Madison, Wisconsin

 

It’s hard to fully appreciate a campsite when one is setting up one’s tent in the dark, as has been my lot so far on the first four nights of this trip.  I’m appreciative of wherever I end up, but it is often not until morning that I can marvel at its charms.  My late campsites aren’t because I’ve been desperate to find a place to camp, just that I’ve been unwilling to stop when there’s still daylight in these increasingly short days, unrelentingly confident that I will find a last-minute spot for me and my tent. I pass up innumerable enticing places to camp in that last half hour of light not wishing to rein in my legs.

So far so good, even last night on the outskirts of Madison.  It took me a little longer than I expected to pass through this capital city and college town after dropping in on its Carnegie, a former branch library a couple miles north of where the main library, also funded by Carnegie, had stood.  It was in a bohemian neighborhood, sharing a parking lot with a food coop.  It now houses ZebraDog, a design firm.  A plaque on its side acknowledged Carnegie and it’s architects Claude and Strack, who designed the building in 1912 in the collegiate gothic style, emulating the academic buildings of Oxford and Cambridge, with red brick and limestone arches, niches and banding. It’s backside was as striking as the front.  

There had been wilderness to the south of Madison on my way into the city from Stoughton, twelve miles south, where I stopped for a more classic Carnegie, so I felt assured there’d be more of the same on the other side of the city.  Stoughton’s Carnegie was centrally located at a major interaction on the main thoroughfare bisecting the city.  It still functioned as a library, though its original entrance had been replaced by another in an addition along the Main Street. 

With just two hours of light remaining I was hoping to fill my water bottles with ice and water at a MacDonald’s a mile down the highway on the way to Madison, but like another MacDonald’s I had tried earlier in the day it’s lobby was closed, harkening back to earlier Covid times.  It’s not the case with all MacDonald’s now, but I fear the ease and popularity of the drive-throughs may have encouraged some managers to keep their lobbies closed as a cost-saving measure, just as businesses are happy to have their employees working at home.  I will be greatly saddened by the loss of access to the MacDonald’s self-service ice and beverage machines.  

I was in need of cold water for the first time in these travels, as the temperature had jumped back into the 80s, twenty degrees warmer than my first couple of days when I set out from Chicago.  It had been so cool, I wore long pants the first two days and sweated so little that I hadn’t had cramps, as I ordinarily do the first couple days of a tour as my legs grow accustomed to the effort and I sweat out essential electrolytes.  

Rather than being able to fill my insulated bottles with ice at MacDonald’s, I had to be satisfied with just one bottle’s worth from a 32-ounce cup at a service station.  I could really take advantage of MacDonald’s ice dispensers, as I had found another deluxe Camelback insulated water bottle along the road near a resort lake, easily the best find of the trip so far, bringing my total of such bottles to four, all found along the road, two at the Hilly Hundred.  If I just put ice in the bottles and bury them in my panniers, the ice will last for hours.  It is always a great luxury in my tent at night after a long dehydrating day in the heat.

My GPS showed some pockets of forest just north of Madison, so I pedaled in the increasing darkness with little worry.  I just hoped I didn’t come upon a cheap motel that might entice me to stop in for the Packer/Forty-niner Sunday night game and all the days’ highlights.  I was spared that temptation and soon had a forest to disappear into.  I didn’t mind at all needing my headlamp to clear a spot for my tent and then to find the notches to attach my rain fly.  

Once I’m in the tent every campsite is the same and I can begin my nightly ritual of getting food into me and removing my constricting accouterments (gloves and socks and watch) and begin charging my iPad and Garmin and jotting down my stats for the day—miles and average speed and feet climbed and items scavenged along the road (coins, neckerchiefs, bungee cords, license plates, etc) and what food a dumpster may have added to my larder. The latest of note were two Panino trays of hard salami, prosciutto and pepperoni wrapped around mozzarella cheese.  

The night before I had the added chore of repairing a flat.  I had discovered a slow leak late in the day.  Rather than repairing it on the spot and losing some riding time, I was able to nurse it along, adding air three times half an hour apart, enabling me to get a few miles further down the road.  It was such a tiny hole I had to wait until the next day to immerse it in water to find it.  I can go a long tour without a flat, so this early flat is no reason for alarm. I traditionally find many more neckerchiefs along the road than suffer flats.  They are tied right now.  The lone neckerchief was a white one, my least favorite, but a color that is turning up with increasing frequency.  Janina promises to make a quilt of them one of these days.  

The Madison Carnegie was my fourth of the day.  The first had been in Watertown.  It mirrored that of Stoughton, likewise located at a prime intersection and also with an addition to its side extending it along the main thoroughfare it was on and usurping its original entrance.  It was adorned with picnic tables out front and wooden chairs, including a quite over-sized one.

The Carnegie in Jefferson, fourteen miles south, had been replaced by a new library a block away. It now was occupied by a land title company.  The small building had been attached to an old small Episcopal church, making for a most odd pairing.  Despite the striking alteration, the Carnegie had been given National Historic Place Status.

The day before I had stopped at the Carnegie in Waukesha, west of Milwaukee.  It being a Saturday I could gain entrance.  A massive construction project, the latest of many over the years, had the tiny Carnegie portion of the vastly expanded library off-limits.  It was  now referred to as merely the “Carnegie Room,” though what remained of its exterior gave evidence that it had been something of magnificence.  The many additions had so swallowed it up the librarian couldn’t even tell me where the orignal entrance to the library had been.

Two young librarians at the new West Allis library, a suburb of Milwaukee, twelve miles from Waukesha, were so little versed in their Carnegie, replaced in 1989, they didn’t even realize it was two blocks away and was now an assisted living center called Carnegie Place.  It’s original entrance up a set of stairs had been blocked off, greatly undermining the beauty of the building.

As I head north into the woodlands the camping will be even easier and with the towns smaller, the Carnegies ought to be more true to their origins.  I have yet to have a good sit-down in a Carnegie this year and have yet to come upon a portrait that so many have mounted in a position of prominence.  I’m always happy to give him a nod of appreciation.  With luck I’ll have that pleasure at the next Carnegie in Baraboo.