.  It was now the Department of Community Development.  It was large enough to serve the community as a library until 1995 without any alteration.

The building’s heritage was acknowledged with a portrait of a smiling Carnegie out front, using the word “great” to describe him. His official portrait and all others convey a similar gentle look of contentment.  The caption exaggerated the number of libraries he built in the US, giving a figure of 2,500, which is the number he funded worldwide. 

In a small park by the bridge connecting the US and Canada we were delighted to discover one of those Strengthen the Arm of Liberty replica Statue of Liberties that the Boy Scouts made available to communities in 1950. It was the first I’d come upon with a golden torch.  I had neglected to check to see where they might be in Pennsylvania and New York after starting my trip with two in Indiana.  There being none in Ohio, I had forgotten about them.  

While Chris and I had the rare opportunity to eat in a restaurant at a Burger King a couple blocks from the Carnegie, I checked Wikipedia for other mini-Statue of Liberties in the state of the original.  There were five more, including one in Le Roy fifty miles away near the next cluster of Carnegies.  Great News. And two more in western Pennsylvania also on my route.

I wouldn’t be enjoying them with Chris as he was heading north to Maine along Lake Ontario while I would drop south a bit and head east.  We’d had a fabulous eight days together, as fine a companion as I’ve had, of which there have been many, from the great Aussies Vincent and Andrew to Ingo the German, and Don Jaime and Janina and Waydell and Crissy and Laurie and Craig and Tomas and David in Turkey, Dwight in Cuba, Stephen in China and many more. It was a genuine pleasure to be recalling them all as I rode with Chris.   

Chris was exceptional in being happy to spend as many hours a day riding as he could with early starts and late finishes.  He enjoyed striking up conversations with people we met along the way and had plenty to say himself.  He was always in a good mood, as anyone should be on the bike.  Hopefully he has many tours to come, though he has professional talents that will be hard not to put to use.

It was very tempting to continue on to Maine and it’s eighteen Carnegies with Chris, but my jaw needed a break from our near non-stop talk.  It was almost becoming too sore to eat at day’s end. We could well meet up again in a couple of months in Michigan or Minnesota if I’m not out in Telluride. If not then, undoubtedly somewhere else in the world in the years to come.

I bequeathed him a black bandanna, a badge akin to a Boy Scout earning his Eagle Scout neckerchief. If nothing else he can put it to use to wipe clean the Tupperware bowl he had acquired a couple days ago to join the ramen cold water club and also to emulate my eating of cereal with chocolate milk.  Up until then he had traveled without a bowl to eat out of.

The Statue of Liberty in Le Roy was along Oatka Creek across from the library.  It was the first I’ve come upon without a plaque identifying its origins.  While I lingered, a parade of fifty or more cars passed with the graduates of the local high school.  They were led by a squadron of five fire trucks with sirens blazing.  Graduates have been celebrated in many towns I’ve passed through with their photos on small posters mounted in front of their homes or lining a few blocks of the town center or hung from lamp posts.  It could be virus-related since they’ve been denied the typical graduation ceremony.  

The Carnegie in Warsaw twenty miles south through a belt of corn fields and more forest was swallowed in trees.  I had to look close at the slightly different colored bricks to notice the addition to its side and rear.  The most obvious evidence of the addition was the street level entrance through a single glass door on the side.  The double front door had a sign reading “The library is closed until further notice.”  Curbside pickups had started a month ago.

The Warsaw McDonald’s was the first I had come to since Youngstown with coins scattered by the pay and pickup windows, including quite a few silver coins, among them a quarter, my third of the day. The few drive-up lanes at various franchises I had checked since then had all been bereft of coins. I was beginning to think the handfuls of coins I gathered in Youngstown had been an aberration and that there was no need to continue this study.  So now it is back on.