Beloit, Wisconsin

 



I am commencing this fall’s Biketober a little early, heading off to Wisconsin a week before it’s official start since I know the temperatures could become frigid all too soon in the northern reaches of the state where a handful of Carnegie libraries await me up along Lake Superior.   My itinerary includes the thirty-four of the state’s still standing fifty Carnegies that have yet to intersect any of my forays into the state.  

The ride will take me from the bottom of the state in Beloit on the Illinois border to its far north on Lake Superior where four Carnegies dot it’s coastline.  I also plan to cross into the U.P. for four Carnegies not far from Wisconsin, which will allow me to complete Michigan’s slate of fifty-one, many of which I rounded up last October.  If I finish off Michigan and Wisconsin, that will bring my total of completed states to nine. The others are Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Colorado, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. 

If I’m really ambitious I could make it an even ten with a dash over to the northwest corner of Iowa for the seventeen of its remaining ninety-eight Carnegies that I failed to get to two falls ago when I cut short my circuit of the state to return in time for the Milos Stehlick memorial.  Slowly but surely I’m putting my imprint on each of the 1,470 that still stand  of the nearly 1,800 built in the US.  I’m well over half way there.

I felt more in need of a deep bike immersion than usual after the least amount of biking I’ve ever done during my month in Telluride tending to the film festival’s shipping department.  We were located for the first time in the satellite community of Mountain Village separated from Telluride by a twelve-minute gondola ride or close to half hour drive, which made the job much more demanding and time-consuming than usual, limiting time to bike. 

The workload was compounded by the absence of two long-time staffers and bosom-buddies who had over twenty-five years of experience between them.  It also didn’t help that the festival was extended by a day to five days, meaning there was one less crucial day of preparation in the week before the festival started.  The extra day of cinema was nice, but my Strava totals suffered greatly, with not even fifty miles for the five weeks Janina and I were away, which included a week’s driving time there and back.  By the time we got back to Chicago I could feel a distinct brain fog from the lack of the customary injection of endorphins that my body generally has coursing through it. I needed a long, long bike ride to flush out the toxins from being so sedentary.

It was a week after our return before I was able to make my immersion back into the life I know so well and regain my bearings.  It was time well spent though helping Janina put the finishing touches on her Telluride Journal to be published for the first time by the Canadian cinema website Offscreen.  It’s ready to go in it’s next edition.  Hooray, hooray.  She sure had plenty to write about with the extra day of cinema and the usual wide array of films, from the first of the Oscar contenders to lost or overlooked films, including silent films from Russia and Greece and an Ingmar Bergman film from 1971 starring Eliot Gould and an explosive French musical from 1979 set on a slave ship.  As always, it was an array of cinema second to none accentuated by many luminaries including Kenneth Branaugh, Jane Campion, Paolo Sorrentino, Asghar Farhardi, Alexander Payne, Peter Sellars, Laurie Anderson, Alice Waters, Pico Iyer, Conrad Ankar, Barry Jenkins, Maggie Gyllenhaal.

It took several hours and nearly fifty miles before I escaped Chicago’s noxious sprawl and maelstrom of traffic and slipped into the cornfields and wide open spaces of rural/pastoral America.  And a while longer before I fully escaped the blight of cookie-cutter developments with mindlessly monotonous “homes” hovering in the background like a scourge upon the land.   But that joyous perpetual treadmill my legs were on gradually purged me of my malaise and rejuvenated my spirit.  I was a distinct anomaly, the lone cyclist among thousands and thousands of motorists, a wane cry of sanity in the wilderness of internal combustion machines bringing about the ruination of the planet.

Outcast or outsider, I cared not.  I only felt a sense of release and freedom and complete independence that being off on the bike provides.  And my independence was further affirmed knowing I’d find a quiet nook to curl up in night after night without having to register with anyone or hand over a credit card.  My first was as fine as any in a cluster of trees alongside a cornfield. I couldn’t have been happier as I dined on a feast of avocados mixed with slices of roasted turkey breast and crumpled feta cheese, with a side of hummus,  and dessert of dried mango slices and pound cake compliments of a nearby Aldi’s dumpster.   I was in no need of food as Janina had sent me off with meat loaf and mashed potatoes and corn on the cob, and I had packs of ramen and other rations, but an Aldi’s dumpster right along the road late in the day was too inviting to resist.  I am always curious to see what might be on offer and rarely am I disappointed. 

The next morning I checked on another dumpster, not wanting it to go to waste,  and was rewarded with a platter of cheese cake slices and pumpkin pie. I could have rescued a dozen pies and shared them with the fools in their cars streaming in and out of the Aldi’s oblivious to the banquet in back and the ease of plucking their provisions from a single container rather than trudging up and down it’s aisles pushing a cart having to make multiple choices.  America, the land of opportunity and the land of plenty, a touring cyclist’s paradise, free food and free lodging whenever needed and miles and miles of carefree, uplifting riding.  What more could one ask for?

I crossed into Wisconsin well-fed and fully energized.  Just across the border into Wisconsin on the outskirts of Beloit was a store selling fireworks. I didn’t bother to check its dumpster but headed straight to Beloit College for it’s Carnegie, one of two in Wisconsin on college campuses.  The other had been in Appleton at Lawrence College, but it had been torn down.  Of the fifteen that had been razed in Wisconsin, another had been Beloit’s public library, replaced by a sprawling, characterless edifice on the outskirts of town that had formerly been a shopping center.  A sign on its door advised the use of masks but didn’t mandate them as in Illinois.  Most inside were masked.

I didn’t have to stop and ask where the Carnegie was on the campus as I immediately recognized its features, though it was no longer the library, nor had any plaque or markings identifying it as the former library, just the classic columns and light fixtures typical of a Carnegie and 1904 chiseled into a corner of its base.  A professor in his office confirmed it had been the library.  It was a fine start of the many to come, each which would be highlight of the day if it were not for the glorious campsite that will end each day and the many fine sites along the way.