New Orleans, Bead City

For miles leading into New Orleans, even in the sparsely settled bayous dotted with houses on stilts, necklaces of beads littered the roadway.  It was eight days to Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, as is the French translation, and the culmination of all the parades and revelry leading to Ash Wednesday, when Lent commences and devotees begin a time of penitence and abstinence until Easter.  

The necklaces were remnants of offerings from the many parades all over the city nearly every day for the past two weeks, sometimes as many as a dozen in a day in various parts of the city.   Outside the city I wasn’t intersecting with parade routes, just spotting strings of beads discarded by those who had gathered them and had tired of them already.  

They were mostly gold, purple and green, symbolizing the Christian trinity of power, justice and faith, though other colors slipped in as well.   Once I reached the city proper any roadway could have hosted a parade.  Necklaces were everywhere—in gutters, around people’s necks, dangling in trees, draped on fences, wrapped around tree trunks, adorning homes and plenty more scattered along the road.  

I was fortunate to find accommodation at the packed 180-bed India House Hostel just off Canal Street.  I was warned when I checked in that it was a party house, but most of the partying went on elsewhere and those in my 16-bed dorm when they trickled in, some as late as dawn, were respectfully quiet.

Janina and I had stayed at the hostel in January of 2014 when a polar vortex had many of the hostelers walking around wrapped in blankets.  It was an ideal location, two blocks from one of the four remaining Carnegie Libraries in the city.  It had been a yoga studio on that previous visit and remained so.

There had been six Carnegies scattered about the city, including the Main Library, which had been razed by the wrecker’s ball in the 1960 and the other by Hurricane Betsy five years later.

Six of the nine libraries Carnegie bequeathed Louisiana were in New Orleans.  I had gotten to three of the four on that visit with Janina, but didn’t have the time to reach the fourth, as it was on the other side of the Mississippi that bisects the city, and necessitated using a ferry to reach it, as bikes aren’t allowed on the lone towering downtown bridge over the river.

Taking a ferry across the Mississippi was a fitting conclusion to these travels, as five weeks before I was aboard a ferry crossing the Amazon.  What a contrast.  That Amazon crossing took 24 hours, this six minutes, the blink of an eye, truly putting in perspective the magnitude of the Amazon.  The Mississippi, as are all other rivers, is a mere trickle in comparison.  

I felt as if I was withholding a monumental secret from everyone else on the ferry, most with beads around their necks and in a celebratory mood.  They wouldn’t know how to react if they knew a fellow passenger had recently been on a ferry crossing the mightiest river of them all on the other side of the equator.  I had been dropping jaws at the hostel whenever anyone asked me where I was biking from.  “Uruguay” left most speechless.

My first time to New Orleans by bike I had also left people stunned and without words to react.  That was January 1986 when I biked down for the Bears Super Bowl.  It was fourteen degrees when I left Chicago with twelve days to bike 900 miles with just ten hours of light each day.  With the winds from the north I arrived in plenty of time.  The hardest part of the ride was having to stay in hotels the first three nights until I reached Kentucky and the temperature moderated enough time camp and snow no longer covered the ground.

It was a different time back then.  No one called the police on me. Rather someone in Mississippi, who told me I’d cycled a long way to see “a Mississippi black boy run” (Walter Payton), reported me to a local television station after our chat.  Less than an hour later a camera crew in a van pulled up beside me and interviewed me as I pedaled along.  The next day people repeatedly told me they’d seen me on the news the night before.  No one from the NFL got wind of my story, nor did I go around advertising it once I reached New Orleans, otherwise I might have been invited on to the field for the coin toss.

After my quick crossing of the Mississippi it was less than a mile to the Algiers branch library in a quiet residential neighborhood of small boutique homes.  As throughout much of New Orleans, the homes had a distinct character and charm, something severely lacking throughout my time in South America.  Residents here exhibited a genuine sense of pride in their place of residence. It was uplifting meandering about the city soaking it all in, and for a rare time I thought I had come upon a place I wouldn’t mind living, or at least lingering for a while.

The Algiers branch still functioned as a library.  It’s corner lot was flanked by park space to its left and right, that remained open rather than lost to expansion.  A sign in the window above the bike rack offered bike locks to those without.  

New Oreleans is so compact it took no time to return to the other two Carnegies on the other side of the river whose acquaintance I had made six years ago.  Though I’ve been to hundreds since, I could clearly visualize them and their location. They’ve all left a strong, enduring impression.  

The Dryad Branch, built to serve the “colored” community back in the era of segregation, stood regally at the end of Oretha C Haley Boulevard allowing those approaching it a prolonged look at all its majesty, causing one to wonder what this grand edifice might be if one didn’t know.  It is now a branch of the YMCA.

The Napoleon Branch, two miles away on Napoleon Avenue, set in a park, now functions as a children’s resource center library.  As with the other three Carnegies in the city it wasn't marred by an addition.  Napoleon Avenue is a regular parade route, with stands for spectators set up along the way. The library deferred to the parades and did not open on parade days.

When I flew off to Uruguay three months ago to ride up to the Carnegie in British Guiana I had no designs whatsoever on all these bonus Carnegies in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, nineteen in all.  They felt like a reward for all the trials I endured in South America—the ants and mosquitoes and mechanical difficulties and unrelenting steep hills and three days on dirt and spells of heat.  

I am ready for some down time.  I have three months of the four cycling magazines I subscribe to awaiting me and a host of books to track down, including E. O. Wilson’s treatise on ants and “Fordlandia” about Henry Ford’s ill-fated attempt to establish a rubber factory in Amazonia.

Janina and I always take a spring trip of some sort.  The sooner the better, as the road ever beckons. 

Gulfport, Mississippi

The first tour I undertook with the bike I’m presently riding, Trek’s 520 touring bike, was to Ecuador in March of 2005 to visit Jim and Marshia, cycling compadres from Chicago, who were a year into their latest endeavor running a B&B in Banos.  They got into the business when a cycle touring enterprise they set up to lead tours in Ecuador failed to generate enough clients to sustain it.  They liked the B&B that had been the base of their operations enough to buy it.

Now here I was fifteen years later closing in on Jim and Marshia once again, this time at their current base in Gulf Shores, Alabama, as they’ve turned over the operation of their B&B to a 50-year old Englishman who they hope will assume ownership after he’s run it a few years and generated enough income to afford their asking price. He’d been living in Banos the past ten years after burning out on being the chief accountant for the Manchester post office in the UK.

Marshia (the only person she has ever come across who spells her name the way she does) came to know him through a non-profit that they both served on as board members and recruited him to take over their B&B.  He’s less than six months into the endeavor and showing no signs of faltering, but Jim and Marshia know there is a chance they may have to resume the reins, though they hope not.  Their son Jason is still on the scene in Banos running a brew pub, keeping an eye on how it goes.

It wasn’t Ecuador so much that they had grown weary of, but rather the ”hospitality business,” answering the same questions and dealing with the same petty concerns day after day, meeting an array of interesting travelers from all over the world they would gain a short-term attachment to hoping for a continued friendship but knowing that was pretty much beyond the realm of possibility.

Rather than returning to Chicago, where their two other children and their lone grandchild reside, they have temporarily settled in Gulf Shores, Marshia’s home town where her brother and sister still live and her father too, who is in hospice care, living with his son.  Marshia has been back since August.  Jim recently joined her after she rented a three-bedroom house on the first of the year.  I was their first guest, getting to camp in their back yard on a thick bed of pine needles.

Gulf Shores is home to a large population of Snow Birds, wintering northerners, mostly residing in the miles of glitzy high-rise condominiums hugging the coast all the way to Florida.  It was an unsettling sight riding past this mix of Las Vegas and Sedona after having avoided all such development riding inland through Florida and Georgia and Alabama. The condos began a ways after I reached the coast in Pensacola and then went on and on all the way to Gulf Shores, “A Small Town with a Big Beach.” The developers had won the battle with all the long-time homeowners who once owned ocean-front property, many wiped out by one hurricane or another.

Marshia admitted she was briefly enticed by the view of the ocean and a daily double of a sunrise and a sunset over the gulf that she would have had from a high-rise condo, but knew she couldn’t possibly endure living in such confinement, so found a house to rent in the old part of town not far from her sister.  It was hard to imagine all the thousands of condos were inhabited, so there might have been some enticing bargains, but she couldn’t be tempted.  The occupancy rate isn’t a widely discussed topic, so she didn’t know what it might be.

Since Jim had only just recently joined Marshia he had yet to connect with or establish a cycling community as he has wherever he finds himself or come up with an outlet for his other passion—reading his poetry.  He pioneered poetry slams in Wicker Park along with co-founding Chicago’s Critical Mass.  

He’s always ready to belt out one of his many stirring poems, gladly sending me off with a sterling rendition of his poem “Hospitality Rap” riffing on the many demands of those in the hospitality business.  “WiFi or die” came early in the poem, as it is one of the most common mantras of those checking in. Of the various words he rhymes with “hospitality” is one of his own creation—“sur-reality.”  (See below for the entirety of the poem.)

It was a biting fifty degrees, below Jim’s tolerance level, the morning of my departure, so he didn’t tag along with me the twenty-one miles to the ferry at Fort Morgan, which would allow me to stick to the coast and not have to take a long detour up to Mobile and then back to the coast.  It was the fourth ferry of these travels, the first across the mouth of the Amazon and the other two in and out of Suriname.  

I arrived 45 minutes before the departure of the every ninety-minute ferry.  By departure time there were twenty-eight cars, the ferry’s capacity.  There were license plates from sixteen states plus Ontario, but none of Alabama.  A bearded chap in a car with Illinois plates told me it was minus eight degrees that morning in Chicago, about the coldest it’d been all winter.

It was a cold thirty-five minute crossing of the bay that extends up to Mobile with a nasty breeze whipping up sheets of spray off the choppy seas.  It was all open-deck, so I had to huddle up against the higher siding in the middle of the ferry.

The ferry took me to Dauphin Island.  I exited the island on a five-mile long bridge to the mainland, about the same distance as the ferry crossing.  It was one of several long and high bridges I would cross in the hundred miles from Gulf Shores to Gulfport in Mississippi where my next Carnegie awaited me.  

Along the way I was drawn into a discount bakery by a sign in the window advertising three sweet buns for a dollar. I was happy to discover they were 590 calories each.  While I waited to pay for them a white-haired man asked the sales clerk, “Where all do you go to church,” the all-important question in the South.  He wasn’t familiar with her church, so asked, “Is that Baptist?”  They proceeded to have a couple minute conversation.  When I finally stepped to the register, the woman didn’t ask me the generic “How are you,” but rather a, “Are you doing okay,” with a general concern in her voice, as if someone only buying the cheapest thing in the store might be in a bad way, even though I was in my bicycle outfit, tights and helmet, and was well-tanned.

Later in the day I finally encountered someone who recognized me as a touring cyclist.  I was outside a Dollar Store using its slow WiFi, in contrast to the much faster Walmart WiFi, to download some podcasts.  He asked if I was headed east or west, then told me his brother had biked coast-to-coast in 1981 and then didn’t ride his bike again for ten years, and wondered if I might be having similar feelings. 

As is the Southern manner, he was in no hurry, lingering for a genuine conversation.  He told me that he used to be the captain of the ferry I had taken to Dauphin Island, but now free-lanced around the world.  One of his favorite places was Venezuela, but that was fifteen years ago when it was much more stable than it is now.  “The evils of socialism,” he put it, then added, “I hate to think what will become of our country if Bernie Sanders becomes president. He’s an outright communist.”

When I crossed into Mississippi the first town I encountered was Pascagoula,  birthplace of Jimmy Buffett in 1946.  The next town of significance was Ocean Springs, home of the artist Walter Anderson (1901-1984) and WAMA, the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, featuring his work and his brothers Peter and James.  The museum was full of Walter’s somewhat surreal renditions of the outdoors.  He was not only considered an artist, but a naturalist and mystic as well. A series of his murals fills the adjoining Community Center. 

Another museum devoted to a local artist was five miles away in Biloxi on the other side of Biloxi Bay—the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art. The museum complex of several pod-like  buildings designed by Frank Gehry was as much of an attraction as the art within, mostly the eccentric pottery of George Ohr (1857-1918), the self-proclaimed “Mad Potter of Biloxi,” whose work went largely unnoticed during his lifetime.  

On the other side of Biloxi was the Jefferson Davis home and presidential library.  By then I was able to trade the hectic shoulderless four-lane coastal highway with lots of honking motorists for a sidewalk that ran along the wide beach for the dozen miles to Gulfport.  It was too chilly and windy for anyone to be on the beach except for a few windsurfers in wet suits.  The Carnegie in Gulfport was two blocks inland from the coastal highway and stood all alone surrounded by parking lots, as all the nearby buildings had been devastated by Katrina in 2005.  

It looked very lonely and out-of-place in this forlorn, antiseptic setting. It had long before Katrina been replaced as the town library and had never been subjected to addition or alteration.  It was now an art gallery, but still retained Carnegie Library on its facade and had a photo from its dedication in 1916 even before it was completed in its entry.  The dedication drew a large crowd of all ages, many wearing hats and all looking dressed as if going to church.

Now it’s on to New Orleans and it’s four Carnegies and then Amtrak back to Chicago. I’ll be arriving exactly three months after I flew off to Uruguay.

Hospitality Rap

Is this hospitaity?
Yes, sur-reality

we check em up and check em down
we check you out before we check you in
Where you been?

gimme the code before we unload
it's wi-fi or die

and what? no tv?
how can that be?
and where'm I gonna put my car
can't stand to be too far…
from it

Is this hospital-ity
Or sur-reality?
What's your national-ity?
Swedes are sweet
the dutch don't ask for much
aussies a little noisy
the danes are never much of a pain
and all the czechs are good

where can we go
what can we do
look at the map
I'll show it all to you
go up this street, down that one
turn on the next street
4 blocks up, 3 blocks down
you're right in town
walk around

there's plenty of food around
but forget your haute cuisine
and go for the folk scene
llapingachos salchipapas or fritadas
or you do the pickin'
chicken and rice or rice & chicken
or a meat hog on display
and be nice
to the flea-scratchin' cuy snatchin'
street dogs gone astray
Hear what I say?

see the virgin on parade
follow her to the steeples
kneel down with the people
sense the incense
kiss the padre's ring
and try to remember how long it's been
since you heard an angel sing

this is hospality
I sell congeniality
Yes, sur-reality

the volcano crater?
She's a hot potater
she'll blow now or she'll blow later
so don't let it spoil your tourist day
you hear what I say?

she's a magical vortex livin' in geo-time
but in the meantime
for 200 bucks I'll be your guide
help you feel the vibe

how's the weather?
what's the season?
sometime it changes for no reason
yesterday wet, dry today
you hear what I say?

can you come and build me a fire?
and bring a hair dryer?
my lamp's burnt out
And where's that hiking route?

So do me a bathroom favor
Come up and drain my tub
And bring a roll of toilet paper
And don't forget to change my bulb

Is this hospitaity?
Yes, sur-reality

My bathroom's a lake
For what I'm payin
I want a break in the rate
or I ain't stayin'
See what I'm sayin?

I want somebody to wash my clothes
and massage my toes

thermal springs are cloudy
kids are roudy
the virgin in heat
burns my feet

last night the aussies in 2 were a little noisy til 3
and tonight i know the kids in 8
are gonna stay out late

I found a bug under my rug
and can you make the water
a little hotter?

noise on the street's
disturbing my sleep
And in room #3
the hot water's
where the cold oughta be

and by the way
how long can we stay...
past checkout?

Is this reality?
Or is it hospitality?

Andalusia, Alabama

If the forests of southern Alabama weren’t so pervasive and so easily accessible, I’d have abandoned homes as places to camp, either behind or within.  I have to give them a close look, as it isn’t always easy to ascertain whether some of them are being lived in or not.

I have been able to partake of secondary roads with little traffic on my hops to the three Carnegies in this part of the state.  It has been interval training of a sort with all the loose dogs giving chase impelling me to sprint.  Spring-like temperatures have returned allowing me to ride bare-legged and bare-armed as I was able to do through most of Florida and, of course, all of South America. The strong sun in the tropics has left my shorts two-toned, the bottom halves bleached.  

The last couple of days have been idyllic, days meant for being on the bike, though I’m the only one with the wisdom to be doing so.  I’d like to be flying a banner “Save the planet, ride a bike,” but I know that would get me run off the road.  

At least no one seems to object to my benign presence on their roads.  I’m very careful though to make sure that there is no motorist within sight when I leave the road for the forest, as I’ve been reported in the past, and the police have come looking for me with bright lights in the dark.

The South likes to make rules giving those with some authority something to enforce and to remind the populace to stay in line.  The libraries often have excessive admonishments rarely seen elsewhere.  The Carnegie in Union Springs had the usual “No Food/No Drink” sign, but added “No Gum” to it.  One had to sign in not only to use its WiFi but also to go to the downstairs rest room.  The new, very palatial library in Troy, replacing its Carnegie, stated “All children under twelve must be accompanied by an adult.”  And as I reported previously, the library in Palmetto, Florida doesn’t allow bedrolls or bulky luggage.  

The head librarian at the Carnegie in Eufaula come out of his office to accost me as I wandered about his library early on Monday morning, the first patron of the day.  He turned very cordial when he learned I wasn’t a ne’er do well come to take up residence in his fiefdom.  He went to his files and pulled out a sheet of paper detailing the history of the library, one of the first in the state opening in 1904.  There had been fourteen, but only eight remain with only two still serving as libraries.

He took me upstairs to a large auditorium complete with a stage.  He didn’t realize this was a rare feature in a Carnegie, assuming they all had one. The auditorium gets considerable use.  One of the state’s senators would be there the next evening for a community meeting.  It hosts a weekly dance class.  

The Carnegie in Union Springs, the other still serving as a library, forty miles to the west, was a more typical one-room school house version, not much different than when it opened, other than the computers and the Carnegie portrait offered to all the Carnegies in 1935 on the centennial of his birth.  It was propped in a corner atop the built-in bookshelves that surrounded the building’s interior.  It maintained its splendid fortress of a circulation desk at the top of the stairs into the library.  Eufaula had lost some of its charm when it replaced its original circulation desk when it expanded, also doing away with its original entrance.

The Carnegie in the larger city of Troy, home to Troy University, the fourth largest in the state, was another with a second floor. 

It was enhanced by a staircase with a spiral in it and a chandelier and a set of four stately columns in its foyer.  There were no shelves of books as it had been replaced as the city library in 1982 and was now the city hall.  

Thus ended my four-day string of Carnegies from Tallahassee through Georgia and Alabama.  It is over two hundred miles to my next in Gulfport, Mississippi.  I have hardly any libraries to look forward to in this stretch, as my route will largely take me through towns too small for a library.  

I’ve biked over eight hundred miles from Miami, putting me over five thousand miles for the trip, about what I bike my three months in France every summer. This could turn out to be a record setting year for miles ridden.

Cuthbert, Georgia

Rather than heading west from Tallahassee, the direct route to Don Jaime in Gulf Shores, I went north to Georgia for a set of four Carnegies in the lower left hand corner of the state and then over to Alabama for three more before ducking down to the coast.  It added a hundred or more miles to my travels, but it was impossible to resist.

I set out from Tallahassee in thirty degree temperatures, a good preparation for my return to Chicago in a week or so.  I needed both pairs of my gloves, the light weight pair good to 45 degrees and a pair of wool gloves for wet conditions, to keep my hands warm.  I had five light layers on my torso, all I had in my reserves other than a lightweight down jacket that I have yet to put to use.  A wool hat under my helmet was my final defense against the cold.  

By the time I reached the Georgia border, twenty miles away, I was able to shed the wool gloves and one layer on my chest. Upon crossing into George the road became the Plantation Parkway, though none were evident through the thick forest.  After three miles I turned onto Jackie Robinson Parkway leading to Cairo, where he was born in 1919.  He only lived  there for a year, as his mother moved his family to Pasadena a year later when her husband abandoned them.

The first of my Georgia Carnegies came in Pelham.  It was the only one of the four I’d visit that remained a library, but there was no going inside as it was closed on Saturdays.  It must be a one-person operation as during the week it closes for lunch between 12:30 and 1:30 in this small town of less than 4,000.  It had a small addition to its side to provide a ramp for handicapped access.  That’s where I sat to take advantage of its WiFi.  

In less than five minutes two squad cars pulled up to investigate me, one containing a young black woman and the other an older white guy.  Neither were friendly in the least, though they didn’t run me off. They wanted to make sure though that I didn’t plan to hang around their town for long.  As the woman ran a check on my driver’s license, the guy wanted to know where I was coming from. He’d never heard of Uruguay.  He had no reaction to my story of the officers in Brasil who went and found me a two-pound jar of peanut butter, quite a contrast to the ways of this pair.

There must a strong suspicion of strangers in these parts as the next day I was halted out on the open road by another police officer.  As he checked my driver’s license a second officer arrived on the scene.  Evidently someone had reported a suspicious-looking stranger passing through and they both responded to the call.  They were a little less hostile than the officers of the day before, asking a little about me—my age, my work and if I had any physical ailments.  All I could complain about were chapped lips.

The cops nonwithstanding it was a most pleasant stretch heading west to Alabama through pecan orchards and acres and acres of cotton, though it was clearly Trump country. It had the bonus of two stray license plates, one more than I found in over five hundred miles in Florida.

I had no opportunity to see if librarians were any more friendly to an outsider than the region’s law officers with the libraries in the next three Carnegie towns not open on Sunday.  The Carnegie in Albany, a veritable city of 77,000, was now home to its Arts Council.  It had a large addition to its rear which didn’t distract from the majesty of its front side. 

The Carnegie in the small town of Dawson to the west was now an events facility for the county historical preservation society.  It had a Little Free Library out front.  

The still magnificent building was flanked by the town fire department and an abandoned house, emblematic of the many boarded-up buildings in the town center.

Cuthbert was of the same size as Pelham and Dawson, but had a little more vibrancy, as it was a college town of a sort—Andrew College dating to 1854, so no connection to Carnegie.  It was the lone Carnegie of this Georgia foursome with a plaque out front tracing its history as a library until it became the town’s Chamber of Commerce in 1997.  As with most it was a women’s club that spearheaded its acquisition.  They raised funds with oyster suppers, a woman-less wedding, turkey dinners and ice cream festivals.  Men dressing in drag were once an attraction in these parts. The owner of the motel I ended up at for the Oscars said he remembered such an event at his church when he was a youth forty years ago.

“Parasite” was the story of the night, winning not only best international feature film, but the best overall film as well as best director and best screenplay.  It brought back fond memories of seeing it at its Cannes world premiere in the three thousand-seat Palais and then three months later in the one hundred-seat Mason’s Theater at Telluride at a pre-fest staff screening.  I might just have to watch it again when I return to Chicago if it is still playing at the Landmark, as Janina has yet to see it.

Now it’s on to Alabama.  How will the police respond to me there?

Tallahassee, Florida

My tent may no longer be bug-proof thanks to the scissor ants of Brasil, but it’s rainfly remains intact and water proof.  Thus I felt perfectly calm, confident of remaining dry, as I sat in the sanctity of my tent as a storm pelted us.  People had been warning me all day that a storm was approaching and even Janina in Chicago sent word of it, thanks to Tom Skilling and his WGN weather report. 

The rain wasn’t due to begin until six p.m., around nightfall.  I was hoping to ride right up to six and disappear into the forest I was riding through before the rain hit, getting me to within twenty miles of Tallahassee.  But the rain came an hour early forcing me to hurriedly set up my tent in the rain.  Fortunately it was just a light drizzle at that point, so my shoes didn’t take on much water, though my shorts absorbed enough water to necessitate immediate shedding.

As the storm intensified I had to put on ear plugs to hear the podcast I was listening to as the rain pounded the tent so hard and thunder and lightning went off every few minutes.  When a tree limb crashed upon my back it triggered a memory of being hit by my bike flung upon my tent as I lay sleeping by a maureder with a shotgun in Turkey.

I knew it was unlikely that I was under siege in this isolated nook of trees by someone who wanted my money, but a sign a few miles back alerted me that I was back in bear country, so I knew it was a possibility that I might have just been whacked by a bear.  After a few moments of tension, I felt assured that it had only been a tree limb.  I could only hope that none followed.   My chief concern was that the downpour might turn into a floodtide, but the storm passed before any water started gathering around me.

Thanks to Lynn, a friend in Alamosa, Colorado, I had a place to pitch my tent in Tallahassee.  She had arranged with her long-time friend Rose to put me up.  She lived outside the city out of my way, but arranged with a friend with a backyard for camping to put me up.  She lived less than a mile from the Florida A & M campus and it’s Carnegie Library. 

We all got together that evening with a few other friends with an interest in my travels for dinner.  My first order of business upon arrival in Tallahassee, even before searching out its Carnegie, was to find a bike shop, as I had snapped a spring in my rear brake caliper and had only been riding with a front brake for the last one hundred miles.  That was manageable until I came within twenty-five miles of Tallahassee and the terrain turned hilly, accelerating my speed on the descents, making braking hard with just a front brake a perilous proposition.  It was the first climbing my legs had been subjected to since French Guiana two weeks ago.  It felt good to have some variety in the terrain and also to put a little extra strain on the legs.  

Though I was gaining some altitude, it wasn’t much as Tallahassee sits at just 203 feet, 142 feet lower than the highest point in the state 125 miles to the west on the border with Alabama.  It’s the lowest high point of any of the fifty states.  Much of the state is just above sea level.  It doesn’t begin rising until before Orlando at 82 feet.  So Disneyworld could be save from the rising seas.

Tallahassee, being a college town and a city of 200,000, had a handful of bike shops, so I was confident I’d find one that could make the repair of my brake or could replace it if it came to that.  Rose recommended Joe’s Bike Shop, one I’d naturally be drawn to as the premier bike mechanic in Chicago, who has been my saviour many a time, is a Joe.  And this Joe was a master too.  Not only was he able to replace my brake, he had a spare bar-end shifter to replace one that I had been nursing along almost since the beginning of the trip, fearing it could go kaput at any time.   None of the many bike shops I visited in Brasil could improve upon it.  I was resigned to waiting until I returned to Joe in Chicago to have it resolved.

This Joe’s shop was on the north side of the city alongside a small lake. From there I had a five mile ride past the state capital and Florida State University to the Carnegie of Florida A&M, a black college founded in 1887, eighteen years before it received its Carnegie.  The library faced out on the wide-open quad.  It was the only non-red brick building on the quad, rather a stunning white with Carnegie Library in bold black letters.  It was an anomaly among the 108 academic Carnegies, most of which blend in with the campus architecture.  

The Carnegie has been replaced by a much larger library, also on the quad, and now served as a black heritage museum and research center.  Among its many exhibits and photos was a KKK outfit accompanied by Billie Holliday’s anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit.”  A sign behind the outfit said “No photographs.”

By the time I reached Beth’s home a little after five, she was home from work.  Ruth and her daughter and another friend, a retired schoolteacher arrived while I was setting up my tent.  After I took a shower we headed over to a popular nearby restaurant named for Cabo San Lucas that specialized in fish and Mexican fare.  They were all campers and lovers of the outdoors, giving us much to talk about.  We couldn’t make it too late of an evening as Ruth and her daughter had an early morning assignment to check on an organic farm, a part-time job of theirs certifying such operations.  My throat was weary from the most talking I’d done in quite some time, but it was nice to have an evening of socializing and learning a bit of life in Florida.  It hadn’t always been easy for my open-minded, progressive dinner companions coping with the local prejudices.

Ruth brought me two baked sweet potatoes wrapped in tin foil, perfect road food that harkened me back to China where there were regions that such fare was common street food, something I was on the alert for.  I could hardly wait to the next day when I could partake of them.

Chiefland, Florida

As with the first pair of Carnegies I came upon in Florida, the second set were just two miles apart—in Tampa and West Tampa.  Tampa received a $50,000 grant from Carnegie, five times larger than most, resulting in a most commanding edifice.  It opened in 1917 and was Tampa’s first library.  By 1968 the city had outgrown it.  A new library replaced it and it became the administrative offices for the library.

West Tampa actually acquired its Carnegie three years before its much larger neighbor.  It can easily be argued that it’s compact size and traditional restrained dignity lends it a greater majesty than its grandiose cousin.  It was the first of the four Carnegies on my Florida itinerary so far that still served as a library.  It had a large addition that now provided the entrance to the library. 

On a landing outside the original library a cut-out figure of Carnegie stands just below a framed newspaper article from 2014 detailing the events of the library's centennial. 

The article quoted a few of the town elders recounting their earliest memories of the library.  One man said, “I was intimidated by this amazing structure.  Ascending the steps I thought I was ascending to heaven.”  He also praised the librarians, saying, “Their interest in you raised your self-esteem.  Thank God the library was here.”

It was built on the site of a former cigar factory, the first industry of West Tampa established in 1892 that employed its largely immigrant community of Cubans, Spaniards and Italians.  A lector read to the workers from magazines, newspapers and novels, establishing in them a connection with the written word that drew them to the library once it opened.  

The next Carnegie on my agenda was in St. Petersburg twenty miles away.  I went on-line to learn if I could ride the three-mile long Gandy bridge across a large bay that separated St. Petersburg from Tampa, site of next year’s Super Bowl, keeping it in Florida after Miami this year.  I found an article that said police were known to ticket cyclists even though there were signs before the bridge advising motorists to share the road. The sign was still there.  I took a photo in case I needed to defend myself.  Motorists hardly needed to share the road, as there was a plenty wide shoulder on the bridge that remained flat all the way across the bay.  It was a nice reprieve from riding in the city traffic before and after the bridge.  

I had to duck down more than ten miles south to downtown St. Petersburg for its Carnegie.  When I turned off Fourth Street North at Third Avenue North and spotted the Beaux Arts Carnegie a block away I had my first spontaneous Carnegie “wow” of this trip.  It sat in front of a lake, which it took its name from, “Mirror.”  As with Tampa, it was the city’s first library, but unlike Tampa it still served as a library, though it was no longer the city’s Main Library.  

A large addition to its side matched the original so harmoniously it hardly seemed an addition, though inside there was a clear distinction between the old and new.  The ceiling was much higher in the old and the windows much larger, giving it a much greater warmth than the addition.   Even though it was sunny and warm outside, quite a few homeless were scattered throughout the library making it hard to find an available outlet.  Finally a woman reading the New York Times in the addition pointed out a set of outlets in the leg of the table she was seated at.

It was mid-afternoon and I had a long ride to escape the series of towns north of St. Petersburg up the coast.  I feared it was going to be a test of my wiles and good fortune to find a place to wildcamp.  The traffic was unrelenting on a road that alternated from being six and eight lanes wide.  At least there was a sliver of a bike lane most of the way. It was a non-stop gauntlet of nearly every franchise that had a foothold in the US and one billboard after another advertising real estate agents and “aggressive” attorney’s.  

What few patches of wilderness that had escaped the clutches of the developers had high fences around them as if to keep out us transients.  But I lucked out half an hour before dark when I came upon a small stretch of forest with a high wooden fence on just one side separating it from a luxury subdivision.  It was unkempt and thick enough with vegetation that I didn’t need to be concerned with dog walkers or joggers or serial killers.  I just had to hope my headlamp didn’t catch the eye of someone through the cracks of the wooden fence. 

The suffocating traffic and franchise hell continued for thirty more miles the next day.  It included two Aldi’s but I had no luck supplementing my diet or pleasing my palate with some surprise, as an Aldi’s the day before had with several cartons of bean and chick pea salads, as both their dumpsters had been emptied earlier that morning.  Peering into an empty dumpster, having my expectations denied, is almost as disappointing as showing up at an address where I expect to find a Carnegie and discovering Wikipedia had it wrong.

Not long after I got back out into rural, forested Florida I came upon a sign warning of bears.  There is an actual Florida black bear subspecies, the only American Black Bear to live in a semitropical region.  I wondered how concerned I needed to be when camping.  Twenty miles after passing the sign I asked a librarian about bears in the vicinity.  At one time they roamed the entire state from Key West into Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, but they were now confined to a few park areas and none in the direction I was headed. 

By Inglis as I closed in on the panhandle I had the road pretty much to myself.  A sign warned motorists that it was thirty-five miles to the next gas station.  I was far out enough into the sticks for there to be a small town called Yankeetown, a settlement founded in 1923 by someone from Indiana that the local postman derisively called Yankeetown before it had a name.  I thought a nearby community had a bit more range in its worldview to have named a forest for Goethe, but the Goethe was not the German writer but a local who owned the land before the state acquired it in 1992.

Walmart’s were occurring with enough frequency, at least one a day and sometimes two or three, that I have yet to have to resort to a Dollar store, as I most commonly must out on the Plains.  That means I have access to fresh fruit and bread other than white as well as chocolate milk and other solid caloric choices.  I am regaining some of the weight I lost in South America and no longer need fear going into energy debt.  The last Walmart had a special on mini-360-calorie pumpkin pies for fifty cents.  I should have bought more than two.  Here’s hoping the next Walmart has the same deal.  I will stock up.

Ruskin, Florida

It was  240 miles from Miami to my first Carnegie in Florida in Bradenton on the other side of the state, a mere hop-skip-and-jump compared to the 4,000 mile ride from Uruguay to the previous one in Guyana. 

Though the Carnegie in Bradenton is the southernmost Carnegie in the US, it is not the nearest to the Carnegie in Guyana, as there are five in between scattered through the Caribbean in Barbados, Saint Luca, Saint Vincent, Dominica and Trinidad.  It would have been nice to island-hop on the way back to the US dropping in on each, but the bike air fees would have been astronomical. The best bet would be to find someone with a yacht and a penchant for libraries and make a sea voyage of it.

I’d had nearly two hundred miles of rural riding through swamps and woodlands and orange groves and grazing cattle until I came to within fifteen miles of Bradenton, spring training home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, when the residential sprawl out from the Gulf of Mexico began. There was a sudden and dramatic transformation from rural to urban and with it came a maelstrom of traffic. The highway still offered a bike lane, which I had all to myself, but now I had traffic signals and turning vehicles and the general malfeasance of motorists to contend with, not the least of which was belligerent horn blasts.

Downtown Bradenton loomed in the distance marked by the twelve-story Bradenton Financial Center with it’s blue-green windows. Just a few blocks away was the historic Carnegie, which celebrated its centennial two years ago.  As exciting as setting eyes on it was the swelling of anticipation as I came near, as if I could feel it’s presence radiating out.   It was a classic with Doric columns and high windows and a pair of plaques flanking it’s entry, one acknowledging its origins and another it’s designation as a National Historic Place. 

A third double-sided plaque out front traced its history serving as the city’s library for sixty years.  When it was replaced by a much larger library it was transformed into a Historical Records Library, preserving the records of the county going back to 1855.  “Carnegie Library” still graced its facade.  

Less than two miles to the north over the Manatee River was another Carnegie in the smaller town of Palmetto.  It too was in pristine condition and glowed with all the magnificence that is the hallmark of just about every Carnegie, giving me a jolt of joy.  It was now a museum and faced the new bland library that had a sign forbidding bulky luggage and bed rolls.

It was Super Bowl Sunday, so the next order of business was finding a motel.  There was a Motel 6 thirty-three miles north outside of Tampa, where the next Carnegie awaited me.  I might make it by game time, but hoped I’d come upon a non-chain, locally-owned ‘50s era motel with some character.  I passed a handful on my way into Bradenton, but had no desire to stop so soon or double  back to them.  

A motel catering to transients on the outskirts of Palmetto was tempting, but it had no vacancies. Though I was looking forward to watching The Game, I felt disappointment that I couldn’t take advantage of the fine camping in the orange groves I was passing.  I had camped in the rich aroma of a grove the night before.  It was the first night in weeks that I hadn’t been besieged by mosquitoes.  The temperature may have been a contributing factor, as it was 43 degrees when I set out in the morning, colder than it was in Chicago.  I wore the gloves and tights I had brought along for the first time, never needing them in South America.  

As I approached Ruskin I spotted another old style motel, but it too had no vacancies.  I feared I might have to see if any of the many RV parks had a television room and allowed tenters.  Some advertised WiFi and heated pools and bingo, but not “tenters welcome.”  On the other side of Ruskin was at last a motel without a “No Vacancies” sign.  It had one last room and was cash only.  I was fortunate to get it as in the next few hours quite a few people stopped hoping for a place for the night.

I arrived in time for the last couple of hours of the pre-game show.  I had a fine spread of food thanks to the dumpster of first Aldis I had come upon outside of Bradenton—three pellets of Brie, yogurt, bananas and cranberry juice.  I would have gathered much more, but that was all that my panniers could accommodate.

I had no rooting interest in the game.  Whoever won I could feel happy for, but likewise I would feel sympathy for whoever lost.  Both coaches and both quarterbacks had strong reasons to root for.  Kansas City had gone much, much longer without a Super Bowl win, fifty years, so I could feel better for their fans.  But they’d had a strong, competitive team the past few years while the 49ers had been woeful.  Their turn-around from the second worst record a year ago to the best record this year was remarkable and to win it all would top it off.  As close and as exciting as the game was, I was fighting fatigue and looking forward to going to sleep.  Kansas City made a heroic comeback, which it’s fans could greatly celebrate, but the poor 49ers fans had to suffer a collapse when they thought they had it won.  

My strongest emotion by far for the day was that climatic moment of laying eyes on two Carnegies.  And I could go to sleep looking forward to three more such pleasurable moments the next day in Tampa and St. Petersburg.