Fort Smith, Arkansas

An elderly gent greeted the Perryville librarian, the first of these travels forty miles northwest of Little Rock, with a “Brrr, it sure is cold.”  I had to suppress a laugh, as forty-five degrees was a veritable heat wave for me having just come from single-digit temps in Chicago.  I was riding along in a mere three layers, which was too much at times on some of the long, steep climbs I’d already encountered, three less than I’d needed for my sixteen mile ride to Chicago’s Union Station with a temperature of six degrees the day before.  Janina had offered to drive me, but there was no way I was going to accept confinement to a car when I could be riding my bike in temperatures I was plenty accustomed to riding in.

The shivering guy may have been reacting to the twenty degree temperature early in the day, colder than I expected when my train arrived at 4:15 a.m., over an hour later than scheduled.  I didn’t mind the late arrival at all, cutting into the time that I’d have to wait for the sun’s arrival. I was the only passenger to disembark at Little Rock, with the majority going on to Dallas on this the Texas Eagle.  I took my time loading my bike, diminishing the time I’d have to ride in the dark.  There was no traffic to speak of at five a.m.  and no snow to contend with, just the possibility of black ice.  A bank sign confirmed the sub-freezing temperature.  

As I approached the outskirts of Little Rock’s sprawl and street lights threatened to disappear I stopped at a donut shop at six a.m. that had seating.  After forty-five minutes when a pink blush appeared in the east I was happy to resume riding even though the first wave of commuters were already taking over the road.

I could fully celebrate being off on my first tour of 2022 riding roads I’d never ridden before when the first farmstead appeared.  I was headed to Fayetteville, two hundred miles away via Fort Smith on the border of Oklahoma and it’s Carnegie library.  I was drawn  to Fayetteville for the Cyclocross World Championships, just the second time they had been held in the US.  Any cycling World Championships has appeal, but these gained a little extra luster after I attended the National  Championships last month in Cantigny Park in Wheaton, just outside of Chicago.  

It was exhilarating to witness at close hand the competitors in a host of races, from twelve year olds (boys and girls), to the professionals, male and female.  They all rode with grit and determination on the two-mile dirt circuit, which included a steep climb many had to run up and a sand pit and a staircase.  

The close proximity to the athletes even included a brief chat with the men’s champion, 23-year old Eric Brunner, fresh off the podium with his new national championship jersey and gold medal.  

Janina had enjoyed the racing too, but didn’t care to venture to Arkansas in the time of Covid, so rather than driving, I had the pleasure of making the trip via train and bike, my preference anyway.  I was more than due for a bicycle getaway with it being three months since my last, a circuit of Wisconsin getting to nearly forty Carnegie libraries, including one that is now a bicycle shop.  

I was coming down with a case of cabin fever, even more dreaded than Covid.  My time had largely been devoted to completing my immersion in Emile Zola, reading his thirty novels and three collections of short stories and book of photography, as well as several biographies.  I was drawn to him as perhaps his most famous piece of writing, “J’Accuse,” a diatribe that filled the front page of a special edition of a Paris newspaper in 1898  denouncing the conviction of Alfred Dreyfus of treason, led to the creation of the Tour de France.  

I had no idea that Zola was also an ardent cyclist.  The bicycle doesn’t turn up in any of his twenty-volume Rougan-Macquart series of novels, as the bicycle had just been invented at the time they take place largely in 1870, but two of his later novels included ardent odes to the bicycle, truly redeeming what became an ordeal reading novel after novel of man’s darker side.  The day after I posted a report of “Zola and the Bicycle” to the blog  I was aboard a train to Little Rock.

I was still getting out on the bike every day for an hour or two as I was reading Zola and supplemented the riding with some skating on a nearby slough big enough for multiple games of pick-up hockey to be played simultaneously. 

The outings maintained my conditioning, confirmed by my ninety-four miles right out the gate from Little Rock and eighty the next day, better then I could have hoped for with the short days and over seven thousand  feet of climbing thrown in. 

The temperature had dipped to 33 degrees when I slipped into the woods at 5:45 for my first night of camping. I added a layer and would have lit a candle if I hadn’t forgotten to include a couple in my provisions as I meant to.  But even so, within thirty minutes my still radiating body heat after eight hours on the bike warmed the tent ten degrees and I was fine.  I wrapped my legs in my sleeping bag and shed my wool socks, a Christmas present from Janina. 

It was sixty miles of more fine cycling the next day through rural terrain on roads I had all to myself to Fort Smith, a veritable city of nearly 90,000 on the border with Oklahoma with the Arkansas River running through it.  It had outgrown its Carnegie and so had the local tv station that had been its latest tenant.  The grand building had a “For Sale” sign out front and “Carnegie City Library” above its entry, the first Carnegie I’ve come upon referred to in such a manner.  It had fallen into disrepair with a hunk of its roof over the entry missing, as if blown off by a tornado.  

Tornadoes are common enough in the area for a nearby library to have a sign advising patrons to head to its rest rooms if a tornado siren should sound, the first library I’ve encountered with such a sign.  Several of the libraries I’ve stopped at so far have had signs on their doors saying they no longer offer Covid tests, a service they had formerly provided.  They also had signs forbidding firearms. 

I have one more Carnegie on my itinerary in Arkansas north of Fayetteville then I will have gotten to all of Arkansas’ still standing Carnegies, a mere three.  I visited its one other in Morrilton in November of 2011 on a ride with Don Jaime through the Ozarks where we had one delightful encounter after another with locals not sure what to make of a couple of graybeards in tights.  Little Rock is the only other city in Arkansas to take advantage of Carnegie’s beneficence, but it was razed in 1974.  Arkansas is not a state of readers. I had to ask four people in one town where it’s library was.  Usually everyone knows.  And the one who told me had to use her GPS device to find it, as mine didn’t show it.  It is also a rare state where towns don’t have signs to the library.  Oklahoma next door has twenty-five Carnegies. If the weather permits I may round them up as well. 

But now I have the Cyclocross World Championships to look forward to even though they will not include the two preeminent riders of the discipline—the Belgian Wout van Aert and the Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel, who have accounted for the last seven world titles.  They were also two of the most prominent riders and animators at last year’s Tour de France.  Van der Poel is injured and van Aert thinks coming to the US would disrupt his preparations for the spring classics, which he values over another World Championship.  

Their absence makes the 22-year old Brit, Tom Pidcock, the favorite.  He has the potential of being a great, so it will be exciting to see him in action.  And Marianne Vos of Holland too, the greatest woman cyclist ever, who has won multiple World Championships on the road and on the dirt.  Fans will be able to clearly read their focused facial expressions multiple times as they pass on the two-mile circuit at speeds much less than road cyclists and spread out, not buried in a peloton as those on the road.  It’s gonna be a fine weekend.