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.