Waveland, Indiana

I was hoping it was a good omen to be visiting the Carnegie Library in Waveland just hours before the Cubs would be taking on the Nationals at Wrigley Field in game four of their five-game playoff series holding a two games to one advantage. Waveland is as significant to Cub fans as the W flag, as the bleacher entrance to the hallowed shrine is at Waveland and Sheffield Avenues. I  have been at that intersection hundreds of times, including for all 81 home games of the 1975 season, fulfilling one of my dream ambitions of spending a summer in the bleachers of Wrigley.  But the omen carried no weight as the Cubs fell 5-0, forcing a fifth game in the nation's capital.

The entire town of Waveland wouldn't fill the left field bleachers, even at its peak population of 676 when the Carnegie was built in 1914.  It has dwindled to 420, so there has been no issue of expanding the library, as is the case in most communities. When I asked the librarian if there was anything distinctive or unique about the library, she pointed to a landscape painting over the fireplace and said, "We have a T. C. Steele.  He used to live here."

She didn't know when.  "My one hundred year old mother would know," she said.  "She probably told me, but such things pass in one ear and out the next."  She led me to a table and picked up a biography of Steele and said, "This will tell you all about him."  Steele's family moved to Waveland in 1852 when he was five years old.  He lived there until he went to college.  He painted up to his death in 1926 and is considered the "father of the Hoosier school of painters." His boyhood home is on the National Register of Historic Places.  There is another local home on the Register, but not the Carnegie, though it well could be, as many are.

I'd just had a nice fifteen-mile ride from Roachdale, a slightly larger town with a similar-sized Carnegie in its original state other than the addition of a side entrance to accommodate those who couldn't handle its steps.  The standard portrait of Carnegie likewise welcomed those entering from the front accompanied by a plaque.  The library was further adorned with a pair of classy light fixtures outside its entry.  Sitting at one of its original wooden tables was another pleasant trip back in time.

Preceding these two small-town Carnegies I passed a quartet of suburban Carnegies to the west of Indianapolis.  Only the one in Danville still served as a library, though it had had a pair of additions to its backside nearly quadrupling its size.  Looking head-on, one wouldn't know.

A plaque out front acknowledged its heritage.

The Carnegie in Mooresville had been acquired by the bank next door and had been attached to become a very unSiaemese-like twin.  It's original entrance was now blocked and its identity as a library buffed off its facade. Only a plaque inside on the outside wall that now connected with the rest of the bank revealed its original identity.  

The Carnegie in Plainfield was now the national headquarters for the Triangle Fraternity, one of two collegiate fraternities not identified by Greek letters.  There are only thirty-five chapters of this fraternity of engineers, architects and scientists.  With such an association this was a Carnegie that was as pristine as the day it was built.

The Carnegie in Brownsburg had also been taken over by an organization on the technological side--Hendricks County Solid Waste Management District--and was likewise a glory to behold.

A bench out front demonstrated what it did.

All six of these Carnegies were solid, distinguished buildings still serving and pleasing their communities. As I hopped from one to another, first through suburbia and then past cornfields and forests, I imagined the era when they were built over a century ago when there were more bicycles than automobiles on these roads.  I was now the lone cyclist, my example of these many years having no effect.

The Hilly Hundred

This past weekend was the fiftieth anniversary of the Hilly Hundred, the longest running bicycle event of its kind.  Bicyclists from all over converge on Bloomington, Indiana for the opportunity of back-to-back fifty mile rides through the hilly, forested terrain of southern Indiana.  It was my third participation, the first about twenty years ago and then last year.  

The event isn't as popular as it once was, but it still attracts a couple thousand ardent cyclists.  Over the years, and even from last year to this, the profile of the riders has changed dramatically from cyclists of all levels of commitment to mostly the most committed.  In years past there would be a significant number of casual cyclists pushing their less than optimum bikes up the hills. This year hardly a soul couldn't make it up the hills, many of double digit grades.  Most flew up them hardly needing to shift.  Close to 99 per cent of those riding were on high-end bikes.  Nearly every rider was using clip-in pedals.  Lycra was universal.  I was among the one per centers on a bike with a rack and fenders and kick stand and unLycraed.  At the rest stops most of the bikes were laying in the grass if there wasn't a tree to lean them against.

This was not a parade, as it once was, of a wide array of bikes with character ridden by people of all sizes and shapes expressing their personality with their garb and adornments.  Now it was clones of the svelte and fit in Lycra, hardly a casual rider among them.  It had evolved into an elitist gathering of the hard corps on higher-end bikes, maybe thanks to the $90 entry fee entitling one to some food and drink.  If one could pass on the food, as I did, one could ride along without charge.  There was little out-of-the-ordinary self-expression even among the jerseys, just bland club or local jerseys.  I did have to talk to a guy wearing a Cubs cycling jersey, a fellow Chicagoan who had driven down for the weekend.  It had no number on it.  If he'd had that option, he'd  have gotten one with a 17 for Anthony Rizzo, his favorite player.  He didn't have a W flag on his bike, but he did have one on his car.  I would have asked the rider with a Pelotonia jersey its significance, but he rode by too fast.  I would have chased after him, but I was riding with a friend who was one of the rare cyclists on a bike weighing more than twenty pounds and not wearing cycling shoes, and I didn't care to leave her behind.

In year's past I've ridden with Dwight, but he was attending a Heartwood conference devoted to forest issues.  My other cycling friend in Bloomington, Jeff, was also unavailable for the ride, but I at least got to enjoy a lunch with him and a handful of his cycling cohorts at the magnificent kitchen complex that he established two years ago and rents out to local food vendors and uses to prepare food for his pizza restaurants. Jeff had somehow managed to get time away from his many business ventures to bike Mynamawr with Dwight this winter and then RAGBRAI. We had much to share.  Jeff was able to convey his pizza expertise to a restaurateur in Mynamawr who had been struggling to get his dough just right. He couldn't resist the abundance of food in Iowa and was disappointed to return six pounds heavier.

I still had a cycling companion for the Hundred, Dwight's girl friend Susan. At less than one hundred pounds, she has a good weight to power ratio and scampered up the hills even on her comparative tank of a bike.   She had plenty of pep, but most of those on the ride, who were on bikes that cost as much as the cars of many of the clients she serves as a social worker, flew by us.  It allowed us to survey the steady stream of our fellow riders as they bombarded us with a chorus of "on your left" and an occasional "car back" or "car up."  There were few cars other than the occasional vehicle patrolling the course.  At intersections where there might be traffic, a police officer was stationed.  The course was adequately marked with small yellow arrows and occasional warnings of "nuts," also written in yellow, where a walnut tree could be shedding its golf ball-sized product.  They'd mostly been cleared from the road, but there was the ever present danger of another falling.

I was able to see Dwight Saturday morning before he headed to Paoli fifty miles to the south for the weekend.  The start of the ride was in Elletsville, just five miles from his farm. As we breakfasted on fresh food from his garden, he noticed a feral cat peering at us through a thicket of blackberries.  He was not a welcome visitor, as such critters prey upon his bird population. He quickly grabbed his shotgun and dashed out the door.  He got off two shots, but wasn't sure if he'd gotten him.  His aged Labrador is no longer the tracker he once was, so Dwight and I took a stroll around.  The vegetation is thick on much of his property, so we couldn't find the cat, though Dwight was certain he'd wounded him.  "If you see vultures circling later," he said, "you'll know where he is."

We wandered over to his former communal garden, what he called his "Communist Plot."  None of his friends who used to come out and garden had returned this year.  But he had a new friend who had a vast and varied tomato crop much larger than all the small patches put together.  It was a commercial operation mostly harvested for the seeds that would be sold worldwide. It was an impressive site with high fencing to thwart the deer. The many varieties of tomatoes were carefully labeled.   Dwight offers tomatoes by the bucket to his friends.  When he returned Sunday night he prepared a delicious salad of the many hued tomatoes fresh off the vine.  The main course was rabbit, that he had shot.  He and Susan baked it in a pie.  There was enough to send me on my way the next day.

I didn't get as early of a start as I might have as I had 120 pages left to read in Dwight's soon to be  published third book, his second volume of Wild Tales.  This one is called "All Over the Place."  It recounts his travels in Africa, South America and Asia going back nearly fifty years, climbing mountains and biking and just exploring. There are also rollicking chapters on sinking a whaling ship in Norway and spending time in a Mexican prison and looking after a quadriplegic brother and outwitting the medical profession in paying for a knee operation and discovering what he thought was a meteorite.

I was the first person to be reading the actual print of the book that Dwight had self-published through Amazon.  Dwight had had several friends proofread and edit his on-line rough draft, but a few typos had slipped through.   I wanted to find as many as I could before I left so he could all the sooner make the book available to the public and print up a few more copies for friends.  Most were minor that few would notice, such as an inconsistency in using "ok" or "okay" and not always putting a comma in numbers of a thousand and more and making that common mix-up of peddling and pedaling.   He also used the expression "win-win" in a story from the seventies before the term entered the lexicon.  The stories were always so gripping it was hard to slow down to catch such things.

My route in to Bloomington a few days before took me across the Wabash River at Terre Haute on the Theordore Dreiser bridge.  There was a lone Carnegie Library on the sixty mile stretch to Bloomington in Spencer.  It was now a museum.  It acknowledged its Carnegie roots with a Carnegie Coffee Bar.  It's corner location allowed this historic building to fully display its unspoiled grandeur.

My route north from Bloomington would take me past four more Carnegies to the west of Indianapolis.  I had previously visited the three still standing Carnegie branches in the city as well as those to its east.  Then I'll hit seven more of Indiana's 166 Carnegies, the most of any state, before crossing back into Illinois.  Slowly but surely I'm getting to them all.

Greenup, Illinois

Among the many charms of small town libraries are their wall hangings. Rather than the standard Read posters featuring a celebrity, they often decorate their walls with items of local interest--photos or plaques or homilies.  The Carnegie in Hillsboro gentlely reminded its patrons to observe the due dates of the books they check out.  In a small town, the librarian can be as significant a figure as the mayor and are often much beloved. Many are remembered with plaques.

The Hillsboro Carnegie may not have been designed by the most accomplished of architects, but he did include columns in his design.

The Carnegie in Pana had a cluster of photos of the local swimming pool from the 1950s.  The town was renowned for its above ground pool.  It's portrait of Carnegie above the entry was flanked by portraits of George Washington and the person who donated the land for the library.  The librarian said that when she gives tours of the library she always begins there so she can explain who Carnegie was.

Not only was the librarian most friendly and talkative but so was a twelve-year old girl out front who had arrived at the library on a bike as well.  She was the first, and only so far, person to react to the Trump mask adorning my bike.  "I like the Trump mask," she blurted, then added, "That's hilarious."

The Carnegie in Taylorville is now a law office.  Taylorville was one of the few towns with a slogan--"A Great Place to Live."  The slogan of the much smaller Morristown was more location specific--"Where Progress Meets the Prairie."  I stopped at a small store that advertised "All fountain drinks 89 cents."  It was Indian run.  It's owner said, "Come back, all our prices are cheaper than Casey's."

The central plaza in Taylorville featured a statue of Abraham Lincoln commemorating the time he served there as a judge.  It included a pig, as Lincoln was said to have had one as pet in his youth.

Hillsboro had a Lincoln statue as well, a few doors down from the cafe where I gorged on hotcakes.  For the first time in these travels most of the towns I've past through still have a restaurant for the locals to gather at, a small sign of healthy local economies.  This one had reopened two years ago and was owned by someone who lived in a nearby town where he had a similar restaurant.  It was nice to begin my days knowing I could count on a stack of hotcakes not too far down the road.

After a day with three Carnegies in sixty-two miles I had a glorious four-Carnegie day as I closed in on Terre Haute and the Indiana border.  The first was in Shelbyville with its flag at half mast in remembrance of the 59 dead in Las Vegas.

As with Pana it had an addition to its back that did nothing to mar its grandeur.  It's addition had similar  wooden bookshelves and wooden tables as those in the front of the library.

It wouldn't be easy to leave such a tranquil setting, if I didn't know a similar one awaited me in an hour or two.  The next came in the city of Mattoon.  It's original library was so large it only required a minimal addition, mostly to provide a handicapped entrance to the side.

It was just ten miles to another city in the 20,000 range, Charleston, home to Eastern Illinois University. It's much smaller Carnegie had a huge, nearly block-long addition.  It was almost a miracle that the original library had been incorporated in the design, though it's entrance was closed up and had been appropriated by kids as a skateboarding ramp.  It was the only library in this batch to identify itself as a "Free Public Library," all the others didn't feel the need to include the word "free."

The original library was now the periodicals room, comprising not even ten per cent of the floor space of the library.  As with the Edwardsville Carnegie and many others that have built additions around their original library, the former outside wall is now part of its interior, almost as if it is a Roman ruin in a museum.

One could certainly appreciate the beauty of the front of the original library and feel great gratitude that there was enough enlightenment in the community to preserve it.  That is not always the case.  Of the 111 Carnegies built in Illinois, seventeen have been demolished, many in the suburbs of Chicago.  The Hall of Shame includes Evanston, Wilmette, Highland Park, Des Plaines, LaGrange, Brookfield, Harvey and Downers Grove. Only two of those built outside Chicago remain standing and only one as a library, in Maywood.   The Park Ridge Carnegie, across the street from the new library, houses several small businesses. 

My final Carnegie in this Illinois batch in Greenup is now a military history museum, something that would not please Carnegie.  He spent the final years of his life as a personal ambassador to the world trying to avert WWI.  Discouragement over his failure led to his death in 1919.   The Greenup Carnegie had a turret that made it look like a castle or military installation.

Seven of the nine Carnegies I visited in Illinois still served as libraries, right around the average for the state, with 68 still functioning as libraries.  My final stretch to Bloomington will only include one Carnegie that I have yet to visit along the way.  But if I'm feeling deprived I can always drop in on the Carnegie in Bloomington, now a museum.

Litchfield, Illinois

Even though I was still more than a week away from arriving back in Chicago when I crossed the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River from St. Louis to East St. Louis I felt a wave of joy, happy to be back in my home state despite the terribly depressed condition of my entry point.  Entire blocks had been leveled and were nothing but weeds.  Many of what buildings remained were boarded up.  There was no traffic to speak of.  Stop lights had long ago been turned off and were rusting relics, replaced by stop signs.  It was a virtual dead zone, a stark contrast to the vitality and affluence on the other side of the river.   

Entering St. Louis from the north the road was littered with more stray coins than I had encountered the previous thousand miles.  I even found a pair of gym shorts with a ten dollar bill in a pocket.  I also gathered a bin of fishing lures and the greatest find of all, a Trump mask.  No one had swerved to run over it, nor has anyone responded to it in any way since I attached it to my bike, just as my mini-Cubs W flag lashed to the back of my bike had been totally ignored all the way from Telluride.

I had a fine eighteen-mile early morning ride out of St. Louis from its western suburbs, where I stayed with my ardent cycling friend Peter, an administrator for the two Principias, and visited with my old friends Robin and Ellwood and Chris. Ellwood and Chris were in particularly good spirits as the fund they manage (Towle) had just experienced its second "Trump Bump," gaining twenty per cent in the past month thanks to the President's proposed tax plan.  Last November they enjoyed an even greater bump of fifty percent.  That brought them so many new investors they had to temporarily put a cap on accepting them.

My route through the burbs transitioned me into the city via it's superlative Forest Park, a true treasure  full of museums and lakes and site of the 1904 World's Fair.  I continued past the city's palatial downtown Carnegie Library, filling an entire block, and then by the spectacular Arch before crossing the Mississippi.  Though my entry into the city the day before had been complicated with few choices for getting over the Missouri River, my ride out  was a delight, especially since the first six miles had been with Peter and Chris and a friend of theirs who had twice biked coast-to-coast. They turned off to join up with several dozen other MAMILs that we saw amassing for their weekly 7:15 a.m. "Knucklehead Ride," a local ritual that'd been going on for thirty years.  Peter wasn't going to ride long as he had a cycle cross race to get to over in Alton on the other side of the river.  He'd be one of the favorites in his category, as he'd just entered the 60 to 64 age bracket.

He's no slouch, as in years past he has qualified to compete in the national championships on the road and time trial. He has the sense to resist competing in crash-prone criteriums. He's well versed in all phases of training and racing, including nutrition.  When I arrived at his home within walking distance of Principia, he had a deluxe smoothie for me and had nutrition-rich nibbles available too.  In the beastly hot summer months he commences his training rides at 4:30 in the morning, so it was no big deal hitting the road at 6:30 with me, just as the sky was turning pink.  

It was a treat to talk cycling over dinner and into the night with someone who has put so much thought into it.  He had even attended a racing camp in Asheville conducted by my friend Randy Warren and had gotten advice from one of Christian Vande Velde's most valued advisors--Dr. Allen Lim.  Peter met him while scouting out the national time trial course a couple of years ago.  He didn't recognize him at first and asked him as they were riding along how he could improve his aerodynamics without the huge expense of going into a wind tunnel.  Lim said to just vary his position while riding in a very quiet area and find a position that minimized the sound of the air going by his ears.  

That brought to mind one of my all time great descents in the Andes while in I was in Bolivia after crossing a 15,000 foot pass.  After twenty minutes or so flying down the mountain I began hearing what I presumed was the roar of a truck coming from behind me.  The sound grew louder, but I held off the truck.  When I peeked behind to see how close it was, there was nothing behind me.  The sound I was hearing was that of the air thickening with oxygen.

I was happy to learn that Peter wasn't weary of my ongoing Carnegie quest.  Some might consider it an obsession, but Peter termed it a "beneficial appreciation."  He thought "obsession" had a negative connotation, and he saw nothing negative about my pursuit and celebration of the libraries.  Even though I've been to hundreds, I was excited about the string of them that awaited me in Illinois. However similar they may be, each has a distinct quality and radiates an unmistakable aura from generations of patrons who have loved it and spent countless hours of contentment within its confines.  These masses have left an immeasurable residue of gratitude for the hours and hours of reading pleasure their library has provided them.  I can feel it from miles away and I like to think I may contribute to the aura myself, cross-pollinating them as I hop from one to another and linger within their confines.

My first Carnegie in Illinois came in Edwardsville twenty miles from East St. Louis following old Route 66.  It took me past the Cahokia Mounds World Heritage Site.  Though it was well beyond the decrepit perimeter of East St. Louis, there were dumpy mobile-home parks on either side of the park.  I had climbed the mounds three years ago with Janina when we drove down to New Orleans visiting mounds all along the Mississippi, so I just let my gaze take them in, the largest Monks Mound to my left with its staircase to its summit and smaller mounds and the Park Headquarters on the other side of the highway.

A cornerstone on the large Edwardsville Library said 1990.  The librarian explained there had been a $2.4 million expansion that year that surrounded the original Carnegie to its left and right and its entire backside.  The original entrance had been turned into a large curved window.  The new much larger building was magnificent inside and out, but it was no longer the "perfect white diamond in a setting of emerald" as the town newspaper described the original library sitting in the town's park shortly after its opening.  The article further gloated, "No city of the size of Edwardsville has a handsomer or better-equipped public library."

The citizens of Litchfield thirty miles up Route 66 could easily dispute those claims as its unmolested Carnegie has only grown more noble with age. It has the town's central park all to its self, an honor more often reserved for County Courthouses or City Halls. It's inscription of "Carnegie Library Litchfield" over its entry was particularly radiant in the setting sun.

These initial two Carnegies whetted my appetite for the seven more that awaited me on my swath across the southern quarter of the state to Indiana.  I knew a premium campsite awaited me either in the abundant forests or amongst the tall  withered corn fields.

Mexico, Missouri

If I had known I'd be passing through Mexico, Missouri I might have been more inclined to have headed down to Patagonia, Arizona, not far from the Mexican border, at the start of these travels to complete a pairing of Latin American-named towns that evoke a rush of fond memories, having biked hundreds of miles in each.  A couple of long-time friends, who are ardent travelers, have taken up residence in Patagonia, but neither could assure me they would be there after Telluride. It still would have been nice to have gained an acquaintance with the town and also to add some Carnegies in Arizona and New Mexico to my collection, but I opted instead to cut several hundred miles from my ride so I could reach Bloomington, Indiana in time for its annual Hilly Hundred weekend.

I was drawn to Missouri's Mexico by its Carnegie library. It was vacant and looking a bit neglected and  rejected, especially compared to the adjoining grand Carnegiesque library that had replaced it. At least it hadn't been razed.  I wasn't able to inquire if the library had any plans for it, even though I had ridden hard to reach it before five and its presumed closing time, as it had been closed for the day so the staff could assist with the move of books to a branch library in the neighboring town of Vandalia.

Mexico, with 11,000 residents, was the largest town I had passed through all day, big enough to have a country club and also a parking lot twelve miles out of town for carpoolers.  I had spent the day riding small county roads through tiny towns, including Dalton with a population of seventeen. The only food available was the meager selections at a lone Casey's General Store and a Dollar Store.  They have driven out local stores all along my route.  Casey's was in a town of just a couple hundred people.  I asked the teenaged girl at the checkout counter if there was a library in the town.  "We don't have anything here," she scoffed.  A few minutes later, as I sat outside the store drinking a chocolate milk and reading "Catcher in the Rye" she passed by with the garbage.  She came to life and blurted, "I love that book."

I thought I had made a mistake when I ventured off the main highway for this more direct route on tiny roads when I hit a stretch of gravel.  Fortunately, it only went on for five miles and was relatively flat. But I rode very warily remembering my tumble on gravel in Nebraska last year that came near to breaking a collarbone.  There were stretches of roller-coaster steep hills that also made the shorter route longer than the long route.  It gave me a taste of my weekend of hills in Bloomington to come and made me happy that I'd be riding them shed of all my gear.  But it was a nice stretch with no more than two or three vehicles per hour and worry-free camping.  I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to manage this ride without anyone calling the cops on me for illicit camping with less than a week to go.  Usually it's happened by now lately in my US travels.

With only thirty-five Carnegies, compared to the sixty-six of Kansas, of which I stopped at nine, my route across Missouri will intersect with just three.  The first was in Parkville on the campus of Park College on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River towards Kansas City.  As with most of the academic libraries Carnegie funded, its architecture blended in with the campus architecture and wasn't particularly recognizable as a Carnegie.  Such libraries are still statuesque structures, but they don't distinguish themselves from all the buildings around them as the public libraries do.

I had not much more than an hour before dark to find a place to camp after crossing into Missouri and visiting Parkville.  All the suburban developments on the other side of the river from Kansas City  caught me by surprise. They went on for miles and miles broken only by malls with the usual franchises. I thought I'd be back into rural America heading north out of Kansas City, but the sprawl of new cloned two-story homes in vast developments continued unabated.  I was lucky to find a pocket of forest with a trail blocked by a gate and a "No Trespassing" sign that I could go around for a nice quiet campsite other than a distant barking dog.

During the night a front passed through bringing rain and a drop of temperature.  It was below sixty when I broke camp, necessitating not only a long-sleeve shirt for the first time in a week, but my windbreaker. Clouds filled the sky for the first time since I left Telluride over two weeks ago.  At last, fall conditions.  Now just the hills, and not the heat, were sapping my energy.  The much more fertile soil of Missouri was reflected in corn over head-high that helped blunt what little breeze there was.  Forests also made the terrain look much more habitable than Kansas.  But the towns were still small and on the fade.  The Carnegie in Excelsoir Springs was vacant and nearly as forlorn as the one in Mexico.  A "For Sale" sign was in its window.  All of the "historic downtown" was equally shabby, though not uninviting.  One could find a home for a song here.  The town's new standard library was on its outskirts near its Dollar Store and other franchises. 

The small towns I've passed through are truly dying, but the larger towns are full of "Now Hiring" signs, from fast food joints to small factories, something I hadn't seen in years past on my commute back to Chicago.  One receives very mixed signals on the health of the economy.

It was two days of riding from Excelsior Springs until the next Carnegie in Mexico.  And after Mexico there would be no more until I cross the Mississippi into Illinois.  Even with all my meandering around my home state over the years nine Carnegies await me that I have yet to visit across its southern extremity as I head to Indiana.

This ride is distinguishing itself not only of being free of a brush with the law, but also without a flat tire, a virtual miracle having crossed a long stretch of goat's head terrain. I also went over a thousand miles before my first roll of electrician's tape, something I was actually in need of as I'd used what I'd brought in Telluride.  So far I have two license plates for Dwight and have collected three neckerchiefs, including a rare albino one, and two more bungee cords in addition to the two I left with Joel.  

And as has happened several times before on these Carnegie  quests, I heard Ralph Nader pay homage to Carnegie. He mentioned him in his podcast of August 5 when he was interviewing David Callahan, author of the book "The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age."  It wasn't until the end of the hour interview that Nader lauded Carnegie for funding "2,500" libraries in the United States and Canada.  The precise number of Carnegie-built libraries is 2,509 world wide with 1,679 in the US, 126 in Canada and the rest in Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia and a few island republics.  He accurately quoted Carnegie from his book "Gospel of Wealth," where he wrote, "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced."  Nader added, "I don't think anything has been written better by a billionaire."  Nader also praised Warren Buffet for his philanthropy.  He gives each of his three children $100 million a year for their charitable organizations.  One of his daughters has funneled $500 million dollars to women's groups supporting abortion, more than anyone else.

Kansas City, Kansas

In this recent stretch of extreme heat no sound has pleased my ears more than the rattle of ice in my metal water bottle after I have crawled into my tent and pulled the bottle out of my pannier, hoping the ice in the drink I put in it an hour or more earlier hasn't melted. Even if I don't hear the sound, I know the drink will be considerably colder than the water in the three bottles attached to my frame, but to have a drink with ice in it when I have yet to cool down after a long day of being roasted is almost too good to be true. The chilled fluid soothes the throat and dissolves the misery of all those hours of being baked by the sun. It is always a challenge to just sip and make the drink last as long as possible.  No alcoholic could enjoy a drink more than I do my ice-cold drink in my tent at day's end.

At least when the sun sets, the temperature becomes more tolerable and at some time in the night I actually have to pull my sleeping bag over me. The morning hours are still somewhat cool until ten or so making me glad to be on the bike even though I know I am soon doomed to the inferno. It is no wonder that hell is hot and not cold.  One of the worst things of these hot days is I must ride in those morning hours and can't stop at a diner for a stack of hotcakes.  The bounty of calories is almost enough to get me through the day, but equally pleasurable is the dose of local color in small town cafes where most of the patrons know one another and though they may be seated tables apart speak loud enough that anyone can pick up on a conversation. To speak in modified tones would be unsociable and grounds for accusations of plotting or being secretive, inspiring someone to blurt, "What are you whispering about over there?"

After five days of blistering heat a slight decrease even of a couple of degrees was reason to celebrate.  I still rode from ice-filled drink to ice-filled drink, but when a service station didn't have a table to sit inside in air conditioned comfort, it wasn't such a disaster to have to sit outside in the shade.  I was ever in search of water to pour over me.  I wasn't so happy during the blitz of heat when I arrived at the Carnegie in Canton after it had closed and neither of its water spigots were dispensing water.

The library had none of the flourishes (columns or bay windows or high ceilings or elaborate light fixtures or dome) of the more prominent Carnegies.  It blended in with the neighboring homes, but it was still a small gem.  The town took extra pride in it, as its construction in 1921 was the last of the 1,679 libraries in the US that Carnegie funded, and erected a sign out front to that effect.  Canton was in such decline with most of the businesses empty and adorned with "for rent" signs that the library was only open four days a week for a total of fifteen hours.  But at least it's WIFI hadn't been curtailed, nor did it require a password.

I was lucky a small grocery store across the street was open until seven.  It did not have a soft drink machine with an ice dispenser, but it did have a tankard that dispensed purified water for 59 cents per gallon.  There was no charge for my small water bottle.

If the winds hadn't been so fierce, or if I had known that my friend Laura, who I met through Facets over twenty years ago had grown up in nearby Peabody,  I would have ducked back south on a diagonal road to its Carnegie.  But I chose to stay north and head to the two Carnegies in Emporia, as I knew I could include Peabody on my next Carnegie foray to Kansas when I followed a corridor of them through Sterling and Hutchinson and McPherson. 

I had no luck finding the former Carnegie on the campus of Emporia College as the address given for it on Wikipedia had a church and none of the students I consulted on a Saturday evening when all the administrative offices were closed knew anything about it.  I had to settle for just the former public library Carnegie, looking somewhat like a castle, now a museum right next to the new library.

Like the Carnegie in Canton, the Carnegie in the similarly-sized Lyndon had a prominent sign out front letting the world know of its origins.

It hardly needed the sign, as it had all the luster of a Carnegie.  I almost thought I was in France when I noticed its opening hours were interrupted by an hour for lunch.  France is frequently on my mind on my Carnegie quests.  As I enter a town with a Carnegie,  I brace myself for the sudden exhilaration of spotting it, knowing it will be the most historic and magnificent building in the town, just as I anticipate a town's cathedral in France, always a grandiose, monumental building, and like the Carnegies of America, in the town center.  One might think the French with their love of reading would similarly honor their local library, but that is not the case at all.  France does have one Carnegie, in Reims, built after WWI to replace its destroyed library, and it is a gem, just a couple blocks from its World Heritage Cathedral.  But otherwise the country's libraries are nondescript or modern glassy buildings, frequently referred to as a "mediatech" in the modern lexicon.

I found the Carnegie on the campus of Baker University in Baldwin City early Sunday evening, my third of the day after Lyndon and Ottawa.  Ottawa's was now a Cultural Center sitting in a large park.

Baker's Carnegie was now an administrative building and had been replaced by a much larger library next door.  I was able to tap into its wifi to call a reader of this blog who lived twenty-five miles away and had invited me to visit. 

I had been pushing it to try to make it this evening and had already biked seventy-four miles, my best day since the heat had hit.  I had an hour-and-a-half of light left.  If I got close enough to his house in Olathe, world headquarters of Garmin, within the sprawl of Kansas City, by dark, I was hoping there would be street lights or enough ambient urban light to keep riding.  It would make for my first hundred mile day of these travels.  I am always happy to have such a goal.  Arriving at his house after dark would be a nice triumph.

When dark hit I was still in semi-rural terrain.  After being blinded by the brights of several approaching cars, I opted to camp behind an abandoned car mechanic's garage.  Rather than feeling defeat I felt the exhilaration of a ninety-mile day in ninety-degree heat.  It was still a triumph to arrive at Bill's house the next morning, especially being greeted by a Tour de France flag that he had acquired when he paid The Tour a visit in 2008.  We didn't know each other at the time, otherwise we would have rendezvoused at L'Alpe d'Huez, where we both were in the year Carlos Sastre attacked on the climb to win The Race. 

Bill had been laid off by Sprint and Erickson six months ago and was still enjoying his severance package, so was free to lead me into Kansas City and its lone, still-standing Carnegie, twenty miles away.  It's not likely he can find work in his field, so he's been taking courses to become a paralegal.

He had a garage full of bikes.  He chose his prized Rivendale for our ride.  We made it a leisurely four-hour ride alternating between bike paths and quiet residential streets and shortcuts that he knew.  We passed through suburban developments similar to those featured in "American Honey," one of last year's best movies about dispossessed youth traveling the country selling magazine subscriptions.  Bill hadn't seen the movie, but he had had such people come to his door.  It was hot enough I was hoping we might pass a lake for a dip.  If we did, Bill said, it would be a man-made lake, as Kansas did not have a single natural lake.  Instead we had to settle for a drinking fountain in a park for a dousing.

Though Bill hadn't taken to the bike until 2002 as a means to get a little exercise, he had become fully immersed in the pastime.  Besides taking his son to France for The Tour, he had driven to California in 2010 for the Tour of California.  His wife doesn't accompany him on his travels, as they house a couple of handicapped foster children and one of them always has to be on hand to take care of their needs.  Though we had never met, we rode along like long-time pals thanks to our bonding over the years through the bike.  Bill exuded a wholesome Midwestern warmth.  I was in no great hurry other than to escape the sprawl of the Kansas Cities divided by the Missouri River before dark.  Bill hadn't intended to accompany me all the way to the Carnegie, but he got me all the way there, even enlisting the help of a cyclist to guide us the last few miles to avoid the larger hills that laced the terrain the entire way.  They had never met, but they had a mutual friend in the cycling community.

Bill was enticed to accompany me all the way to the Carnegie, as his favorite military surplus shop was just a couple blocks from it.  It was a huge warehouse with all manner of merchandise, some of it vintage items not for sale--a bike, a jeep, a motorcycle and various armaments.  The Carnegie resided in a depressed neighborhood and was vacant, but retained all its splendor.

Less than a mile from the library after a long steep descent Bill discovered a bulge in his front tire.  We were lucky he hadn't suffered a blowout on our high-speed descent.  He let some air out and continued on.  Rather than trying to find a bike shop and bike home, mostly into the wind, he opted to call Uber.  He didn't mind at all, as he drives for Uber, as well as Lyft, and thought it would be a worthwhile experience to be a passenger. He enjoys the work, as it suits his curious and gregarious nature.  The Carnegie was to the west of the downtown, so he tagged along a little further with me towards the downtown where it would be easier for him to get a ride, before I headed north to cross the Missouri River to track down a Carnegie in the small university town of Parkville.   

Newton, Kansas

Other than the above brief outburst of enraged sculpture along the roadside from a venomous welder in the small town of Mullinville, there hasn't been much variety to the scenery through the Plains of western Kansas.  Corn struggling to make it and soybeans and grasslands have dominated the scenery.  The soybeans respond with more vigor than the corn to the not so fertile soil. A competition is on to get a yield of one hundred bushels of beans to an acre.  The few towns look almost as withered as the corn.  Trees are a rare sight.  With little to block the ferocious winds whipping up from the south gusting between twenty and thirty miles per hour, I have been buffeted all over the road.  The temperature has been in the 90s for several days, ten degrees above normal.  What had been most pleasurable cycling for ten days has become an ordeal.  The lone salvation has been the wide shoulders, nearly an extra lane wide, giving me enough leeway not to be blown out into traffic.  

I chose not to abandon the four-lane divided highway heading into Wichita for a parallel road with less traffic, as it did not have a shoulder providing me with a life-saving cushion.  A librarian in Kingman, forty-four miles from Wichita, warned me about heavy traffic heading into the city, strongly advising me to leave the main highway in Goddard, nine miles before Wichita, but she had a much different sense of traffic than someone from Chicago.  She was 65, but had never been in a city larger than Kansas City, and had barely left the state in all her years.  When she retires next year her dream is to see an ocean.  Her choice is the Atlantic, as driving across the Rockies scares her.  

The ovenish heat and the fierce winds forced me to take shelter every four or five miles on my run-in to Wichita whenever I came to the shade provided by an overpass.  There wasn't a town or service station for twenty-eight miles.  This was a more demanding stretch than the sixth-nine miles between towns in eastern Colorado.  It was more sapping than the high nineties of Madagascar, as there was no wind to contend with there.  At least I wasn't dripping sweat here.  The water in my water bottles was nearly scalding and even though I had flavored it with Tang, it was hard to force myself to drink.

All that kept me going was the prospect of a service station with a soft-drink and ice dispenser. Even better than a service station is a McDonald's with its offer of help-yourself unlimited soda for one dollar.  It's array of drinks often includes Powerade, a less sugared alternative.  I couldn't have been happier when I saw some Golden Arches ahead.  I tried to sip and not guzzle first one and then another giant ice-filled cup of the Powerade with a splash of Sprite.  I absorbed it like a sponge.  It was a relief to be in air conditioning after roasting for four hours in the heat.  I was lured to the large city of Wichita for its Carnegie.  There had been two, but the other on the campus of Wichita State had been torn down a while ago.  

I reached the sprawl of Wichita an hour before dark.  I could have camped in a huge cemetery on the outskirts of the city, but I was concerned about how much liquid I would need to drink so opted for a cheap Indian-run motel near the airport.  There were several to choose from.  Even more important than WIFI was that it have an ice machine.  I drank and drank, so much so that I didn't eat enough, waking up at three a.m. starved.  I had hoped to watch the Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam, but my selection of channels did not include PBS.  I was unable to report in to Janina, as she was experiencing a similar heat-wave in Chicago, with a record high for the day, and had her industrial strength fan cranked up so she was unable to hear the ring of her phone or the ping of FaceTime on her computer. I had to wait until the morning to talk.

I would have liked to have gotten an early start in the predawn cool, but I was so exhausted from battling the wind the previous two days that I slept until 7:30.  At least I would be heading north from Wichita for fifty miles, so my lone adversary for the day would be the heat.  I had a pleasant seven mile ride through "suburbia" to downtown Wichita and its former Carnegie, now housing a bank, across from the new library.  It retained its stunning majesty.  The new library was just a building, hardly worth a glance. 

I left town on Broadway, taking it twenty-five miles north following railroad tracks and Interstate 35, passing a rundown $25 a night motel, to Newton and another most regal Carnegie. 

It had been a historical museum since 1973, after serving as the town library for seventy years with just one expansion in 1923.  It had an exhibit on the Chisholm Trail, which I had been following since Wichita.  It was the route Texans had used to drive cattle up to Abilene, one hundred miles north, to a rail terminus.  It had been established after the Civil War when the state of Missouri put a halt to Texans bringing their cattle through the state to reach the eastern markets.  

Now that I have reached the more populous eastern half of Kansas my days will be filled with multiple Carnegies.  My nostrils will be spared the stench of feed lots and the piles of manure dumped by fields.  I had to be wary where I camped, lest the wind shift in the night and I be assaulted by unwelcome aromas.  I have so far been spared goatheads, those prickly burrs that can adhere to tires and turn them into a sieve.  They have bedeviled me in Nebraska on previous rides back to Chicago.  My tires did pick up a handful when I wheeled my bike onto the property of what I thought was an abandoned house, but I was able to brush them off before they penetrated.

Not only did the Newton Quickstop service station have 79-cent 32-ounce drinks, but it offered the first bargain hot dogs in nearly one thousand miles.  I am always hoping for 99-cent dogs when I walk into a service station.  The Quickstop deal was three for three dollars, an offer I didn't have to think twice about.  The 99-cent hot dog may be a thing of the past, but this was close enough.