Ames, Iowa

At the first cafe I stopped at in Iowa I was startled by a burst of laughter coming from a table of two elderly couples and the almost joyous exuberance of their conversation.  That wasn't something I had encountered in Nebraska.  The Nebraskans weren't necessarily repressed and downtrodden, but their economy certainly seemed so, as reflected by the sorry state of most of their towns and their Carnegie Libraries, and that couldn't help but be reflected in the demeanor of its people.  In comparison with those in Iowa, they seemed to be more coping with life than enjoying it.

The towns in Iowa were pulsing with life and weren't run down as were those in Nebraska.  The grass was green and the paint wasn't peeling and faded. Vacant store fronts were a rarity.   Small towns had coffee shops and other non-essential businesses, such as florists, that implied a healthy economy.  And the Carnegie libraries had a shine to them.  Most had had an addition to cater to the growth of the towns, while those in Nebraska hadn't had that need.  The people aren't so much to blame, but rather one state having rich and productive soil and the other not so much so. Even Iowa’s late fall withering brown corn stalks were much hardier than those of Nebraska.

With folk seemingly scraping by in Nebraska, as if they're just trying to hold on, clinging to a frontier-mentality, people have a common bond and look out for one another. When I had one final flat tire late in the afternoon as I neared the Iowa border, two motorists stopped to offer help.  One even offered a Subway sandwich he had just bought.  A few days earlier someone else asked if I needed money as I sat eating a peanut butter sandwich under a tree. He was astounded I was bicycling to Chicago.  He didn't think such a thing was possible.  

My flat tire was an exclamation point on the bad luck that has dogged me on this trip.  I thought my slow-leak woes were behind me when I put one of the three brand new tubes that I had bought at Walmart a couple of hours before in my rear tire. It wasn't totally necessary, as I had been nursing a super-slow leak for several days that only required a small amount of pumping at the start of the day and then again mid-afternoon.  But during a rest break I decided to replace the tube and be done with this extra pumping that was a strain on my injured shoulder. Two miles down the road I could feel the tire going soft.  When I took out the tube and reinflated it to find the puncture, I discovered the tube had a blemish in it and I had been sold a tube with a hole in it.  

I should have been wary, as when I opened the box the tube came in, I could see that someone had already opened it and ineptly stuffed the tube back into the box.  I assumed that whoever had bought it hadn't meant to buy a presta valve tube and had returned it.  Instead, they returned it after either discovering it had a hole or puncturing it themselves.  "Only at Walmart," one might say.  And only on this trip with so much I'll-fortune starting with a brake pad wearing out on a long steep descent and even worse snapping a brake cable on another long descent and the frustration of following Interstate 70 and being detoured onto 80 and pulled over for it and then nearly breaking my collarbone and continually pricking my tires with goat heads and having my tent crumbled by violent winds and rain.  Ah, the joy of bike touring.  Yes, it is a joy despite all the adversity.  Pedaling a bike for hours and hours out in the hinterlands is always revitalizing and knowing that the planet is my campground, equally so. Biking long distances is an emphatic Declaration of Independence that never grows old.  Even if I didn't have Carnegie Libraries to search out, I'd still be at it.

The first I came to in Missouri Valley after crossing the Missouri River into Iowa had a huge addition with the original entrance turned into a garden emphasizing its grandeur.  It's not an uncommon redesign of a Carnegie ensuring that patrons will use the new, stairless, handicap-accessible entrance.

To the right of the circulation desk above a coffee-maker offering a cup for one dollar hung an original portrait of Carnegie without identifying him.

The Carnegie in Logan twenty miles away had the standard portrait that the Carnegie Foundation offered to all the Libraries in 1935 on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth hanging in its entry.  Its addition in 1989 matched the original brick of the library and wasn't detectable looking at it straight on.

Cupcakes and cookies and lemonade filled a table to honor the departure of one of the librarians, adding to its neighborly feel.

Continuing on route 30 another twenty miles took me to the distinctive Carnegie in Woodbine with an addition to its side in 2001. 

Unlike Logan, which had Carnegie chiseled over its entry, Woodbine identified itself with a CPL emblem just under its roofline.  A plaque beside the door announced the building was on the National Register of Historic Places.

Further down 30 in Dunlap was the first Carnegie without an addition and that no long served as a library.  The Word of Life church now held services there.  

They had let it fall into disrepair. It was on its way to becoming a ruin with crumbling bricks and peeling paint and missing light fixtures, one missing even a bulb.

Denison was back to a Carnegie with full dignity.  One could look upon it without realizing it had a large addition behind it.

The Carnegie in Carroll was addition-free, but it was now the Carroll County Historical Museum.  It's facade on three sides was adorned with authors--Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Longfellow, Virgil, Dickens, Goethe, Plutarch, Irving, Emerson, Eliot.

Below the windows was a little extra ornamentation of carved books with  a "CL" for Carnegie Library.

Continuing on 30 I came to the magnificent Jefferson Carnegie with a large modern addition attached to its side.

On its backside were five banners promoting reading.

At about the half-way point across the state in the college town of Ames was another temple of a Carnegie with a large glassy addition.

Even in this college town I saw no Clinton posters.  I haven't seen a one in over a thousand miles, just ones for Trump, though not much more than one or two a day.  I was camping in a cornfield and missed the debate.  When I asked a librarian the next morning who won, she said, "No one.  We're in big trouble."

Blair, Nebraska

My left shoulder remains sore and painful and has limited use, but it's improving by increments every day. I can now raise my arm to my ear when I need to reinsert an ear plug and I can drop to my bar end shifter without having to inch my fingers down the handlebar to reach it.  Bumps in the road no longer send jolts of pain to my shoulder and I can lift small amounts of weight with my bum arm.

It is still a semi-excruciating struggle to thread my arm into my jacket or even my vest.  It would be nearly impossible to put on my sweater or a t-shirt.  But all of that is incidental since it's not preventing me from riding the bike and finishing off this 1,500 mile trek from Telluride to Chicago.  I can't stand on the pedals, as it puts too much weight on the arm, nor can I pull with it.  Fortuntately, the terrain is mostly flat, so that's no great handicap.

Sleeping can be painful, as I forget I have an injured arm and move it without thinking and receive a jolt of pain for my mistake.  I haven't had a good night's sleep since my crash.  I had my worst night's sleep of the trip two nights ago when a strong wind whipped the rain fly into the tent all night and at times buckled the tent poles against me.  It just wouldn't quit.  Just before dawn the gusts turned violent and unleashed a torrent of rain.  With the tent suddenly a sieve and threatening to collapse on me I had to put on my Goretex jacket while trying to hold the poles upright as rain trickled in soaking my sleeping bag.  It rained some more during the day.  The sun never appeared, so I was unable to dry my sleeping bag or sleeping pad or tent.  It forced me into a motel for the first time in fifteen nights since leaving Telluride.  It was in David City, a town with a Carnegie.  It was my third of the day, the most of this trip.  Only one still functioned as a library, my first of the day in Clarks.

It was another basic red-brick building, but unlike the Carnegie in Ravenna, there were steps up to the entrance, the symbolic rising up to knowledge, and it was framed by a pair of faux in-set pillars, lending it a modicum of majesty.  It stood on the corner of the main intersection of this small, barely-gasping, town. Like just about every small agricultural town I have passed through in Nebraska, it was withering on the vine.  None offered much of an inducement to linger other than their Carnegie or if I were a sociologist studying what induced people to stay.  There were no hours posted for this Carnegie, just one of those clock-signs in the window of the door indicating it would reopen at one.

A couple hours later I had to drop down four miles from the highway I was following at this point across the state to check out the Carnegie in the slightly larger and healthier town of Stromsberg.  It forced me into a strong south wind, the same one that had blown all night.  Knowing I'd have it at my back on my return to my east-west artery made it somewhat tolerable.  But shortly after I arrived in Stromsberg, while I shopped at the local supermarket largely staffed by high schoolers, a storm hit, and when it calmed after half an hour, so did the wind.

I waited out the storm under an awning, as the library wasn't open on Saturday.  It had replaced the Carnegie a few years ago.  The Carnegie had stood vacant since. A local had finally come forth and  was presently converted it into a book store and a bakery.

Like every one of the nine Carnegies I had visited so far on this ride across Nebraska, it was pretty much in its orginal state without an addition other than an air conditioner.

By the time I left Stromsberg, there was a hint of a breeze from the south, giving me a little assistance, but not the turbo-charge I had been counting on.  After a couple of hours I had the option of turning north to the large city of Columbus for its Carnegie and the guarantee of a motel for the night or continuing east to the town of David City and its Carnegie, but taking a chance on finding accommodation.  I opted for the smaller town, saving the tail wind to Columbus for the next day, rather than having to push into it back to David City.  I thought I made the right decision when I found a small Indian run motel in David City that gave me a discount for paying cash.  But the wind switched during the night and I had a strong headwind for twenty-five miles to start my day.  A frolicsome hour-and-a-half ride became a brutal three-hour forced march. I'm not one to say that it always seems like I have a headwind, but I had been cursed by ill-winds for a couple days that seemed to be purposely turning on me.

At least the Carnegie in David City broke the trend of red-brick boxes.  It was still red-brick, but it had large windows and an ornamental entrance and a distinguished roof.  It houses Immunotec, a company that sells wellness products. It had the Ten Commandments on its new glass door.

I spent over an hour in the motel repairing punctured tubes.  All four of my spares needed patches, as many as three or four thanks to the insidious and unavoidable goatheads.  It wasn't even save to push my bike through the grass in small parks, as they could pick up an array of those prickly bastards.  I awoke one morning to both tires flat and the tires sprinkled with the heads I had picked up merely pushing my bike down a dirt road with small patches of weeds that were mined with them.

I had to cut some of my patches in half to complete the job.  Columbus would be the first city large enough since Denver with a store where I could buy tubes and patches--a  Walmart.  Before I tackled the tubes, I took my first shower since Telluride.  I forgot about my injury and squeezed shampoo into my left palm, which I couldn't lift to the top of my head.  I had to transfer it to my right hand.

The Carnegie in Columbus was the third of those I'd visited in Nebraska that was now law offices, though the building was for sale.  It had been red brick, but had been painted white. 

Sixteen miles east of Columbus in Schuyler was the eleventh and final Carnegie of the Nebraska sector of this ride.  And it was the saddest--vacant and with broken windows.  A musty smell oozed out of the broken front windows.

As I sat in the shade and finished off a two-pound container of Walmart's Amish macaroni salad I watched a non-stop parade of Hispanics, mostly in family groups, flocking to a Hispanic grocery store. At least fifty per cent of those shopping at the Walmart in Columbus were also Hispanics.

I had been intending to cross the Missouri River into Iowa at Omaha to visit a Carnegie in Council Bluffs on the other side of the river and also to seek out an Apple Store to try to regain access to my yahoo email.  That would have been a detour of forty miles, more than I cared to make since the miles haven't been coming so easily thanks to the wind and my injury.  Instead I continued due east to Blair, whose Carnegie burned down in 1971.

Fullerton, Nebraska

 Having suffered a couple of broken collarbones as well as a severe contusion of a collarbone during my years as a bicycle messenger, I well know their piercing pain.  There isn't much difference.  So when I crashed on a surprise descent on a thickly gravelled road with my shoulder bearing the brunt of my fall and felt an explosion of pain in my left collarbone, I held out hope that I hadn't broken it, which would meant the end of this ride and weeks off the bike.

I laid on my back in agony for several minutes trying to fathom how this could have happened.  I had just turned on to this unexpected stretch of gravel ten minutes before and was following a nice hard-packed lane as good as pavement, flying along assisted by a tailwind, when all of a sudden I came to a slight rise and then a descent that was thick with gravel.  I gained speed before I could brake and then was swerving out of control.  The pain in my shoulder was so sharp I didn't realize blood was oozing from my left knee and a golf-ball sized knob had popped up just below it.

It was dusk and there hadn't been any traffic on this road since I had turned on to it.  I didn't particularly wish to be rescued.  I just wanted to crawl off into the nearby cornfield and lick my wounds.  There is nothing a doctor can do for a broken collarbone other than give one a sling, and I could easily fashion one myself from all the bandanas I'd been finding along the road.

I had risen to a sitting position when I saw headlights approaching.  The driver had no choice but to stop. He was a 40-year old man in a pick-up truck wearing a reflective vest. "Are you all right?" he asked.  "Do you want me to call for help?"

"I think I'm okay," I replied.  "I just need help picking up my bike."  I knew there was no way I could manage that with just one arm.  I was already holding my damaged arm across my chest in the sling position.  I could see a clearing between cornfields a little ways away where I could set up my tent and start my recovery.

I hobbled along with a pronounced limp using the bike as a crutch.  The pain in my leg was a minor throb compared to the searing pain in my shoulder.  I pushed the bike a couple hundred feet through a grassy strip between fields and leaned it against a barbed wire fence.  Then began the challenge of setting up my tent with one arm.  Any jiggle of the bad arm had me whelping in pain.  I didn't care that I was visible from the road, as I would have welcomed a police officer, just to find out how far it was to the nearest motel in case I needed to lay up for a couple of days.

I managed to open a can of beans with one hand and added them to my ramen. There was no quick clapping to death of mosquitoes with only one hand at my disposal.  I could finally gain a slight measure of relaxation leaning back in my sleeping pad/camp chair.  I began experimenting with my bad arm and discovered I had a little range of movement giving me hope there wasn't a break.  The brightest glimmer of hope came when I laid down to sleep and after a few minutes on my back slowly eased over to my right side without any stabs of pain.  I couldn't have done that with a broken collar bone.  The weld on its previous break may have saved it.  My previous severe contusion kept me off work for two weeks.  Touring is much less demanding than measengering, so maybe I could start riding in a day or two.  Right now my arm was useless.  I couldn't lift a thing with it and any jarring of the shoulder was excruciating.

I slept solid and could keep sleeping with the dawn as clouds had moved in blunting the sun, not heating up the tent.  I slept till noon and considered sleeping the rest of the day, but I didn't have enough water for a second night.  It took nearly an hour to break camp and then an hour-and-a-half to push the bike three-and-a-half miles to the pavement, with a half hour rest break.  My leg was sore and my shoulder very tender.  Only three or four cars passed and a grader smoothing the gravel.  He was a day late.  None stopped.  

When I reached the pavement I warily threw my leg over the bike wondering if I dared attempt to ride it.  I gripped the handlebars with both hands and squeezed the brakes okay.  Leaning forward only caused minimal pain in my left shoulder.  I pushed off and I was happily, almost miraculously, back riding my bike.  It was two miles to the town of Dannebrog, population 345.  It wasn't big enough for a motel, but there was a small grocery store. The owner was wearing a "Don't Suck" t-shirt, motto of Cubs manager Joe Madden.  He was an ardent fan who makes a trip to Wrigley, 600 miles a way, nearly every year.  He said I could pitch my tent in the town park, a block away.  

It was tempting, but I couldn't resist giving my damaged left side a little more of a test.  Some might advise rest as the best healing agent.  I go with exercise, circulating the blood and moving stiff joints and lifting the spirit.  It seemed to be working.  I managed fifteen miles before dark, camping beyond the county fair grounds in St. Paul and within range of a slaughterhouse where the terrified squeals of hogs made my squeals of the evening before seem insignificant.  

It was another night of grimacing, but I was relieved that I wouldn't have to call Janina to come rescue me, as I knew she would gladly have done.  I was still done in and slept nearly twelve hours, but I could ride with a lot less pain in my leg, though the shoulder was a different story. Every bump in the road registered with it.  I didn't make it to Fullerton and its Carnegie, thirty-six miles away, until mid-afternoon.  The library had been retired nearly twenty-five years ago and was presently vacant.  Carnegie would have greatly applauded it as it had no ornamentation.  It was a purely functional two-story red brick building with no funds wasted on embellishments, though it did have "Carngie Pulbic Library" chiseled over the entrance.

It had more space than the slightly more distinguished Carnegie in Ravenna I visited a few hours before my calamity with the gravel.  The town had plans and the site for a new library, but not the funds.

A substitute librarian was on duty. It was a rare library that required a code for its WIFI.  She had to make a call to find out what it was--booksrfun.  I was there when school let out and its lone upstairs room was suddenly filled with kids wanting on to the computers.  There is no greater emblem of small town America than kids leaving their bikes unlocked and in disarray out front.

The Carnegie in Arcadia was only open four days a week for just three-and-a-half hours at a time.

The Carnegie in Loup City was now a law office that maintained its regal demeanor facing on to the town's main square where in 1934 there was a demonstration known as the "Loup City Riot."  

A historical plaque explained that women poultry workers were threatening a strike over their wages.  Ela Reefe "Mother" Bloor of the American Communist Party and others came to support their cause.  It resulted in a clash with local residents.  Bloor and others in her group were given jail sentences and fines, squashing "the attempt of the far left to organize farmers and workers in Nebraska."  Alexander Payne might have another Nebraska movie here, or John Sayles could have his first. 

Broken Bow, Nebraska

I can now add Nebraska to the ever-growing list of states where I have been stopped by a cop while on my bicycle.  It wasn't  totally unexpected as I was riding on Interstate 80, simply following the detour signs around some road construction on route 30, paralleling the Interstate.

It was Sunday evening when I came upon the road construction.  Signs advised that the construction continued for twelve miles and also warned of $300 fines for anyone who continued on the road.  If I'd had more than half an hour of daylight remaining, I would have risked continuing on 30 with no road crews at work.  Instead I followed the detour signs for a mile to the Interstate, crossing the low Platte River on the way.  I didn't dare the Interstate in the dusk, setting up my tent behind an abandoned service station. I set my alarm for six a.m. to make an early dash on the Interstate not being fully confident that bicyclists were embraced by the detour.

My map showed the next exit was twelve miles away at Paxton.  If I didn't have a contrary wind, I could make it in less than an hour.  The air was calm as the sun rose in a clear sky dead center on the road ahead as I descended the long entry ramp to 80, a road I have driven many a time, but never biked.  The traffic was very light at this early hour, about half cars and half 18-wheelers.  The wide shoulder was nearly free of debris.  I passed up a couple of heavy black rubber bungee cords that only have minimal stretch that I rarely scavenge.  I also ignored a stray nickel, that might have been a slug. I wasn't going to stop for anything less than the extraordinary to get this over with as quickly as possible.  I kept my head mostly bowed to avoid looking into the sun, just occasionally glancing from side to side at the bland Interstate scenery of withered fields of corn and weedy pastures of grains.

The traffic gave me a wide berth, most moving over into the far lane.  Only one trucker gave a less than friendly toot, protesting my presence.  With most drivers cell phone-equipped these days, anyone could dial 911 and alert the authorities of my encroachment.  Once I had gone six miles, half-way to the end of the detour, I relaxed a bit, thinking that if I were apprehended I'd simply be taken to the nearest exit.  I still rode hard, diminishing somewhat the pleasure of being on the bike.  I was coming off my first hundred mile day and would have slept a bit longer if I hadn't wanted an early start for my possible illegal incursion.

When I saw a billboard advertising a service station and cafe at the upcoming exit, two miles ahead, I breathed a sigh of relief.  But then moments later a squad car passed me with its overhead red light spinning and then pulled over.  Two officers hopped out.  They didn't need to gesture for me to stop.  Their first words were, "Don't you know it's illegal to ride your bicycle on the Interstate?"

"I was just following the detour."

"It doesn't apply to bicyclists."

"What was I supposed to do?"

"You could have kept riding on route 30.  I should be writing you a ticket right now and putting your bike in my car and taking you back to where you got on, but my trunk isn't big enough for your bike.  I'll let you continue to the exit.  It's just a couple miles further.  But be careful.  This is a dangerous road.  Six people have been killed along here.  We're headed to the shooting range.  I don't want to have to come back and clean up your body."

"Don't worry.  I'm not enjoying this at all. I'll be happy to get back on 30.  Did the Broncos win yesterday?"

"Yes they did, but I don't remember the score."

They must have been in a hurry, as they didn't asked to see my driver's license, as every other cop has so they could go sit in their car and keep me waiting while they called it in.  All they wanted to know is where I was from.  When I said Chicago, I asked, "Do you think the Bears can win tonight's Monday Night game against Philadelphia's rookie quarterback?"  They did not know.

I had braced myself for an encounter with the law two nights before when I camped by a high barbed wire fence surrounding a tower and some trap doors.  It was far enough from the road and near dark that I felt safe until I saw a sign on the fence that warned trespassers would be subject to armed force.  I didn't plan to trespass, but as I set up my tent I heard a whirring sound.  I looked up to see a surveillance camera scanning the premises.  I feared my motion might have triggered it.  But it went into action every fifteen minutes. Either no one was paying any attention to it or if someone was they recognized I was no threat, as no one came to apprehend me, as once happened in South Dakota when I camped alongside a similar enclosure.  Soldiers in full combat gear came by in the morning and told me I was camping beside a weapons cache, as this might have been.

That was my last night in Colorado on a lightly travelled road to Sidney, Nebraska, site of the first of the ten Carnegies on this year's route across Nebraska.  It was on Illinois, the main street through a city struggling to survive.  Though it still was emblazoned with "Carnegie Libary" above its entry, it was now the town's Chamber of Commerce identified by a large sign accompanied by the slogan "Keep Sidney Beautiful" and the initials "KSB."

A plaque on the still regal building said it had been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The characterless, replacement library off on a side street will never earn such recognition.

Towns and Carnegies are few and far between in the western half of Nebraska.  It was more than 200 miles to the next in Broken Bow.  I felt fortunate to find a mini-cafe in the small town of Arnold with a population of less than 500, thirty-two miles from Broken Bow after camping in a cemetery sixteen miles away.  The cafe catered to the elderly in the town, who filled several tables chattering away.  I could only pick up fragments of their overlapping conversations as I ate a burrito since there were no hotcakes on the menu--"I saw her walk across the highway to get her mail," "I hear they're moving to Indiana," "I can't place that person though I know I should," "I was busy decorating cupcakes, three hundred of them," "I'll have to see what Bob says,""We're going to take Mildred to supper."

It was going to be another 90 degree day so I availed myself of a thirty-two ounce Dr. Pepper.  I had the wind at my back until I turned south on Route Two for nine miles down to Broken Bow, a town of 3,500, large enough to have outgrown its Carnegie.  It had been converted into the Carnegie Professional Buiilding with offices for a law firm, accountants, an auctioneer and a couple of social services.  It was splendidly maintained complete with beds of flowers.

Around the corner a historical marker explained the town's name.  In 1882 when an early settler sought to name and establish a town on the spot of an earlier Indian encampment his first three choices were rejected as being too similar to other towns.  He'd seen a broken bow on the spot so offered that as a name.  There is no Native American presence in the town, though the town park is called Tomahawk and the high school sport teams are known as The Indians.  Shops had signs of Indian Power and Sink the Swedes, the nickname of a rival school.

The new generic library was three blocks away.  It was trying to raise funds to expand.  It had a display of books that had been made into movies with a sign saying "Never judge a book by its movie."

Broken Bow is ten miles from the geographic center of Nebraska.  I have forests ahead.  Broken Bow is known as the "Sod House Frontier," the beginning of terrain that the early settlers had to use sod to construct their homes, there not being much wood.

Fort Morgan, Colorado

Unlike three years ago when I was caught by that "once in 500 years" deluge of twenty inches of rain in less than twenty-four hours in my crossing of Colorado, I have not had a drop of rain since I left Telluride a week ago.  But I was pelted by hail twice, both time as I neared the summits of high passes of over 11,000 feet--Fremont and Loveland.

The hail on Loveland was brief and inconsequential, but on Fremont it persisted for fifteen minutes or more, wetting the road and ruining my descent.  I had to brake so steadily that I wore out one of my rear brake pads and was scraping metal on metal.  It sounded much worse than it was, as I still had adequate braking power and only slightly marred the rim.  I didn't stop to replace the pad until I had completed the descent and escaped the hail.  

The excessive braking from my daily steep descent in Telluride and five passes afterwards weakened my front brake cable enough that it snapped a day later shortly after I crested Loveland Pass, the highest of the six passes I crossed this year at just under twelve thousand feet right on the Continental Divide.  It could have been catastrophic, but I was fortunate I was well below peak speed and could halt myself with my rear brake and by putting down my left foot. It happened just before a sharp hairpin turn.  If I had been going much faster when it broke I could have catapulted over the restraining wall and lost my bike and more.  

I had no warning whatsoever that my cable was weakening.  I am always wary on descents, but still push my limits and let it fly.  Only once before have I broken a cable on a steep descent, also on the front, which provides the bulk of the braking power.  It was in France on a wet road as I neared the finish of a long descent in the Alps and was entering a town with a round-about up ahead.  My rear brake hardly slowed me at all. I was lucky on that occasion to have a grassy rise, like a truck run-off lane, to veer off into, stopping just before a wall.  I doubt I would have been able to negotiate that round-about at the speed I was going.

Traveling by bike is an act of faith in many ways, from knowing I'll always find a place to camp at the end of the day to knowing that the truck roaring up behind me isn't going to run me off the road.  My years and thousands of miles of touring have only reinforced that faith.  And I had to cling to the faith that I would find my way down to Denver after Fremont Pass when it ended at Interstate 70 in a tight canyon more than seventy miles from the metropolis that hugs the high mountains.  

I had word that there was a series of bike paths and frontage roads paralleling the Interstate, but I had no map and the route was not as well marked as it could have been. At least cyclists were accommodated in a fashion through this narrow gap in the mountains. There were only a couple of short stretches where cyclists were forced to ride on the shoulder of 70, but even those weren't marked.  One simply had to know.

I repeatedly had to ask the way, sometime after going the wrong way and having to double back. I spent nearly half an hour in the Frisco Tourist Office poring over paper and Google Maps with the young woman on duty trying to find a route from there to Idaho Springs and its Carnegie Library. Two of my options were going via Loveland Pass or a much lower pass that wasn't paved and included a complicated array of dirt roads through the back country.  We finally allowed Google's bike route option to make the decision, which was climbing Loveland Pass.

A frontage road took me the final few miles from Georgetown into the old mining town of Idaho Springs.  It's Carnegie, still in its original state, stood proudly in the middle of the town, looking as gallant as the day it opened in 1904.  It's front door was open, letting in the cool fresh air.  A couple of teen-aged boys were tossing a football in the expanse of grass to its side.  Every table inside was occupied by someone with a computer.  I had to sit on a stool by an outlet to tend to my business.

I asked the librarian if he knew anything about the Carnegies in Denver.  I had made a circuit of eight of them last fall, but since learned that I had missed one, the lone academic library Carnegie had funded in Colorado on the University of Denver campus. Wikipedia had failed to list it.  The librarian didn't have first hand knowledge of it, but was able to find its address and also that it had been replaced by a much larger library and had been converted into the Student Union. The information he found wasn't entirely up to date, as when I made a long detour to the south of Denver to find it, I discovered it had been torn down over a decade ago.  That was a disappointment, but it did enable me to spend some extra time in Denver, following the Platte River part of the way.

I made my final 1,600 foot plunge into Denver down Lookout Mountain Road, which took me past the grave and museum of Buffalo Bill.  A steady stream of cyclists were climbing the road, more than I had seen since leaving Telluride.  Only one passed me on the descent, just as I was finishing it off.  We were caught my the same traffic light in Golden, northwest of Denver.  I asked the way from there to downtown Denver.  He led me for a mile to 32nd Street, which had a bike lane that would take me to the heart of the city.  It passed the sprawling Coors brewery.  A large crowd was awaiting a tour.

If I had known the University Carnegie had been torn down, I would have skipped Denver and headed directly to Fort Morgan to the north for my next Carnegie, saving me about four hours and quite a few miles of horrid urban traffic.  But I was in no rush, so didn't lament much.  

My route to Fort Morgan took me through the small town of Keenesburg.  A fellow touring cyclist I met last November at the School of Americas Vigil at Fort Benning in Georgia emailed with the news that he knew a cyclist who travels on a trike pulling a trailer who lived there.  He gave me his contact information including his Facebook page--Michaelonacycle.  When I arrived at his home, his garage door was open revealing his fabulously ornate trike adorned with all sorts of talismans and a huge solar panel forming a canopy over the cockpit that was packed with so many devices it might have been a 747.  

Michael is a tinkerer extraordinaire.  His bike has a music and lighting system worthy of a Rolling Stones concert.  His bike won the most creative award at the 2014 Recumbent Bike Rally in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.  He dropped in on it on during a six-month ride from his home in the Upper Peninsula to visit his mother in Keenesburg.  He had recently ended his marriage of twenty years and decided to divest himself of all he owned other than what he could carry on his bike.  He started out with over 300 pounds of gear lashed to his bike and on his trailer.  Even with a motor on his bike, that was a bit much and he pared down.  He eliminated one of his guitars, but not a mini that is made from a coffee can.  He also carries a harmonica.

Living on his bike he found that a small two-man tent was a bit confining, so he now carries a six-person tent he can stand up in.  He also carries a toilet he designed--an actual toilet seat attached to a bucket that has kitty litter in it.

It's not so easy to wildcamp with such a large contraption.  He often stays in Walmart parking lots.  He can drop curtains down around his cockpit and sleep there.  He is still fairly new to the touring life, but he is a full-fledged convert and wishes to make it his life, promoting solar energy and the simple life.  I couldn't get a photo of him in his cockpit as he'd recently taken a fall into his firepit and was too incapacitated to contort himself into that position, so I had to do it.  A tube dangles at his head to blow into for his horn.

It was a sunny, but cool day without a hint of a wind, ideal for cycling.  Unfortunately, Michael was several days away from being able to ride his bike, so he couldn't accompany me out into the wide open terrain.  But he did send me off with a bag of cherry tomatoes from his garden and some of his home-made beef jerky and a box of triscruits and some nuts and raisins.  I left him with a black pillow case I'd found along the road adorned with guitars, a perfect sack he said for some of his gear.

I didn't make it to Fort Morgan, over fifty miles away, until the next day.  The streets around the library were closed off and filled with old cars and old tractors.

The Carnegie though had been swallowed up by a huge addition.  It's original walls were indistinguishable from the new.  No remnants remained, not even in the museum that adjoined the library, just a photo of a gala celebration around the library.

It was a disappointing finish to this year's Colorado Carnegie quest of four libraries, two of which were still in fine shape.  I have now visited 29 of the 30 still standing Carnegies in the state.  There were 36.  The only one I have yet to get to is in Trinidad in the southeast corner of the state.  I will make it my first destination next year after Telluride.  Colorado will then become the first state that I will have have visited all its Carnegies. 

Leadville, Colorado

I did a  little more cycling than usual during my month of tending to the Shipping Office for the Telluride Film Festival this year, thanks to being housed up in the resort Mountain Village rather than in the town of Telluride itself.  It is more luxurious up there, but not so convenient with a half hour rather than a five minute commute to the Shipping Office.

It was a commute unlike any other. Janina and I had the choice of taking a pair of gondolas to work every morning or a seven-mile bike ride with a thousand-foot descent, quite a contrast to Janina's usual Metra commute from suburbia into Chicago.  It was slightly faster to ride the bike, and much more exhilarating.  Both were spectacularly scenic with 360-degree views of rugged high peaks including some of Colorado's fifty-eight 14ers, more than all the other states combined.  The back-half of our commute, returning home after work, was the gondola, as it was always after dark.  

Biking back would have certainly kept my legs tuned, but what I was able to do was enough to minimize the strain my legs have felt in years past when I set out on my bike ride home to Chicago beginning with four passes before descending to the Plains--the Dallas Divide before Ridgeway, followed by Cerro Summit and Blue Mesa Pass out of Montrose, and then the killer, Monarch Pass after Gunnison.  Usually I make the ten-mile ascent of Monarch on the morning of my third day of riding.  This year I reached it before the end of Day Two enabling me to climb to within four miles of its summit, where I camped at ten thousand feet, slightly higher than what I had been sleeping at in Mountain Village.  

It was a cold night with temperatures near freezing, quite a contrast to the heat on the flats leading up to it.  I couldn't always keep my four water bottles filled as there were long stretches between services and not all the services had drinkable water.  One said its well water was suitable for watering plants and another said its water was so iron-laden most found it undrinkable.  Both had bottled water for sale though at inflated process--personifying the entrepreneurial spirit.

It was well that my legs had more vigor this year, as after descending Monarch, rather than continuing east towards the Plains, I turned north to climb up to Leadville at ten thousand feet to visit the highest of the 2,509 Carnegie Libraries scattered around the world. And then I had the Fremont and Loveland Passes to climb before descending to Denver.  It was a gradual climb of more than fifty miles to Leadville following the Arkansas River passing through Buena Vista where I used to go to summer camp FIFTY YEARS ago. The river was to my right dotted with one rafting outfit after another and to my left was an arcade of a dozen 14ers, among which were the Collegiate Peaks--Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia and Oxford.  Harvard was the highest.  At 14,420 feet it is the second highest of Colorado's mountains. 

I camped twelve miles shy of Leadville in a cluster of bushes between a barbed wire fence and railroad tracks.  Not a train passed all night nor during the day.  I passed motel after motel into and through 

Leadville, mostly small and locally-run with catchy names such as Avalanche.  This former boom-town, that had a gold rush in 1860 and then an even bigger silver rush in 1877, once boasted a population of 50,000, making it the second largest city in Colorado.  It's population now fluctuates between 3,000 and 5,000 depending on the tourist season.  It calls itself "Cloud City" and the "Roof-Top of the Nation." 

It was still going strong when it earned a grant from Carnegie in 1902 to build a two-story red-brick library at one end of its main street.

It served as it was intended until 1970.  When a new library was built several blocks away, it was converted into a Historical Museum, and continues in such a capacity.  A Mining Museum is nearby.

History was a theme of this year's Telluride Film Festival.  It began with Marcel Pagnol's Marseilles Trilogy, three films from the '30s--"Marius," "Fanny," and "César," each over two hours long and each by a different director, with the third by Pagnol.  There was a short wine and cheese break between each film.  Janina and I ducked out of the third film a little early so we could partake of the French-themed Opening Night Feed on Telluride's closed off Main Street.  Cassoulette was one of the dishes as well as more cheese and wine.

Our next film was another French classic, Louis Malle's "The Fire Within," from 1963.  It was one of the six selections by the guest director Volker Schlondorff.  He had served as Malle's assistant director, before returning to Germany to begin his own career as a director, which included the Oscar and Palm d'Or winning "Tin Drum."  Janina and I greeted Schlondorff at the Feed and told him we were looking forward to seeing all his films.  He said he was still thinking about what he would have to say about "The Fire Within."  He began his introduction saying he was a little nervous seeing his good friend Werner Herzog in the audience.  Then he spoke for ten minutes about his long friendship with Malle,  living with him for a spell and accompanying him to Venice for the premiere of the film.

Not only is Telluride synonymous with exceptional cinema, both old and new (it has given the North American premiere of the film that went on to win the Oscar for best picture the last seven years), it is also about the intimacy between film-goer and film-makers.  Janina and I exchanged a few words with Isabelle Huppert during and after her Conversation in the Courthouse attended by only thirty others.  

We brushed shoulders with Clint Eastwood (on hand for the world premiere of "Sully" which he directed) while sharing Pierre Riessient's birthday cake just off the lobby of the small theater named for Pierre before the screening of the documentary "Gentleman Riessant," seventy-seven minutes of Riessant recounting his many discoveries and his role as one of the selectors for Cannes.  During the screening we sat behind Bertrand Tavernier, who kept turning to his companion with a smile of endorsement for a comment of Pierre's, including mention of both him and Eastwood.  Of Eastwood he said that when he first met him in 1970 he recognized that he wasn't a "fascist or a red-neck or a cowboy" as some thought, but a genuine auteur, though he never imagined that he would accomplish all that he did.  Later we saw Tavernier's magnificent three-hour personal documentary of his commentary on French cinema.

As always, Telluride was four days of incomparable cinema experiences that will last us a lifetime. They are too numerous to recount here.  Janina will do much better with her annual Telluride Journal at her website merelycirculating.com.  But it will be a spell before she has fully digested her Telluride experience and "put it all to paper."  She began the process on her train trip back to Chicago.  I am lucky to have three weeks on the bike to ponder and relive it.