Delphos, Ohio

Once I reached the first Ohio Carnegie on my agenda in Wauseon they started coming every twenty-five miles or so.  With none open so far I plop down at the entry of each for a spell using its WiFi, provided it doesn’t require a password.  Wauseon actually offered its password (bookemdano).  The WiFi was strong enough I could sit on a nearby bench.  

It was a rare Carnegie with an entrance at sidewalk  level.  Most have several steps (symbolically ascending to knowledge). The two-story building had a glassy addition to its side.  It was providing curbside pickups, but I arrived after its hours of operation so couldn’t have a word with a librarian or a glimpse of the interior.

My time at each library firmly implants an image of its majesty, which I carry as I pedal to the next and then is replaced by the latest, though not for good, as any can pop up at any time, always giving me a wave of pleasure.

My approach to the next Carnegie in Maumee took me through several blocks of homes, several of which had signs out front saying “A Hero Lives Here.”  I’d been seeing “Heroes Work Here” banners in front of care facilities and hospitals and food processing plants, but these were the first to identify where heroes lived.  It might have been that Maumee was a larger town than most and had a greater percentage of heroes, as it was on the fringe of the metropolis of Toledo. I was spared going into Toledo as I had visited its three Carnegies on a previous trip when I gathered all those in Cleveland and then along Lake Erie to Toledo.



Maumee’s Carnegie sat in a sprawling park.  It had had a couple of extensive additions, totally blocking its original entrance, putting the new one on the opposite side of the complex by its large parking lot.  A sign by the bike racks advertised “WiFi Zone.”  I was the only one taking advantage of it, but two cars pulled up while I was there to pick up books.  The books were placed just inside the entrance on a table, so there didn’t need to be any human contact in the transaction.  

The library was a block from the large Maumee River, which flows into Lake Erie.  I was able to follow it for fifty miles to the Carnegie in Defiance, easily the best cycling of the trip on a lightly traveled secondary road.  I passed through Napoleon and was able to drop by its classic Carnegie, which I had previously visited in April of 2014.  It is well-maintained and unmarred by additions.  “Carnegie Library” is chiseled into its facade, though it no longer serves as a library, rather storage for the new nearby library.

I had my best campsite of the trip in a forest along the river.  I’ve been in a forest every night so far, but all previously had been within range of habitations with the danger that a dog might sniff me out and in such tight bushy quarters that I didn’t have room to raise my tent and shake out what debris had gathered in it when I took it down in the morning. I severely gashed my shin on a fallen log I hadn’t seen at one such campsite saturating my sock with blood.  I’m still smarting from the wound.  This was the first campsite without deer making their presence known with their snorting version of a growl.  

I was able to fill my water bottles at a park area along the river.  As at the Walmarts, the drinking fountains were turned off, but the rest rooms were open, though a sign in front of them warned, “For emergency use.  Not recommended for general use.”  There was hot water as well as cold in the rest rooms, and a soap dispenser, so I could thwart the virus.

The Defiance Carnegie was right on the banks of the Maumee at its confluence with the Auglaize overlooking the remains of Fort Defiance, built in 1794 during the Indian wars in the region.   It took its name from the general who built it, Anthony Wayne, who proclaimed, “I defy the English, Indians and all the devils of hell to take it.”

The Tudor Revival building with a red sandstone facade was flanked with jarringly modern additions.  But two large trees somewhat obscured them and the grandeur of the original so dominated the additions, they could easily be ignored.  Still I couldn’t wipe them from my mind’s eye as I cycled on to Paulding for its Carnegie.

The Paulding Carnegie was the first of these travels with a plaque out front tracing its history as the first Carnegie to serve an entire county, earning four times the usual $10,000 grant for small towns.  

As so often happens, the plaque bungled the numbers of Carnegies, both world wide and in the US.  The actual numbers are 1,679  in the US and 2,509 world wide.  The plaque was way off with  1,946 and 2,811.  

One of the memories I carried on to the next Carnegie in Delphos was of a guy cutting the grass at the library on a riding mower flying the American flag.

I had to verify I had the right address for the Carnegie in Delphos as the library at 309 West Second Street bore no resemblance whatsoever to a Carnegie.  But the address was correct, as this was another of those Carnegies that had been totally swallowed up by its additions. Only the backside revealed the original brick of the building.  The additions had no character and were bland standard fare.  A neighbor at his barbecue said that when the library was redone a statue of a soldier on a pedestal that had been out front was also removed and transplanted to another park.

Along with all the images of Carnegies I have been transporting, I’ve also been lugging a heavy heart.  Two faithful readers of this blog since it’s inception have passed since my return from Brazil, Charlie in Everett, Washington and Robin in St. Louis, though not from the virus.  They were friends and supporters for decades who often replied to my writing. I am at a loss knowing that I won’t be hearing from them during these or any of my travels to come.  

LaGrange, Indiana

It’s been over two months since I set foot in a library, quite a disruption to my routine as when I’m Stateside visiting a library is nearly a daily occurrence.  I wasn’t expecting to find an open library quite yet when I set out to Ohio to round up the 53 of its 103 still standing Carnegies (eleven have been razed) that I have yet to get to, but I needed to expand my riding beyond the bounds of my vicinity and wanted to start adding to my Carnegie collection whether I could enter them or not.  

I had been checking on the status of some of them to see if any had possibly reopened.  None had, but some had begun offering curbside pickups, which might allow me a peek inside.  Though it would be a disappointment not to gain entry to the libraries and give them a wander and sit for a spell, I am accustomed to reaching Carnegies on Sundays or other times when they aren’t open, so that was not a reason to be deterred.  Their exteriors were their most prominent features.  I could be plenty pleased with that.  But most importantly I wanted to be biking and camping, as these quests allow.

My eagerness was more than rewarded when 150 miles into my ride across the top of Indiana to Ohio I discovered an open library in LaGrange in the heart of Amish country. It was a Carnegie that I had previously visited, and was only stopping at to renew acquaintances, not expecting anything more.  But lo and behold, it had reopened, albeit with considerable restrictions.  

Visits were limited to twenty minutes and children under twelve were not allowed in.  Patrons had to observe the six-foot social distancing protocol and were encouraged to wear masks, but not required, though staff was.  I’m not sure what filled me with the greatest joy, returning to a Carnegie or simply being in a library after having gone so long without.  I was almost giddy with glee at this unexpected pleasure being amongst stacks of books and absorbing the aura of this temple. I had no concerns about overstaying my twenty minutes as I had arrived near closing time and could only duck in and out.

All across Indiana at every gas station and grocery store I had stopped at, not a one mandated masks.  All had signs about being careful and many had added plexiglass shields at the gas register.  One store warned, “Please do not enter if you have a fever or a cough.”  A sign at the entry to a Walmart advised, “Face coverings are recommended while you shop.”  Not too many shoppers were obliging, though all employees were.  The greatest hardship was it’s pair of drinking fountains having been turned off, forcing me to fill my bottles in it’s restroom, which only dispensed hot water.  It’s was over 90 outside, so it didn’t take the bottles long to cool to the outdoor temperature.

Not a single restaurant, fast-food or otherwise, provided other than takeout service, so I was relegated to taking my rests and eating breaks outside Dollar Stores or service stations.  I saw a couple sitting at a table inside a Taco Bell and hoped it might have opened so I could take advantage of its air-conditioning, but it was a manager conducting an interview.  She was nice enough to let me fill my water bottle with ice and cold water from the self-serve soft drink dispenser.

These trying times have brought out more than usual courtesy and decency among those I have encountered.  As I sat outside a 7-11 drinking a super Big Gulp and eating a peanut butter sandwich a guy thrust a dollar bill into my hand.  At another store a scrawny young man in a singlet with two little girls in tow asked, “Could you use a couple of bucks?” He hadn’t dug them out of his pocket yet, so I could decline his offer.  A driver of an 18-wheeler who had just made a delivery at a Dollar Store saw me sitting along the side of the building in the shade reading a book. He asked what I was reading and then asked if I was okay.  I told him I was fine and was heading to Harrison Lake State Park to meet a friend.  

Though I had no new Carnegies to search out on my ride across Indiana, as there isn’t a one in the state that I haven’t visited, I did have a couple of those eight-foot tall Statue of Liberty replicas that the Boy Scouts made available to communities in 1950 to celebrate its fortieth birthday to search out.  Only about two hundred communities took advantage of the offer, but they are to be found in 39 states and  four territories.  

Ohio is one of the few states without one, but there were two across the top of Indiana for me to add to my collection.  The first was in Gary.  I had to do a little searching to find it, as Wikipedia was wrong with its location.  It wasn’t in front of the city hall, but rather across the street and on the other side of Broadway on the corner of a large empty lot gazing upon City Hall.  More prominent was a mural of the Jackson Five, who grew up in Gary, a couple blocks away more in the center of the city.

The next Statue came in South Bend  in front of its courthouse.

It bore the identical plaque as the one in South Bend, though with a different year, a year later than Gary’s, as the program went on for two years.  It is a surprise that there are only two hundred of these Statues scattered around the country. I would have thought there’d be as many as Carnegie libraries, 1,679, presuming that most Boy Scout troops would have been administered by citizens with connections to civic leaders who would have wanted to acknowledge the Boy Scouts and have such an icon of a statue.

But this was the McCarthy era and this may have been a divisive issue in some communities.  It is so long ago google doesn’t offer up much on the program.  But I will continue to seek these statues out as these iconic figures stir the emotions.  I’m just sorry I wasn’t aware of them when I was in the Philippines, as there is one there.

I had been hoping to meet up with Rick from Lansing on Saturday at Harrison Lake State Park just south of the border with Michigan.  It would have been a ninety-mile ride down for him.  But he became concerned about encountering people not as concerned about the virus as he is, and decided it best to stay home.

I don’t know whether I am brave or foolhardy or simply rational to be venturing out into the corona virus world.  Janina accuses me of being a Viking and not being risk-adverse.   I may be of Danish heritage, but I’m inclined to the Swedish approach to this virus.  I will be careful, but not paralyzed by anxiety.  I prefer to hope for the best rather than fearing the worst.

I was somewhat concerned about the feasibility of touring in these times.  I feared some dictum might have been issued to law enforcement officials to detain transients and place them in confinement as some of Chicago’s homeless have been in a motel near where I live in Countryside.  

But a report from a touring cyclist who recently completed a coast-to-coast ride without any interference removed my doubts.  A motorcyclist friend encountered the cyclist in Texas in mid-March half-way to reaching his grandfather in Florida after starting out in the Bay Area.  It was just before staying-in-place became the norm.  My friend told the cyclist he knew someone who had just bicycled the length of Brazil.  The cyclist said, “You know George?  I’ve been reading his blog for years.  This is my first tour thanks to him.”

My friend told him he ought to email me.  When he never did I emailed him to ask how it was going out there.  Here is his encouraging reply:

Dear George,

Yes! Since meeting Keller in Presidio I have had a wonderful trip across the South. My goal was my grandfather's house in Ocala, Florida, where I landed last week. Along the way I took a detour up into the Ozarks and then down through rural Mississippi and Alabama. 

For the most part, folks have been wary of the virus but the atmosphere hasn't been too tense. Campgrounds all closed, but I had already realized that a solo forest spot is a much better option. Dining in a restaurant had been an extravagant choice to begin with. The rural police have always passed me with nothing more than a friendly wave.

At the start of my trip, folks would sometimes stop and offer me water or food or even invite me to stay in their trailer; I think this has been the biggest loss. Still, in southern Alabama when a woman looking for a horse heard that I was biking from California to see my grandfather in Florida she told me that I touched her soul and got out of her car and tearfully hugged me. It is wonderful to experience not only the joy of riding a bike but what it can inspire in others.

I've decided to continue on with my tour. Today, emerging from the Everglades into the edges of the Miami urban sprawl, I had my first taste of what life has been like for my friends back in the Bay Area and, no doubt, in Chicago and all major cities. I had felt more comfortable with the panthers and black bears and invasive pythons so tonight I am back in the Glades. In a few days I will begin to head up the Atlantic to visit my uncles in Virginia.

I must mention how floored I was to receive your note. I imagine that it was how a Catholic would feel receiving an email from the Pope. I am absolutely certain that I would not be out on my bike now had I not discovered your blog well over a decade ago. It was like a thunderbolt from Zeus himself; I read every entry, agog, with a map on the other monitor as my mind reeled that this was possible.

After Virginia I hope to continue northwards and perhaps loop back towards California. If I am extraordinarily lucky, we will cross paths, but no matter what the sheer happiness of a day on the bike will shine through me. Thank you so much for achieving true bicycle enlightenment and sharing it with the world.

All the best,

Chris

If I were to have a tombstone, I might want a sentence or two of this to grace it. Such sentiments convey a semblance of assurance that the life I have chosen, or that has chosen me, has not been a futile gesture. 

The Nine Cycle Touring Books of Steven Herrick

Under normal circumstances I’d presently be in the midst of my annual six hundred mile pilgrimage to Cannes, cycling down from Paris.  Thanks to the pandemic, for the first time since 2004, I’m at home in May with no Cannes Film Festival nor Tour de France in my immediate future.  I would have been setting out in fine shape with over 5,000 miles in my legs after my traverse of Brasil earlier this year riding from Uruguay to the Guianas.

Though that was over two months ago, I’ve maintained my conditioning with daily forays gathering rocks, twenty-five pounds or more at a time carried in a milk crate on the back of my bike.  We’re turning our yard in a Goldsworthy rock garden. I have a number of gathering spots, mostly near rivers.  This is a hotspot of limestone, attested to by a giant quarry.  It defines the area to the extent that a sprawling shopping center with multiple stores, including a Walmart and Target and Petsmart, is known as The Quarry.

It’s been a fun project, adding to the many rocks we’d accumulated over the years, truly embellishing our surroundings.  In between these outings I have continued to vicariously escape my semi-confinement reading about being off to other places  Prime among them has been a vein of nine cycle touring books by Australian Steven Herrick, six of which included excursions through France.

Herrick was 53 when he commenced his touring career in 2012, two years after he had taken up cycling when he realized he needed to lose weight.  After several thousand miles of bicycling around his mountainous neighborhood, he had become “a confirmed cycling nutter,” and decided to head off to France to ride a popular cycling route along the Loire River and then capping his trip riding some of the storied Tour de France climbs in the Alps.

Since he was a writer, having written nearly twenty children’s books, he turned his journal into a book, “Baguettes and Bicycles,” and then returned to Europe the next six years for another ride and another book.  He brought his wife along for the next ride from Bordeaux into the Pyrenees, and she accompanied him on all the rest.  They range all over Europe, but France is their favorite country, so every trip except one includes a foray there.  The lone exception is their ride along the Danube, his third trip, recounted in “Bratwurst and Bicycles.”

They commence “Cycling North,” book number five, in Marseilles and continue to the fjords of Norway.  They followed that with “Cycling South,” starting in the highlands of Scotland and ending up in the islands of the Mediterranean including Sicily.  They couldn’t have been happier when they crossed into France from England, escaping the chips dominated cuisine.

Every book comes with the disclaimer, “Cycling is just an interlude between meals,” which Herrick attributes to his wife.  The books are extremely heavy on what they eat.  By his third book, and in nearly every subsequent one, he feels the need to defend his emphasis on eating and his style of touring, staying in hotels and eating in restaurants, which comes under criticism from the more hardcore touring cyclists who camp and eat food of their own preparation. He claims admiration for those willing to rough it, “more power to them,” is his repeated commendation, but sleeping in a “flimsy tent” and eating “noodles or pasta” is not for him.  He likes ending his day with a shower and beer and a long, leisurely meal “eating his fill“ and maintains it is a fine way to get to know a country, as if camping does not offer a similar opportunity.

It is a shame he never gave camping a try, as their environment and the people he would have met in campgrounds would have given him a much greater insight into the countries he bicycled through and much more interesting material to write about than all the food he ate.  Camping further emphasizes the freedom and independence that are the essence of traveling by bicycle, especially if one wild camps in forests and fields.  One is fully unshackled when one’s itinerary isn't dictated by sanctioned places to stay, and having to end one’s day prematurely when the cycling is too good to stop simply because there is no hotel or campground up ahead.  The self-sufficient cyclist can keep riding to his heart’s delight.  But eating, not biking, has a greater appeal to the Herricks.  They are appalled when they meet a pair of cyclists along the Danube heading to Turkey averaging 100 kilometers a day.  “How do they see anything,”  is their response, as if one can’t see anything from a bicycle seat.  Imagine if they met someone doing 100 miles a day.

By his eighth book, the first of two on touring in Japan, he’d become so sensitive to readers taking him to task for his dependence on hotels, he brags that his success as a writer of children’s books has allowed him to be able to afford to stay in comfortable accommodations, and adds, “I’m so indulgent I even travel with my wife.  Shoot me now.”

In all his books he regularly gives the cost of meals and hotels and frequently says they are a bargain compared to Australia.  A favorite phrase of his is to ironically add “princely sum” to the cost of something, as if it was next to nothing.   He is cost conscious enough though to be delighted when the WIFI doesn’t work at a hotel, because it invariably means he’ll get a free breakfast out of it.

His first few trips were on a bike he called Craig, in honor of the weight loss program Jenny Craig.  The children’s writer in him fully anthropomorphizes Craig.  He talks to it and gives it pats of encouragement and is concerned about its sleeping arrangements when it is forced to overnight in a garage. His wife’s first bike goes by Jenny.  He checks on the two of them in a garage one night and notices Craig’s handlebar is touching Jenny’s seat and observes, “She doesn’t seem to mind.”  Another night when they are cooped up with a bunch of other bikes he fears Craig has kept them up late bragging about the extent of his travels, something perhaps his owner is prone to do, as he mentions from time to time that people he meets are impressed by how far he has ridden and mountains he has climbed.

He develops the personality of Craig more than his wife other than to say she is beautiful and is a belly dancing teacher.  Her profession merits some commentary, but he offers not a single anecdote, unlike his references to his own career as a writer of children’s books and his occasional public appearances.  She is a mere ornament and rarely mentioned.  He does give her credit in book number six for introducing him to the term for a gathering of flamingos.  It is a “flamboyance.”  That must have sent him to an anthology of similar terms for other animals as in his later two books on Japan he drops in the term “murder of crows” with no explanation.

As far as his mechanical skills go, he admits it is a struggle to assemble his bike at the start of a tour, writing, “As a bicycle mechanic, I make a great poet.”  Once when he got a flat near a bicycle shop, he turned over the operation to the shop, though he otherwise manages on the road.  Before he climbed Mont Ventoux on his first trip he acknowledged he had to be capable of repairing a flat, writing, “What would I do? Cry?”  He is so ecstatic about conquering Ventoux, when he calls his wife back in Australia to tell her he is near tears.

Though he seems to know something of the Tour de France and racing, he makes no mention of the Australian icons Cadel Evans or Phil Anderson.  He doesn’t appreciate that each of the twenty-one switchbacks on L’Alpe d’Huez are named for a winner of the stage, thinking its “cheesy.”  He misspells the Alpe as Alpe de Huez in “Cycling North.”  That can be passed off as a typo, but not his comment that Tour climbs are rated from category six to HC (for Beyond Category), as the categories begin at four, not six.  Much more egregious is his assertion two books later in “Boulangeries and Bicycles” that climbs are rated from one to five with one being the easiest.  One is the hardest and they begin at four not five.

He is wrong too on one of the most famous incidents of Tour lore that he recounts in “Bordeaux and Bicycles.”  He states Eugene Christophe was disqualified from the 1913 Tour for allowing a young man to operate the bellows as he repaired his fork which he broke descending the Tourmalet.  It was a seven-year old boy who operated the bellows, and Christophe wasn’t kicked out of the race for the unauthorized assist.  He was penalized ten minutes, later reduced to three, which hardly mattered as he spent three hours completing the repair.  It is such a storied event that there is a plaque on the old stone building where it took place, and it was re-enacted on the 50th anniversary of the event with Christophe and the boy.

Since these are all self-published books it is explainable that such slips come through.  Another was spelling Johnny Hallyday, as “Halliday.” The books are far from typo-free.  They are dotted with a recurrent typo of  “a” before words beginning with a vowel (a old road, a elderly Dutch couple) and “an” preceding words beginning with a consonant (an steady, an poorly designed).  It is perplexing that these haven’t been corrected in the ebook versions I was reading.

One has to question his credibility as a touring cyclist when even by book seven he’s still lamenting there is no such thing as waterproof clothing. He’s not paying attention, as they are out there, such as the Arcteryx jacket that for years has kept me perfectly dry in typhoons and monsoons and day-long rains.

Herrick’s last two books on cycling in Japan, with the second beginning in South Korea, offer no explanation on why he moved on from Europe.  He did mention that he’d also cycled in Thailand and was at work on a book of that trip. The two Asia books were much shorter than his European books, just eighty pages.  I was fortunate to be able to read all nine of these for free thanks to a trial offer of kindle unlimited, which allows one to read as many books as one can for $9.99 a month.  Unfortunately, the majority of kindle unlimited books are of the self-published variety and doesn’t include many mainstream titles.   One can read any of  Herrick’s books for between $2.99 and $5.79.  He’s obviously found a market to keep cranking them out.

Though none of his books offer much more than the cycling journals one can find at Crazyguyonabike.com, they at least have the polish of a professional writer.  I kept reading them as they do give a glimmer of  that sensation of being out on the road.  If nothing else, he can be commended for being a strong advocate of cycle touring, affirming there is no better way to travel. And he is right too that there is no better place to tour than France.