Warsaw, New York

The first set of Carnegies in New York as we biked along Lake Erie came in pairs, two south of Buffalo and two north.  There were just forty-four constructed around the state, four of which are no more, but a great bounty of sixty-six in the five boroughs of New York City with all but eight remaining, making New York one of six states to have had more than one hundred along with Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio and California. I was starting virtually from scratch with New York, as I’d only been to two, one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn, while I’d been to virtually all of the others in the century club.

The first on our route along thickly forested Lake Erie came in Dunkirk forty miles south of Buffalo.  It still served as a library though it wasn’t allowing anyone to use it in these times.  It was more on the grand scale, dating to 1904, early in Carnegie’s library-giving when that was the trend. Not being able to soak up the typically luscious wooden interiors of these century old libraries is becoming more and more of a letdown.

Our ride north continued to give us glimpses of the lake and it’s rugged shoreline.  Beaches were few and paltry.  The beach at the Erie State Park was closed due to high waters.  The only one we spotted further on was just a sliver and more rocky than sandy.  Before we reached the next Carnegie in Lackawanna, just south of Buffalo, Chris suffered the first of four flat tires on the day, all on his well-worn rear tire.  

After another at the Lackawanna library we knew it was time to find a bike shop.  The Lackawanna Carnegie had reopened on a limited basis, but unfortunately our Friday afternoon visit was at a time it was closed.  It was nestled in a pleasant green space with room for a small addition to its rear.  If we had gone in and lingered, we would have been extra perturbed to come out to a flat tire.  Instead, Chris realized it right away after we had circled the building finding a water faucet, but not an electric outlet.  

It was three miles to the nearest bike shop on the south side of Buffalo.  It had only been in business two years and wasn’t carrying any of the better brands of tires.  They recommended Rick’s Bike Shop on the north side of the city six miles away.  Chris bought a tube, which he needed two miles later when he punctured the tube I loaned him.  It started as a slow leak but after the second time we stopped to inflate it, it went entirely flat. We were getting a little worried about making it to the shop before it closed at six.  But that was the last flat of the day, so we made it with thirty minutes to spare.  

We instantly knew Rick’s was the place, as there were dozen of tires hanging from the ceiling and rows of bikes and a couple boxes of old bike parts on a bench by the counter.  Rick’s is an institution, founded in 1898,  the second oldest bike shop in the country.  This wasn’t its original location, but it still reeked of history and had a staff of bike diehards who were most welcoming.  We were lucky to have had all those flats to bring us here, just as we were lucky for the flat that led to us camping with Andrew.

The shop didn’t have a Schwable in Chris’ size that we were hoping for, as the one on his front wheel still had plenty of wear remaining even after 9,000 miles, but it had the heavy duty Vittoria Radonneur I had purchased in Columbus.  And it also had a first-rate Topeak mini-pump, much better than the mini Chris had been struggling with.  It took so much effort we had been using my pump for the six flats he’d had the past two days.

Even though the shop was bulging with bikes, it had only two new ones for sale, as all the rest were repairs, along with a handful of used bikes.  It’s stock was depleted because they are selling bikes fast and unable to buy new ones with production slowed down in China and Taiwan, where most bikes are manufactured these days.  They started the year with 200 used bikes in their basement and only had about a dozen left.  They are continually monitoring Craig’s List and other internet outlets for bikes, but they are usually gobbled up as soon as they are posted.  

We asked about the possibility of camping in any of the state parks north of the city.  No one knew of any that offered camping or even forested areas for stealth camping.  All advised us to be careful, as bad dudes might get us or cops on the alert for undesirables.  They clearly didn’t have a touring cyclist’s mentality, as Chris found a fabulous forested area with his various google map searches fifteen miles away.  

But first we stopped at the Carnegie in North Tonawanda, now the Carnegie Arts Center.  It was a modest design, set in a residential neighborhood with an expanse of grass around it.  Back on the four-lane road along Lake Erie a guy in a pickup somewhat gruffly told us there was a bike path on the other side of the road.  We gratefully thanked him, but he still called us “assholes.”

Along with doing all the navigation, finding bike amenable streets and roads with little traffic, Chris also monitors the weather.  It was supposed to start raining at two a.m. and continue most of the next day.  The guys at the bike shop said not to trust any weather forecast for the area, as the wind patterns fluctuate over the nearby lakes Erie and Ontario, making predicting the weather impossible.  Still, we made a point of pitching our tents on high ground.  The rain did come at two, but it was just a light rain and stopped at 7:30, our usual departure time.

It was ten miles to Niagara Falls, the town and the cataract, where another Carnegie awaited us.  The Falls came first.  A sprawling state park connects a pair of falls, the lesser American Falls and the mighty Niagara.  We were happy to be on our bikes as there was a lot of distance to cover in the park.  If it weren’t for the virus, it would have been mobbed, so we could easily navigate the paths on our bikes.  The few visitors were mostly foreigners, though no Chinese.

A hearty wind blew the spray of the cascading water at us.  The best vantage is from Canada, but with the border closed, we had to settle for what we had.  The closed border also denied us a Carnegie Library in Canada’s town of Niagara Falls as well as a hundred others in Ontario.  I had hoped to return to Chicago via Ontario, and Chris too wanted to continue on through Canada, but there are no plans to open the border until at least the middle of July.  

The Carnegie in the US town of Niagara Falls was just a mile away on Main Street.  It stood alone in silent majesty with no other buildings nearby.  It was now the Department of Community Development.  It was large enough to serve the community as a library until 1995 without any alteration.

The building’s heritage was acknowledged with a portrait of a smiling Carnegie out front, using the word “great” to describe him. His official portrait and all others convey a similar gentle look of contentment.  The caption exaggerated the number of libraries he built in the US, giving a figure of 2,500, which is the number he funded worldwide. 

In a small park by the bridge connecting the US and Canada we were delighted to discover one of those Strengthen the Arm of Liberty replica Statue of Liberties that the Boy Scouts made available to communities in 1950. It was the first I’d come upon with a golden torch.  I had neglected to check to see where they might be in Pennsylvania and New York after starting my trip with two in Indiana.  There being none in Ohio, I had forgotten about them.  

While Chris and I had the rare opportunity to eat in a restaurant at a Burger King a couple blocks from the Carnegie, I checked Wikipedia for other mini-Statue of Liberties in the state of the original.  There were five more, including one in Le Roy fifty miles away near the next cluster of Carnegies.  Great News. And two more in western Pennsylvania also on my route.

I wouldn’t be enjoying them with Chris as he was heading north to Maine along Lake Ontario while I would drop south a bit and head east.  We’d had a fabulous eight days together, as fine a companion as I’ve had, of which there have been many, from the great Aussies Vincent and Andrew to Ingo the German, and Don Jaime and Janina and Waydell and Crissy and Laurie and Craig and Tomas and David in Turkey, Dwight in Cuba, Stephen in China and many more. It was a genuine pleasure to be recalling them all as I rode with Chris.   

Chris was exceptional in being happy to spend as many hours a day riding as he could with early starts and late finishes.  He enjoyed striking up conversations with people we met along the way and had plenty to say himself.  He was always in a good mood, as anyone should be on the bike.  Hopefully he has many tours to come, though he has professional talents that will be hard not to put to use.

It was very tempting to continue on to Maine and it’s eighteen Carnegies with Chris, but my jaw needed a break from our near non-stop talk.  It was almost becoming too sore to eat at day’s end. We could well meet up again in a couple of months in Michigan or Minnesota if I’m not out in Telluride. If not then, undoubtedly somewhere else in the world in the years to come.

I bequeathed him a black bandanna, a badge akin to a Boy Scout earning his Eagle Scout neckerchief. If nothing else he can put it to use to wipe clean the Tupperware bowl he had acquired a couple days ago to join the ramen cold water club and also to emulate my eating of cereal with chocolate milk.  Up until then he had traveled without a bowl to eat out of.

The Statue of Liberty in Le Roy was along Oatka Creek across from the library.  It was the first I’ve come upon without a plaque identifying its origins.  While I lingered, a parade of fifty or more cars passed with the graduates of the local high school.  They were led by a squadron of five fire trucks with sirens blazing.  Graduates have been celebrated in many towns I’ve passed through with their photos on small posters mounted in front of their homes or lining a few blocks of the town center or hung from lamp posts.  It could be virus-related since they’ve been denied the typical graduation ceremony.  

The Carnegie in Warsaw twenty miles south through a belt of corn fields and more forest was swallowed in trees.  I had to look close at the slightly different colored bricks to notice the addition to its side and rear.  The most obvious evidence of the addition was the street level entrance through a single glass door on the side.  The double front door had a sign reading “The library is closed until further notice.”  Curbside pickups had started a month ago.

The Warsaw McDonald’s was the first I had come to since Youngstown with coins scattered by the pay and pickup windows, including quite a few silver coins, among them a quarter, my third of the day. The few drive-up lanes at various franchises I had checked since then had all been bereft of coins. I was beginning to think the handfuls of coins I gathered in Youngstown had been an aberration and that there was no need to continue this study.  So now it is back on.

Lake Erie State Park, New York

My final stretch of Carnegies in Ohio came along Lake Erie east of Cleveland beginning in Willoughby, the first of the last five that would complete this quest to get to all of Ohio’s 103 still standing Carnegies. We biked right past it, as it had been greatly altered and was unrecognizable as a Carnegie or even a library.  It’s original entrance facing a grassy square with a cannon had been turned into a window.  The other larger windows of the red-bricked building were laced with narrow cross-pieces giving it the resemblance of a penitentiary.  It’s new entrance was behind the building through a large addition adjoining a vast parking lot.

We were way early for its opening at 11:30.  We were ready for a break, so plopped down on a bench by the entrance.  We had just settled in when an older guy came by and asked about our travels, then told us he had hitchhiked around the country in 1969 for three months with a fifty-pound backpack right after he graduated from high school and before his induction into the army.  He said he had a great time getting picked up by all sorts of amazing people.  “Things were way better back then than they are now,” he said.  “You couldn’t do anything like that these days.  It was the era of the hippies and the Beatles.”  Then he turned to Chris and asked if he’d heard of the Beatles.

He was barely started.  On and on he went.  There was no stopping him.  He said he was a retired cop and postal worker and that the world was in the biggest mess ever, but if we thought it was bad now, it would be nothing compared to how it would be “if Sleepy Joe got elected.”

“At least we don’t have to worry about that commie Bernie Sanders,” I said.  He didn’t take my bait, but instead expressed concern for Chris, wanting to know how much money he had been earning before he lost his job and if he had enough to get by. Instead of complaining that he didn’t get a $1,200 check from Trump because he earned more than the dividing point, he told him he’d been given a severance package of three months pay, so was fine.  The guy offered to take us to lunch, so happy he was for an audience, but we had to decline as we had four more Carnegies to get to.  I wouldn’t have minded listening to him rant some more, but Chris could barely tolerate what we had heard and kept his distance so he couldn’t be further engaged in the conversation.

The next Carnegie in Madison was almost as nondescript as the one in Willoughby and was another disappointment.  It wasn’t much more than a red brick cell block, only enhanced by its light fixtures and large windows.  It had recently transitioned from the town’s library to it’s historical society.

As I took a photo of the next Carnegie in Geneva an older guy passing by exclaimed, “You don’t want to take a picture of that.  I hate that place.  I liked it as a library, but not anymore.”  It was now a court house, which he evidently had some experience with. Unlike the previous two it conveyed some majesty with columns and high ceilings and steps leading to its entrance and a plaque, though not related to the library but to a local who developed a system of handwriting. 

Although these towns were all along Lake Erie, they were set inland enough that we only occasionally could catch a glimpse of its inviting turquoise waters.  When we approached the Carnegie in Ashtabula in a vast park, we could celebrate at last a Carnegie of stature.  The library was thriving, enhanced by a large addition, though the city was in some decline with rooms at a nearby motel going for $119 a week.  “That’s about what I was paying per day for my last apartment,” Chris commented.  

The library was open through the new entrance in the addition behind it.   Masks were required and sitting and lingering not permitted.  The library had suffered a fire in the late 1990s before the addition, causing considerable damage including the portrait of Carnegie.

Then it was on to the final Carnegie of this Ohio-quest in Conneaut three miles before the border with Pennsylvania.  It would have been a stunner in its day, but had clearly fallen on hard times.  It was tattered and decayed, but still retained a great majesty and grace.  A dreary “No Trespassing” sign taped to its door was a shameful indignity.  This great relic desperately needed to be restored.  It’s stripped interior gave hope that might be in the works.

We were able to celebrate and gaze upon it a little longer from a McDonald’s across the street, the first we’d been to that had indoor seating, though very minimally with just three tables bearing available signs.  Ten minutes after we sat down we were politely told the walk-in service was closing, as it was seven p.m., and we’d have to leave.  Chris was just finishing his ice cream cone and I was happy to save the rest of my McChicken for dinner at our campsite. 

We had our eyes set on a vast green patch on our GPS identified as “State Game Land” abutting the lake.  We were hoping to find a spot overlooking the lake to pitch our tents with the sound of lapping waves.  We were able to follow a path right to a cliff overlooking the lake but it was too visible for camping nor could we find any other site, so we headed down a gravel road back into the forest.  

We saw a clearing that looked promising but a car was parked there and a dog came charging at us.  The owner, a gruff, disheveled guy, called him off.  They were just leaving, so we pedaled back down the road a bit, plotting to return after they cleared out.  We paused along the road pretending to look at Chris’ phone.  The guy pulled up and said, “It doesn’t look like you boys are from around here.  Are you lookin’ for a place to camp?”  He was a sinister, somewhat  threatening “Deliverance” character, not friendly or helpful at all.  We didn’t like his tone nor his look, so said we were looking at our map for a hotel.  He was smart enough to know that was a bunch of hokum, but offered no suggestions and went on his way, hopefully for good.  

We returned to the clearing and an overgrown Jeep trail into the woods.  It was a little too soggy for us so we retreated to the road and as we did the guy drove slowly past us again.  I kept my head bowed but Chris said he stared him straight in the eye. There was plenty of other forest to disappear into.  We just hoped the dog hadn’t caught a scent of us and might be able to track us down. After we got deep into the forest a quarter mile away and had our tents set up we could hear the sound of a barking dog.  Chris hadn’t seen “Deliverance,” so if there had been the sound of a banjo he wouldn’t have been further creeped out.   The barking dog was unsettling enough, but it didn’t come any closer.  It soon gave up, allowing us another fine night in the forest.  

We had a long stretch along the coast through Pennsylvania and into New York before the next Carnegie.  Our only library the next day was on the outskirts of the large city of Erie, PA, one of its branches.  We were enticed by a large banner mounted on posts along the road advertising free WiFi.  Even better than the WiFi was the most electrical outlets we had ever seen dotted around the outside of a library.  We were as delighted as a mushroomer coming about a huge patch of chanterelles.  

We each took a socket on either side of the front door.  Before we had a chance to sit down and connect to the WiFi a masked librarian came out and said we were welcome to use the WiFi but she had to call and see what the library system’s policy was on using its outdoor sockets.  “If the library was open,” she said, “you’d be welcome to come in and use the electricity, so maybe it would be okay.”  

All was well though once we engaged Colleen in conversation, and told her of our travels, Chris coming all the way from California and me circling Ohio dropping in on Carnegies.  We talked enthusiastically for nearly half an hour, charging all the while, interrupted every few minutes when someone drove up to pick up or drop off books.  She told us she had taken a course in college on bicycling taught by a woman who had biked coast-to-coast.  What she most remembered of the woman’s ride was that she ate heaps of pancakes and had clean clothes shipped to her at points on her route a week apart.

I wanted to applaud a college with a course on cycling.  She said it was a small religious college outside of Philadelphia.  She was there in the mid-‘90s and was a Swedenbourgian.  I told her there was a small Swedenbourgian community where I grew up in Glenview.  She knew it, the second Glenview connection of the week.  

She told us of a local woman who had written an article for the “Erie Reader” on visiting libraries in the area, then went in and got us a couple samples of the bi-weekly, though not of that story as it was from last November.  It was easy to find on line, looking up articles by Liz Allen in the paper.  The article included the mention of a Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh.  She also sent us off with several patches promoting her library.  Our only wish for her was that we hoped we might inspire her to ride her bike to work.  We were certain that if she did it once she’d want to do it all the time.

We fell six miles short of reaching the Carnegie in Dunkirk, partially because Chris had a flat tire and then another half a mile down the road when the patch didn’t hold on his thorn-resistant tube.  While he was engaged in the first repair a touring cyclist came by, the first I’d seen in a month on the road.  He was on a little less than three hundred mile ride from Cleveland to Buffalo for his father’s retirement party, who didn’t know he would be arriving by bike.  He had a campsite reserved in the Lake Erie State Park thirty miles up the road.  We thought we might stay there too but hadn’t gotten a site yet and asked if we could share his.  

He’s a Warmshowers host, so naturally said yes.  We arrived at 6:15 half an hour after he did.  It was the earliest we had stopped to camp by over an hour in the week we’ve been together.  Chris likes to ride late to minimize the chance of being spotted.  Our host Andrew was a lawyer and hadn’t had the time for any epic trips, but had spent two weeks bicycling Iceland last year.  He had actually been to Iceland twice as there was a super cheap fare from Cleveland.

He muttered an “Ugh” when I mentioned I was surprised to learn Columbus was more populous than Cleveland. “That’s just a technicality,” he said.  

Chris and I had seen a spurt of Biden signs after seeing none until the day before.  Andrew said he had been making a survey of Trump versus Biden signs on his ride and it had been three to one Trump, but that could mean anything.

He was as ardent a Buffalo Bills fan as cyclist, a season ticket-holder who makes the three-and-a-half drive to Buffalo, where he grew up, for every game. He’s greatly anticipating this year with Tom Brady out of the division.  It looks to be the best Bills team since their Super Bowl team of 1999.  He attended that Super Bowl in Jacksonville, though he didn’t bike there as I did to New Orleans in 1986 for the Bears Super Bowl, perhaps my most audacious ride, leaving Chicago with the temperature 14 degrees and eleven days to bike 900 miles with it getting dark by five each night.

It was nice to be able to talk some sports, even though there are no sports going on.  Chris and Andrew were happy to learn they are both on Strava so they could follow each other’s rides.  Andrew is in competition with a group to see who can ride the most miles.  He was in the lead even before this trip, so he’s jumping way ahead.  His mileage will continue to improve now that he can start going in to work again and make the fifteen mile round-trip commute on his bike.  He couldn’t have been happier to be off on his bike, just like Chris and I. 

Chardon, Ohio

 We took a morning break  in Beaver, Pennsylvania to take advantage of a bakery which had an enticing billboard on the way into the town.  While we were feasting on a handful of sweet rolls, an older gent stopped to ask about our travels.  He was a retired truck driver who’d been everywhere and had a nephew in San Jose, where Chris started out from, who was a barber.  He’d served in the Navy during the Vietnam War and his final months of service were at the Glenview Naval Air Base, in the Chicago suburb where I grew up, and just a mile from my high school, Glenbrook South. 

We told him we were headed to Beaver Falls for its Carnegie Library and wondered if there were any plaques or statues acknowledging Joe Namath, as it is where the Super Bowl winning quarterback had grown up. He said there was a plaque and then added, “I played against him in high school.  He was good, but he was a cocky guy.” 

The plaque wasn’t much and it wasn’t erected until 2011, sponsored by the football Hall of Fame and All State Insurance, that employs Namath as a pitchman.  There was a second such plaque by the library.

 The library was a genuine eye-catcher, a well-worn titan of a building on the main highway through the city.  As I was giving it a closer look prowling around its exterior, disappointed that it wasn’t open, a librarian showed up for some administrative chores.  She saw me coming around the side of the building and asked, “Can I help you,” with that tone of “what are you doing” not really meaning “can I help you.”  She was so sour my explanation of getting to all the Carnegies in Ohio didn’t even brighten her.

An hour down the road on another most pleasant bike path through forested terrain we came upon an older guy pushing a bike.  We suspected he might have had a flat and needed help.  No, he was just pushing his bike through a rough stretch.  He told us we had just crossed into Ohio from Pennsylvania and that the Ohio stretch of the path had deteriorated.  He’d gotten a promise from the local mayor to improve the path, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

This fellow was retired too and spent as much time as he could roaming the area on his bike, a passion that went backq thirty-five years.  He had a license plate lashed atop his rear carrier.  I asked if he collected them.  

“No, that’s my version of a fender to protect me from the rain, but I do find them and I always take them to the police.  They’re not always happy about having to try to find the owner.”

I told him I had a handful in my pack, including one from West Virginia, and got a laugh from him when I offered them to him if he felt like getting a rise out of the police.  He gave us the great news that the Youngstown Carnegie up ahead was open, as we hadn’t found one that was open since we began riding together four days ago.  

Unfortunately, he was mistaken, and once again we had to be content with just a view of the exterior of the mammoth library bearing the name of Reuben McMillan, an educator who led the drive to acquire a library from Carnegie in 1907.

We stopped at a McDonald’s on the way out of town hoping for some accessible electrical outlets.  The lone outdoor one had a lock on it and we couldn't gain access to those inside as this was the first McDonald’s we had come upon that didn’t have walk-in service.  For the first time in these travels I had to use the drive-up window.  There was no wait, a rarity.  Chris was hoping for an ice cream cone, but they didn’t have any, so it was just a McChicken and ice water for me.  

At the first window where one pays for the order I was startled to see pennies, and a few silver coins,  strewn all over extending for fifty feet along the building beyond the pay and pickup windows.  This was a possible new phenomenon, people either discarding or simply dropping some of their change at fast food pickup windows. I haven’t had a chance to make a study yet, whether this is unique to Youngstown or universal.  This could be a potential gold mine and an interesting study, perhaps for some PhD, determining what difference there might be between franchises and countless other factors. 

We reached the Warren Carnegie across from a gargantuan and grandiose county courthouse after seven.  In these Covid times there was hardly any traffic in the downtown of this sizable city.  It’s dignified charm was enhanced by the stark contrast with the modern buildings it was sandwiched between.  It had become a law library not open to the public even if it were open.  

We tried a state park campground again, Mosquito Lake, seven miles out of town.  It too had the policy of only being able to book a site on line, with a $6.40 processing fee tacked on to the $27 camping fee.  We could have easily slipped into the adjoining forest, but paid up for a shower and electricity and water to wash our rain-dampened socks and other garments.  

After an early morning downpour delay we rode up the east side of the lake to the small town of Kinsman, where at last Chris could set foot in a Carnegie and gain an acquaintance with Carnegie’s portrait.  The front of the library had been altered with a small entry addition.  Within the addition was the original facade graced with “Pvblic Library” and a pair of globular light fixtures.  A sign said, “Entry only with approved masks.”  No one objected to my white neckerchief, a find that Chris spotted along the road a couple days before, his first of the trip.  He let me have it, as he couldn’t surmise a use for it even though he knew I was a strong advocate.  

We had earlier encountered another mask sign on a gas station store requiring them for all except those with a medical condition.  It had an accompanying sign forbidding hoodies and sun glasses and hats, as the owner feared those were the indicators of potential thieves.

A few blocks from the Carnegie was a unique octangular house where Clarence Darrow lived from 1864 to 1873 moving there when he was seven from a neighboring town.  A plaque stated he moved to Chicago in 1887 after he’d been practicing law in Ohio for nine years. He came to prominence defending Eugene Debs for his role in the Pullman Strike of 1894.  He gained further fame defending Leopold and Loeb in 1894 and in the Scopes “Monkey Trial” defending evolution a year later. 

We crossed back across Mosquito Lake to Bristolville for its Carnegie, and once again had to be content with just a look.  It’s plaque included mention of its first librarian, Gertrude Gardiner, who served from 1914 to 1940.  Chris asked if it’s figure of 111 Carnegies in the State was correct. As happens all too often, the plaque was giving out faulty information.  There had been 114, of which eight were on college campuses.  All but eleven still stand. 

We fell fifteen miles short of Willoughby, forty miles away, for a third Carnegie on the day, pausing to camp in a large forest we had all to ourselves.  We had dessert fit for royalty, slices of lemon cake and chocolate cake and boxes of cream-filled chocolate rolls compliments of a nearby Aldis.  The sliding doors on the dumpster were padlocked, the first such measure I’d encountered, but I was able to hop in for this treasure.  Chris was an instant convert to dumpster diving.  He was all for checking out the next one we came to and was rewarded by a large bag of potato chips and all the bananas one could want. 

We had a couple of firsts for the day, the first Biden sign in someone’s lawn that Chris had seen since leaving California in the town of Mecca, and sharing a bike path with several Amish horse drawn carriages.  Someone told us we were passing through the fourth largest Amish community in the world, and shortly after a sign confirmed it.

And congratulations are due Randy for becoming one of five thousand cyclists in the past twenty-five years to accomplish an Everest.  He climbed over 29,000 feet in just under 160 miles, making twenty laps on a circuit an hour from his home in Asheville, North Carolina.   It took him 13 hours and 57 minutes, with only forty minutes of his time off the bike.  Even though he drank 20 bottles of electrolyte and carbohydrate solutions, including four of $7 high-octane 400 calorie bottles on his final four laps, he managed to lose seven pounds while expending 8,000 calories.  Fortunately it met the approval of the governing body, so he doesn’t have to repeat the effort as Lachlan Morton had to do a week after setting the record, then reestablishing it.

East Liverpool, Ohio

Traveling with a somewhat respectable, young-looking 41-year old has not effected the money-giving.  Chris too has repeatedly been offered money since he left San Jose five months and 8,000 miles ago, up to $100.  He tries to fend off the offerings, and is generally successful other than when someone flung a $20 bill at him absolutely insisting he take it.

On our second day of cycling together a well-tanned woman, in the background above, approached us outside a Walmart with two singles scrunged in her hand and said, “I know this isn’t much, but I’d like you to have it.”  We should have been offering her something, as she had been circling around us for several minutes frustrated that the Uber she had ordered hadn’t arrived and she had food that needed refrigeration.  She was in a mild panic, partially because her phone had gone dead and she couldn’t track the driver’s arrival.

Chris well knew the Uber procedure as he takes advantage of them from time to time, as he’s a rare resident of the Bay Area without a car.  He biked six miles to the company he worked at the past ten years after graduating from Stanford with a PhD in physics specializing in microscopes.  Lasting ten years with the same company in Silicon Valley is as rare as not owning a car out there.  He ended his servitude just before Thanksgiving when he declined a promotion to oversee an office his company was setting up in Oxford.  He’d earlier spent a year in Beijing and had spent quite a bit of time in Melbourne and didn’t want to go work in a distant land again, especially after visiting Oxford and seeing how sultry the weather could be.

He’d had the dream of taking up the bicycle touring life for years.  I’m partially to blame, as after discovering my blog in November of 2011 when Matt of Landmark posted my blog entry on my expense report of a ride back from Telluride via Montana on Metafilter (“2822 miles, 35 days, $252.51 “), he had the world of bicycle touring revealed to him.  That post was widely viewed and drew a lot of ruckus over my prime fuel of ramen and beans.

When Chris’ company gave him his termination papers after he declined to go to Oxford, he decided to take off on his bike to Florida to visit his 97-year old grandfather.  He took a test ride down the California coast and met quite a few Europeans on cycle tours that reinforced his desire to give it a go.  He moved out of his apartment, disposing of all his worldly goods (books to the library, clothes and furniture to Goodwill ) other than his bike gear and a suitcase full of mementos and a few clothes that he left with his brother.

Besides Matt, we have Keller in Texas, both friends I know through the Telluride Film Festival, for connecting us, as Keller met him in mid-March and discovered Chris read my blog.  He got Chris’ email address when he emailed Keller to thank him for giving him a map that was very helpful. So I emailed Chris to find out how the touring was during these times of the virus, as I was antsy to be touring myself.  He’d made it all the way to Florida and was fine.  I told him I’d soon be biking around Ohio Carnegie-hopping.  He responded by saying he would like to try to meet up.  I was all for connecting with a kindred spirit and hearing about his tour and am very happy we made the effort.

We have had three days of nearly non-stop conversation riding on bike routes with virtually no traffic recommended by his iPhone.  The only drawback has been talking too much and neglecting to eat as I’m cycling along, leading to a near bonk.  Chris continually amazes me by anecdotes he remembers from my blog and even further by how much he loves the touring life and what an accomplished practitioner he has become, adapt at wild-camping and riding long hours until nearly dark. He is full of joy and exuberance.

He already has a wide range of exemplary experiences beginning with growing up in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the son of an entomology professor at the University of Minnesota who is one month younger than me.  Chris wondered if people took us as father and son.  It was confirmed that same day when the cashier at a Circle K said “Happy Father’s Day” to me, the first time that has ever happened.

After meeting at the Mansfield Carnegie three days ago, he missed the next Carnegie in Akron, as he needed to take a detour north of the city to a Best Buy to replace his phone.  The charging connection had become problematical, causing him a great deal of consternation, as he is most dependent on it, as I am with my iPad.  He missed out on a quite fine edifice that had once been the main library of this large city but was now a law office.  

We reunited a couple hours later at the Carnegie in Kent ten miles to the northeast of Akron.  The library had a mammoth addition, turning it into a big city library maybe twenty times the size of the original.  At least the original still had a position of prominence and went with “Free to the People” rather than the more common in Ohio “Open to All.“ I was an hour early before our planned six pm rendezvous. Since the electric outlets outside the library were all enclosed with locked boxes, rather than running down my iPad I went off in search of the memorial to the four students killed on the Kent State campus by the National Guard fifty years ago.  

Just as I reached the campus a mile away I encountered someone out for a jog who was able to tell me where the memorial was deep into the campus on a hill. He’d done some bicycle touring, so recognized that I was too and asked if I were a professor, which I didn’t take as an insult. 

The memorial was off in a cluster of trees to the side of a Visitors Center devoted to the massacre.  It was four large unidentified crypts.  

Several placards mounted on posts gave details of the tragedy that unfolded in the field below.  

Chris was very happy and relieved to have his phone worries resolved.  We studied the phone looking for possibilities for camping.  A state park on a lake ten miles away looked ideal.  We picked up a bike path through a forest a few blocks from the library.  That took us halfway there.  We continued on through more forest with enticing camping, but we couldn’t reject the prospect of a shower and electricity.  We arrived at the campground near dark.  It was full, so we just slipped off into the unused group campsite overlooking a lake that Chris said was worthy of Minnesota.  It was a luxury to have a picnic table, but Chris had to fend off a raccoon in the early morning light that came snooping by.

It was on to Salem in the morning with Chris navigating once again taking us on byways that allowed us to ride side by side and with nary a toot.  We stopped at a covered bridge dating to 1876,  older than any Carnegie Library. It is one of five of the more than 250 such bridges still standing that once populated the county. 

The Salem Carnegie identified itself as such.  The addition to its backside couldn’t be seen from its stately four-columned front.  It too had locks on its outlets, but at least didn’t block its WiFi.

We had a two-mile climb and then more before a sharp descent to Wellesville on the Ohio River.  This was another old river town with more than the usual number of rundown homes and old-timers sitting on porches.  It would have been an interesting town to hang out in for a day or a week, especially for someone who likes to photograph derelict buildings and well-worn faces.  There were stories galore to be gleaned here.  It’s Carnegie, just a block from the river and in a cluster of forlorn homes, had an addition to its side and a most adamant closure of its original entrance.  There was no danger here of anyone mistaking it for an entrance now. 

Four miles up river the Carnegie in East Liverpool shone like a comet in comparison.  It was an early grandiose Carnegie given favor as Carnegie had spent time there when he was growing up.

Five miles later we found a campsite up a small embankment into a forest overlooking the river shortly after we crossed into Pennsylvania.  Chris was worried there was poison ivy on the fringe of the clearing where we pitched our tents.  He took a photo of the suspicious three-leaved plants and asked his iPhone to identify it.  Seconds later the verdict was as he feared.  Now he has to wait to see if he brushed up against it.  That wasn’t the least of his worries, as he discovered a bone where he was about to pitch his tent and feared it might be human, imagining our campsite to be a perfect place to bury a body.  

Chris’ ever active mind doesn’t dwell much though on concerns.  He has a long list of projects he could tackle when he returns to work, including a device to monitor traffic noise levels, especially roaring motorcycles. He’s sensitive to noise, enough so he would be happy when the hum from the air conditioning went off in the evening in his office.  His aversion to noise has led to seeking out tiny roads with no traffic that I have greatly been appreciating.  Janina would certainly applaud his route-finding as she too is quite adverse to traffic and noise.

Mansfield, Ohio

As I was closing in on Upper Sandusky my less than full stomach jumped with delight at the sight of a large billboard featuring a heaping plate of hot cakes and eggs and sausage advertising breakfast at Bob Evans. I always welcome a stack of hot cakes, preferably from a local diner.  If the Bob Evans was open I’d have to make it my first stack of the trip.  It was.  My first restaurant sit down meal in months.  I hardly knew how to behave.  The staff was all bemasked, but none of the diners, mostly older couples.

Bob Evans must not be popular with laptopers, as when I asked the hostess for a table with an electric outlet she had to go searching.  There wasn’t one at any of the booths, nor in a side room. We had to go off to a far corner in the main room to find one. I just needed a quick glance at the menu to find the hot cakes section and ordered the basic four stack. 

It was my second Bob Evans meal in two days, as the the day before I rescued a pound package of Bob Evans mashed potatoes from an Aldis dumpster.  I could have had half a dozen and regretted I didn’t take at least a second. But I did supplement it with a fourteen dollar slab of Alaskan sockeye salmon sealed in a plastic pouch.  It was early morning and still chilled.  It was easily the best eating of the trip.  I felt no hunger for hours, just as I felt after the hot cakes, which were more than I could eat at one sitting, saving one for later in my trusty Tupperware bowl. Though I left with a hot cake, I had an overall deficit in my load, as I was able to dump twenty of the quarters given me the day before.

The Upper Sandusky Carnegie was the second in two days that had joined the medical field, this one a doctor’s office. It was in a residential neighborhood and blended right in.  A woman was sitting on her porch in the house next door.  I asked her if she missed the library.  “I can’t hear you,” she replied. “I don’t have my hearing aid in.”

When I approached closer she waved me back in a panic though I wasn’t even within twice the six-foot social distancing range.  I spoke a little louder and she said it was kind of nice to have a doctor’s office next door, but a lot of people didn’t like having to walk up the steps to get in, a feature of most Carnegies.

It was a quick fifteen mile hop north to the next Carnegie in Carey, a beauty of bright orange brick.  It remained a library and was open, though not for computer use other than one’s own.  It’s WiFi required a password—read1234.  The librarian had to fill my water bottle in the employee’s room as the drinking fountain was taped up.  All the chairs at the tables were stacked.  I had to get permission to remove a chair to sit near the lone socket in a corner of the adult’s reading room.  The library had had several small additions over the years, but none detracted from its magnificent front side.  There was no Carnegie on the exterior of the building, but his portrait hung over the circulation desk with a piece of white tape across the bottom saying he contributed $8,000 for the construction of the library.

Another fifteen miles north closing in on Toledo the Carnegie in Fostoria had been totally consumed by a massive addition and bore no recognition of the magnificence of a Carnegie.   All that remained of the original was a stone sidewall.  There was no acknowledgement of Carnegie nor of its origins other than the date of its construction along with the date of the reconstruction on a wall near the entry.  The library was open, but by appointment only, so I was not allowed to wander in this desecration.  

I was done with my northward swing and could begin heading back east to Tiffin for twenty miles into a slight wind. It’s Carnegie had been retired decades ago and had had a series of tenants since, the latest the juvenile court. 

Just half a mile away was another Carnegie on the campus of Heidelberg University.  It was now the Pfleiderer Center.  The new library was the next building over separated by an expanse of grass.  As at the several other universities I’ve visited on this trip, it was completely deserted.  It completed my first five-Carnegie day of the trip and was sandwiched around a pair of three-Carnegie days, bringing my total to forty for the trip.

The first of my three the next day came in Bucyrus, a name so unique it’s origins are unknown.  It’s grand library had a corner entrance and a large addition behind it.  It was another that allowed entry by appointment only.  I arrived before it had opened or turned on its WiFi.  The janitor exiting the building said that the WiFi had been attracting such large quantities of people, some bringing deck chairs, that it had turned into a party and was a threat to the safety of the community, so it no longer left its WiFi on when it was closed as many other libraries were doing as a community service.  It was doing extra service though by providing lunch and breakfast three times a week for needy children.

The Carnegie in Galion ten miles east was one of those that strike awe, seemingly built with no expense spared, as if the town wanted its own Taj Mahal or Pantheon.  Unfortunately, it was closed and I couldn’t behold the interior of its dome and all else.

Mansfield’s monumental Carnegie was also closed.  It was showing its age and had further diminished its luster with the loss of its steps leading up to its original entry beneath “Open to All.”  They had been replaced by glaringly bright marble and glass doors for a non-climbing entry that made no attempt to blend in.  It was akin to putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.  Perhaps if I’d gotten inside and could have been impressed by its interior it might have softened the sour taste I left with.  But I could cling to the great majesty of the Carnegie fifteen miles away in Galion.

I had arrived at 3:30 hoping to meet up with Chris at four.  But with no internet access I hadn’t received confirmation that he would be there.  But right at four he rolled up with a broad shining grin.  It exuded that easy, fully-content aura of the touring cyclist and within moments we were conversing as if we were long-time friends, even though we were just meeting.  He noticed immediately that we were wearing the same Shimano touring cleated shoes.

We chatted for ten or fifteen minutes and then headed down the road for Akron and the next Carnegie sixty-five miles away, the longest stretch between Carnegies in a while.  There will be much to be said in the next post or two about Chris and his five months and eight thousand miles of riding from the Bay Area and his career as a physicist with a PhD from Stanford, the second Stanford PhD of the trip after Kurt in Columbus.