Paul Theroux and the Bicycle

 The prolific travel writer Paul Theroux came into prominence in 1975 with his first foray into travel writing with “The Great Railway Bazaar,” his account of thirty or so train trips over four months, from London to Japan and back.  Five of his subsequent travel books continued the train theme, interspersed with books about travel by foot (“The Kingdom by the Sea,” a walk around the perimeter of Great Britain), paddling among the islands of Oceania (“Happy Islands of Oceania”), sailing 1,500 miles down the Yangtze River (“Sailing Through China”)  and driving around the South (“Deep South”) and along the Mexican border and into Mexico (“On the Plain of Snakes”), among others.

Unfortunately, he has never availed himself of the pleasure of traveling by bike. He has contemplated it, but could never summon the resolve for the most noble and independent and engaging form of travel.  It was an option for his trip around Great Britain in 1981 after two books on train travel, but he thought it would be “too dangerous and too difficult“ and also a “stunt,” lame excuses for not having to overly exert himself. 

Twenty-five years later he seemed to have overcome his resistance to travel by bike, when as he passed through Tibet on a train trip around China (“Riding the Red Rooster”) he felt the urge to bike around Tibet.  He wrote that he’d even begun to plan the trip, but in the fifteen years since he has yet to fulfill that urge, actually resorting to the automobile, the antithesis of the bike, for his last two travel books.  Since he is less than six months from turning eighty, there is little likelihood that he has a bicycling book in him. 

He does express great admiration for Dervla Murphy, the intrepid Irish cyclist, who he devotes a chapter to in “The Tao of Travel.”  He commends her as “a wanderer in the oldest tradition.”  Traveling by bike was no stunt for her. In her many bicycle touring books she is always fulfilling a natural inclination, doing something she genuinely longed to do, beginning with a ride from Ireland to India in 1963, recounted in “Full Tilt.”

If anything was a stunt, it was Theroux’s first travel book.  He didn’t simply take a long train trip through exotic lands, but rather he searched out unique train trips all over Asia, hopping from here to there by plane and boat to connect to his next trip in Vietnam and Japan and Siberia and elsewhere.  He was not a traveler fulfilling some inner need, but rather a writer seeking material for a book. 

He had written nine little-read books (a criticism of V.S. Naipaul and eight novels), some the fruition of his time in Africa with the Peace Corps.  Out of desperation for something to write about that might find an audience and get him out of debt, he pitched the idea of the train book to a publisher, despite his strong aversion to travel writing, calling it “the lowest form of literary self-indulgence,” written by “second-rate writers waffling on about themselves and looking for trouble.”  And in his subsequent decades of travel writing he contributed to rail against it. In the introduction to a collection of his travel writing, “To the Ends of the Earth,” published in 2011 he said of travel books, “A bore wrote it and a bore read it.”

Even though he suddenly had a best-seller on his hands (the book went through three printings due to bookstore demand even before it was released), enabling him to achieve financial solvency, he has no fondness for the book,  as it only reminds him that he was “deeply melancholy” for much of his travels, being away from his wife and two young sons for over four months, just missing making it back for Christmas, and having to write about material that wasn’t in his heart.  Compounding his agony was learning that his wife had an affair while he was away.  When he found out, he wanted to kill her.  Though it is the book that launched him and that he’s most famous for, it isn’t always included in the biographical blurb on book jackets of his subsequent books while more recent ones are.

It is almost an embarrassment to him that he is known as a “travel writer,” as his aspiration has always been to be regarded as a novelist. His success with “The Great Railway Bazaar” turned him into a reluctant travel writer.  His heart never seems to be in it. He bemoans travel as “a horror and always a nuisance...It is in the nature of travel to be uncomfortable, if not scared silly.” 

Through it all, he has persisted with his fiction—novels and short stories—to little avail. He had to eventually admit he was a “second-rate writer” like all the travel writers he disdains.  It is little consolation that the polish he gained from writing fiction put a shine on his travel writing, elevating it above most, earning him the acclaim of one of the better travel writers of his time.

He may not have a compulsion to travel, but he certainly has a compulsion to write, with some fifty books to his credit, including a couple of children’s books, and attempts at science fiction and fantasy and four compilations of short stories and several collections of his magazine pieces.   Wading through his more than thirty books of fiction, one can’t help but feel that his writing is often only the fulfillment of trying to meet a certain quota of words a day.  I found myself, time after time, as I persisted at my task of reading them all, asking, “Why am I reading this drivel?”  Of only minimal interest were his semi-fictionalized confessional memoirs “My Other Live,” “My Secret History” and “Motherland,” all a version of one another.

What an ordeal it was reading them all, especially when he all too often lapses into an adolescent preoccupation with sex.  His novels are populated with mopes burdened by a pathetic craving for coupling.  And his travel books aren’t complete without encounters with prostitutes, only observing without admissions of indulging, though he did while in the Peace Corps, as it was intrinsic to the African culture he found himself in, as he confesses in “Sir Vidia’s Shadow,” an unrestrained undressing of his former friend and mentor, the Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.

He just writes and writes, perplexed by those who complain of writer’s block, actually wondering if those who don’t complain about the agony of writing are “second-rate.” Even when traveling, especially during those long hours on trains when he is trying to avoid irritating passengers, if he’s not jotting notes or reading, he can be struck by an idea for a short story, that may or may not turn into a novel, and begins scribbling away. 

It is hard to conceive how he has managed to write so much, as he is a prolific reader as well as writer.  He doesn’t read books, but rather authors.  His books, travel and novels, are full of literary allusions, rattling off the heights of authors and other stray details, such as Aldous Huxley dying the same day as JFK. Such drop-ins lend a veneer of depth and intelligence to his travel books. 

Though he can often strike a sour note, his travel writing is still a pleasure, especially in contrast to his fiction.  He is particularly adept at dialogue, sometimes going on for a page or more.  His facility with dialogue has led to nine  screenplays, including for his novels “Saint Jack” and “The Mosquito Coast.” It is writing he places in even lower regard than travel-writing, calling it “a waste of time.“

His frequent carping about being known only as a travel writer, and his slightly veiled lack of enthusiasm when he does travel, have earned him the not-undeserved reputation of being a grump, having a chip-on-his-shoulder, aggravated by one and all.  One can trace it to his childhood, where he bore the burden of being a third-born son, picked-on and competing with two older brothers, including Alexander, who became a distinguished and respected writer, nominated for a National Book Award and earning a Fulbright Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship.  He taught at Harvard and Yale.  Paul‘s teaching credentials don’t go much beyond a stint in Uganda after being kicked out of the Peace Corps and another in Singapore until his contract was ignominiously not renewed.

Alexander wrote a scathing review in 1996 in “Boston Magazine” of Paul’s semi-autobiographical novel “My Other Life,” dismissing him as “a poseur, a hack, a whore, a slob and a meretricious scribbler...at best a beach read.”  Paul was appalled, responding that “in the long history of literary brothers there was no precedent for this attack...No one in history has ever done this, a guy writing that his brother’s book is crap.  Even Hemingway’s brother didn’t do it.”

He never won the favor of his parents either.  He devoted a 500-page novel, “Motherland,” to his contentious relationship with his mother and his six siblings, who regarded him with ridicule.  His mother did not approve of his writing, wishing he’d become a doctor, as he once aspired to be and regretted he hadn’t.  She  damned his first book, “Waldo,” about a juvenile surviving a dysfunctional family.  She wrote him a letter, that he has kept to this day, calling it “unfunny, sordid, cheap and vulgar.”

He claimed that his father never admitted to reading any of his books.  He blames his cynicism on his family, all of whom were imbued with a sour trait. They shared a “glee at seeing the worst in people, the confirmation that all of us were dogs.”  Such is his portrayal of most of the people he encounters in his travels.  He belittles and mocks, though with enough restraint that it’s not as offensive as it could be, only antagonizing a small percentage of his readership. Unlike most travel writers whose adjective of choice is “glorious,” his is “lugubrious.”   

He well knows his reputation for grumpiness and does his best to put some restraints on it. He doesn’t entirely object to how some regard him, as a blurb on the book jacket of “Hotel Honolulu” quotes a review stating “full of Theroux’s unashamed crankiness.”  A blurb on the book jacket for “The Pillars of Hercules” stated, “His portraits are pleasantly tinged with malice.”  

He is liable to snap at any slight or behavior that irks him.  When an Israeli border official asked him to sit down, he replied, “Only if you say please.”  At the Singapore border he was told by an official with a bad accent, “Your hair is radda rong.”  He replied, “And yours is rather short.”

His low self-regard comes through time after time.  When his oldest brother, a successful lawyer, expressed envy for the life Theroux has led, Theroux couldn’t understand why, as he feels as if he’s been a failure, never realizing his full potential.  In “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star,” a repeat of his first train travels over thirty years later, a woman tells him, “I want to live your life.”  He thinks, “Really!  My nagged childhood, my undistinguished career as a punk, no good at games, bewildered in college, terminated early in the Peace Corps, disgraced in Singapore when my contract wasn’t renewed, hard up in London, refused a credit card by American Express at the age of 32 because I had no visible credit, divorced.”  He has led the dream life of many and he can’t accept it, preferring to bemoan his shortcomings than be proud of what he has accomplished.

One of the revelations in Alexander’s condemnation was that his brother is obsessed with his bowel movements and eats prunes at breakfast.  That explained why he devoted his ridiculous 1994 novel “Millroy the Magician” to a religious movement founded on having regular bowel movements.  The preacher had a Trumpian motto of “I can make America regular once again.”  The novel is narrated by a 14-year old girl who had been seduced by the preacher in the days when he was merely a small-time magician before he was recruited for a morning children’s television show and developed a following that made him a national sensation.  This was another of his novels that one has to ask, “Why would you want to write such a story?  Who could possibly be interested?”

Theroux pretty much keeps his preoccupation with bowels to himself, though his years in Africa and third world countries must have led to more than a few cases of “the runs.” He lets slip his preoccupation here and there.  In his driving venture around Mexico, his latest book, he acknowledges a spell of two days when he had “the squitters.”     In “Waldo” he writes, “Nothing is so underrated as a good crap.”  In his 1978 novel “Picture Palace,” narrated by a 70-year old woman photographer who has Theroux’s  contempt for everyone she encounters, she remarks that Somerset Maugham was known to be constipated. Constipation is hinted at in “Millroy,” as the preacher forbids the term “toilet,” as it implies toil.  In his novel “The Black House” a character comments “travel bores me, constipates, all those bad meals.”

Maybe if Theroux had gotten out on a bike from time to time his digestive tract might not have been such an issue. He did go for a bike ride around a city in Vietnam when he had a free afternoon in “The Great Railway Bazaar,” but he made no comment on what an eye-opening experience it had to have been floating through neighborhoods he never would have seen and how glorious it was to roam, almost soaring like a bird.  But not much is “glorious” in the world of Theroux.

He writes at more length about a bike ride he took with Robin Williams in a profile he wrote of him for “Talk” magazine, one of thirty mostly non-travel  pieces collected in his book “Figures in a Landscape.”   Williams was an avid cyclist and friend of Lance Armstrong, who he would ride with on Rest Days at The Tour de France and elsewhere. Theroux acknowledged that Williams was a better cyclist than him, but “he didn’t rub it in.”   He doesn’t say whose idea it was to go for the ride, but Theroux deserves kudos for making it a strand of his story.  

In “Motherland” he says he turned down doing a magazine story on cycling in the Scottish Highlands, scoffing at the very idea of “a big man on a bike, pedaling up and down Scottish hills looking for something to write about.”   Too bad he didn’t more fully embrace the bicycle.  It could have tempered his life-long malaise, clearing his head, accelerating his heart rate, unclogging his arteries.  A good long bike ride always leaves one with a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment, like finishing a good book.

Buchanan, Michigan

 

After completing my gathering of Carnegies, I extended my 1,200 mile ride around Michigan by swinging over to Buchanan on the St. Joseph River having learned from Randy of the Warren Podcast and Everesting fame that it had just been named the “nicest place” in the US by the “Reader’s Digest.” He grew up nearby and recommended a visit.

It was so nice that this quiet, four-stoplight town of 4,500 wasn’t even bragging about its designation.  There were no banners or signs proclaiming the honor, nor had anyone bothered to update the town’s Wikipedia page.  That could be in keeping with its namesake, the most obscure of US presidents, Lincoln’s predecessor.  There are fewer places in the US (towns, counties, roads, parks) named for Buchanan than any president.  

It seemed to be a closely-knit community with a huge American flag dangling over its Main Street, lined with stuffed scarecrows promoting local businesses.  The lamp poles all featured a photograph of a local who had served in the armed forces. 

A local school teacher nominated Buchanan, one of nearly 1,200 submissions, the most ever for the “Reader’s Digest” annual competition.  The nominations came from every state, enough that the magazine named a nicest place for every state along with the letter extolling it’s virtues. Collinsville earned the honor for Illinois.

Buchanan won out for having a spontaneous racial justice parade a week after the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis, despite having its Memorial Day Parade cancelled due to Covid-19. With a population of only eight per cent black, the large gathering, including the police chief, was mostly white.  They marched down the Main Street carrying signs and chanting slogans, stopping at the police station where they paused for those infamous eight minutes and forty-six seconds that the police officer pressed his knee to Floyd’s neck. 

Unlike Three Oaks, twenty miles away and a little closer to Lake Michigan, the town was not tainted with quaint shops and boutiques and restaurants catering to tourists.  It only gussied itself up to please its residents, not to attract outsiders. There was no pretension in its decorations, nor any effort to be anything but true to itself.  The “Reader’s Digest” made a fine choice in naming it the nicest place in America, and coincidentally on the day the story of a militia plotting to kidnap the state’s governor broke.

I was further gladdened to have made the effort to go over to Buchanan, as it brought me back through Three Oaks, a bicycling mecca of a sort, having hosted one of the nation’s preeminent annual cycling events, the Apple Cider Century, established in 1974.  A bicycle sculpture greets visitors when they turn off the highway to enter the town center.  The Visitor Center contains a bicycle museum, which was unfortunately closed due to the virus.

A similar sculpture resides in front of the library in New Buffalo further down the road along Lake Michigan.  The library too had been closed for months.

The sculptures were a welcome antidote to all the political signs that took over the landscape throughout the state.  Halloween decorations provided some relief too.

And all the innovative pumpkin displays.  

I greatly look forward to my next ride post-election when hopefully these divisive distractions will be history. They couldn’t help but undermine the usual escapism that going off on one’s bike provides.  

I could somewhat preoccupy myself with various podcasts.  I had fallen behind during The Tour de France when my podcast-listening was dominated by those devoted to The Tour.  There are quite a few.  I had limited myself to four of those offering daily stage reports during The Tour—those of Lance Armstrong, Bradley Wiggins, Johan Bruyneel and another featuring two English and a French journalist, supplemented by Randy’s weekly podcast.

While I cycled around Michigan I went back to the Cycling Tips daily Tour podcast, allowing me to relive The Tour and gain another perspective on The Race.  Among its five voices was a Dutch woman who gave a distinct female perspective.  She surmised that last year’s Tour winner, the young Colombian Egan Bernal, may have been struggling this year because he had recently broken up with his girl friend of five years, a fact that no one else had brought up.

During a post-Tour podcast on the World Championships, won in dramatic fashion by the French rider Julian Alaphilippe, this Dutch journalist said she had been watching the French broadcast, where Alaphilippe’s girl friend, Marion Rouse, a former French national champion, was a commentator.  Rouse was so overcome by emotion when her boy friend was about to become World Champion she couldn’t speak during the final three miles of the race as Alaphilippe held off the chasers. The Dutch journalist kept hoping she’d hear Rouse yelling encouragement or erupting in glee at his victory, but Rouse couldn’t bring herself to utter a word. 

Though many called this year’s Tour one of the most exciting ever, the Cycling Tips website had far fewer hits this year compared to last year when Alaphalippe animated The Race on a daily basis.  That is until this year’s dramatic time trial on the penultimate stage when its numbers exploded, with the cycling community wanting to read about Pogcar’s spectacular and unanticipated seizing of the Yellow Jersey from Roglic.

Though I needed to replace my rear tire during my ride around Michigan, I didn’t suffer a single flat or any mechanical malfunction.  I went three weeks without a drink with ice, a marked contrast to my June ride when I’d stop two or three times a day at a service station or convenience store to avail myself of their self-serve soda and ice machines.  Not once did I stop at such a store for any reason this fall, not even to fill my water bottles or take a break. That may be why only twice did someone offer me money this time in contrast to a dozen or more on my June ride. 

The second came a couple days ago when I was kneeling beside my bike outside a Walmart making room for provisions.  A young Hispanic woman snuck up on me and tried to give me a five dollar bill.  That I could decline, unlike the bag I didn’t realize contained a stash of coins that someone presented me earlier in the trip.  Some cyclists bemoan the hostility they bring out in motorists.  I prefer to dwell upon the goodwill I draw from those I encounter.  I can almost use that as justification for these meanderings—to bring out the good in others.  I’m not sure when I’ll have the next opportunity in these times of the Covid, but it won’t be soon enough.  

For the first time in years I have no winter travel plans.  I could be reduced to a winter ride in Florida finishing off its slate of Carnegies.  I gathered six this past February on my ride from Miami to New Orleans after riding from Uruguay to Guyana.  I only have four more to get to there to complete the state.  I’ve only completed four states so far—Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Colorado, even though I’ve been to Carnegies in 36 of the 48 states that have at least one.  The fourteen new ones on this trip brought my total to 829 in the US and 871 world wide.  Only 1,470 still stand in the US, so I’m more than halfway to seeing them all.

St. Joseph, Michigan

 

When I returned to my bike after walking around the Allegan Carnegie, another dandy with the unique feature of an off-center entry, a police officer was waiting for me.  He was the grandfatherly type and was more welcoming than wary, observing, “It looks like you're traveling.”  It was my first encounter with someone wearing a badge and carrying a gun on this trip.  They can often have an attitude of “what are you doing here” and “the sooner you clear out, the better,” but that wasn’t the case this time.

Seemingly being itinerant earns me attention from the kind-hearted offering money, but also attention from the enforcers of the law considering me a suspicious figure.  None is more offensive than the other, equal representations of how unenlightened the masses are to the noble pursuit of traveling by bicycle. 

This enforcer was more curious than suspicious, and was happy to engage in conversation after I explained I was riding around Michigan visiting Carnegie Libraries.  He wasn’t aware the library behind us was a Carnegie, as there was no plaque acknowledging its status and only “Public Library” in a florid script on its facade adding to the library’s luster.  If he had been a little more observant he might have noticed “Historic Carnegie Entrance” in small print on the door, though it was no longer the actual entrance to the greatly expanded library.

He could somewhat relate to my endeavor, as he said he had ridden his bike six miles the day before, but not on the job, as his force didn’t have a bicycle contingent.  The state police actually had a lone bike for an officer to patrol festivals and other large local gatherings.

I asked the officer if I needed to lock my bike when I went into the library with the police station across the street and a Mug Shots Coffeehouse down the street.  He said, “Probably not, but I always advise people to err on the side of caution.”  

A few minutes later after I had settled in at a table looking out on to the Kalamazoo River the director of the library came by to give me a tour of the Carnegie portion of the library.  She too was of the wary sort and advised me not to leave my belongings unattended.  But just as I felt no concern about leaving my bike unlocked in this small town, I felt it perfectly safe to leave my helmet and handlebar bag and charging Garmin on the table I had been sitting at.

The original library wasn’t open to the public, as it was only used for meetings and special occasions.  It was a typical large single room with a high ceiling and large windows. An elevator and furnace and auxiliary wall had been added and the light fixtures had been replaced by replicas true to the 1914 originals.  Though the books and circ desk and tables and chairs had all been removed, replaced by a scattering of contemporary chairs for meetings, the room still radiated that Carnegie aura.  

The Carnegie portrait had been moved to the new library, but there were portraits of the three longest-serving librarians, including the first, a stern-faced woman who held the post from 1904 to 1948, beginning her tenure ten years before the Carnegie.  My escort said she looked just like her grandmother.  She said the librarian she grew up with in a small town near the Carnegie in Owosso, which she visited for story-times when she was little, was the kindly, rather than task-master, type. 

This library had had two large additions, the latest offering a wall of high windows looking out over the Kalamazoo River.  The librarian was concerned that the beauty of the view might be altered, as a nearby dam was soon to be removed, as it was deteriorating and could give way as had those dams around Edenville.  It was cheaper to remove the dam than to repair it.

I had thirty-five miles of superlative riding through forests on lightly travelled roads to the next Carnegie in South Haven on Lake Michigan.  The western half of the state, away from all the automotive towns radiating out from Detroit, have a minimum of factories and minimum of traffic on the secondary roads, making for the finest of cycling.  I can wake up feeling lucky that I get to begin my day with a bike ride and feel equally lucky that I get to end my day with a bike ride and luckier yet that I get to spend the rest of the day on the bike with a library or two thrown in.  I have to ask, “Have I died and gone to heaven?”

Though I had visited the South Haven Carnegie with Janina, it was a genuine gem worth another visit, especially via bike.  It had long ago become the home of the South Haven Center for the Arts.  The twin inscriptions of  “Open to All” over the door and “Dedicated to the Advancement of Learning” below the roofline still applied. 

Twenty-five miles south following the shoreline the final Carnegie of these travels awaited me in St. Joseph right on the Red Arrow Highway just two blocks from Lake Michigan.  It had a corner diagonal entrance, Kirk’s favorite.  It now housed an architectural firm and another tenant and was called “The Library Building.”  

I have been a little more conscious of pushing deeper into the forest away from the road the past couple of nights, as people have semi-seriously been advising me to me wary of the Michigan Militia.  There was a chance if they spotted a tent in the woods they might use it for target practice.

Friends I visited after Kirk in Battle Creek, my old roommate of fifteen years, Debbie, the long-time manager of the Rapid Transit Bike Shop in Wicker Park, and her partner Gary, were among those expressing some concern, as one of the thirteen recently arrested for plotting to kidnap the governor, had been photographed with their sheriff.  Debbie and Gary had been living at the Circle Pines Retreat outside of Delton since June of last year, deep in the woods on a 286-acre parcel of land.  They were among a handful of year-round residents making improvements on this property that hosts a summer camp for kids and  gatherings for others seeking some tranquility to recharge their batteries.  Among their projects was installing a sawmill and a solar-powered kiln to cure the wood.

Debbie had spoken of Circle Pines with great fondness and near reverence ever since I had known her.  She had been a camper there some forty years ago and continued to return year after year and had been on its board of directors for years.  She and Gary felt privileged to have the opportunity to take up residence there.  It was easy to understand why.

Battle Creek, Michigan

 

The Carnegie Library in Portland is a beauty, an A-plus despite an addition to its rear. It was a rare addition that enhanced the Carnegie experience, as it included a large reading area with cushy den chairs looking out through towering curved windows upon nothing but forest.  It could have been the dream den in some wealthy industrialist’s trophy house, complete with a fireplace.  The back wall of the magnificent native-stone of the original building could be seen over one’s shoulder looking back from the den in the addition.  Patrons were still welcome to enter through the original entrance up a set of stairs, though a sloping ramp had been added to one side.

The library was the crowning glory of this small town that had been uncontaminated by present-day franchises, maintaining its idyllic aura of by-gone times.  I could breathe deeply and freely, unburdened of current concerns in such a setting.  All was fine other than those out with their leaf-blowers, one of the worst inventions ever, marring the quiet tranquility.  Whatever happened to the joy of raking?  How had the invasion of leaf-blowers happened even here?  They are among the many culprits of the rampant obesity plaguing the land.  Each of those wielding the noxious blowers had bulging bellies.

It would have been nice to linger all day at this library, but I had fifty miles to ride to Battle Creek and Kirk.  I was lucky it wasn’t sixty-five miles, as I had ridden an extra fifteen miles the day before in the rain, forcing me to stay in a motel, rather than retreating to the forest when the rain began at 5:30, ninety minutes before dark.  I was hoping the rain would pass before long so I could dry out and camp, but it was not to be.  I was too cold and soaking wet to camp and was lucky enough to be in a town large enough to have a motel at dark—Ionia. 

On to Battle Creek I was able to avoid the busy numbered roads and take quiet byways, some unpaved, through colorful fall foliage.  I was out of the pines, so all the trees were turning.  My route took me through Vermontville, settled in the 1830s by a religious group from Vermont.  With the abundance of maple trees, it holds an annual maple syrup festival, which Kirk attends whenever he can.

A strong wind from the south reduced me to my slowest daily average speed for the trip, just ten miles per hour.  But I still arrived at Kirk’s well before dark, on the outskirts of Battle Creek on Limit Street, the former limit of the Cereal City.  His boxer Digby was delighted to see me, maybe remembering me from my last visit in April of 2018.  I arrived in an ice storm then.  It was too inclement to camp, so I was happy to rectify that this time, especially after having to sleep indoors the night before.  

Kirk had a heaping spaghetti dinner awaiting me and a line-up of football and baseball to watch as we ate and chatted.  He knows cinema as well as anyone I know having served as the projectionist and manager of the Facets cinematheque in Chicago for a couple of decades. He was happy to report movie theaters had reopened in Michigan this past weekend and he was able to have his  first movie-going experience in months.  If he had been truly desperate he could have driven an hour south to Indiana where in the border towns ninety per cent of the movie-goers were from Michigan.  

I was hoping I might be able to join Kirk for an hour or two of making food deliveries, as he has been working for Grub Hub and Door Dash, but I had no energy left for that, nor did he care to leave me.  Like me with the bicycle messengering, he started delivering just for for the fun of it.  He was visiting his sister in North Carolina for Thanksgiving last year and ended up staying through Christmas and was looking for something to keep himself busy.  He enjoyed it so much, when he returned to Battle Creek he checked to see if Door Dash had established itself there and was surprised that it had.  Grub Hub came in a bit later, which he prefers, as it pays much better, guaranteeing at least $11 per hour, though he always does considerably better than that.

Even though he grew up in Battle Creek his deliveries have greatly expanded his knowledge of the area.  Most of his deliveries are from McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Red Lobster and Wendy’s, sometimes as little as an order of fries or a coffee from Starbucks.   When he receives an order he knows exactly what it will pay, including the tip and mileage.  If it is too little, as happens with Door Dash three dollar payments, he can refuse it.   

With the pandemic he just leaves the delivery at the door of the recipient and lets them know it has arrived.  With a business he must take it in.  His favorite delivery is to a strip club where the strippers, whose livelihood is centered on tips, always give him a twenty dollar tip.  They generally order a couple slabs of ribs and come out in their skimpy outfits to receive the order.

At the outbreak of the pandemic business was so hectic Kirk was kept out on the job much longer than he would have liked, sometimes with a backlog of five or six orders after he had been working for eight hours and was ready to call it a day.  The job was losing some of its luster, turning into a job, but it is no longer so hectic so he can enjoy it once again as I enjoyed the bicycle messengering.  Before the pandemic he had to open each bag of food he was picking up to verify it’s contents, a time-consuming effort.  Now he doesn’t have to take the time to rummage through the bags he’s picking up, just grab them and head out.

Digby always accompanies him on the job, so he has no concerns of making deliveries in shady parts of town late at night.   He’s never offered food at any of his pick-ups though if he’s given a bad address and the right one can’t be found he can keep the food.  Unfortunately the couple times that has happened he wasn’t interested in the food and lost time while headquarters tried to find the correct address.  And time is money, even when one isn’t doing it for the money.  

Sparta, Michigan

 

Halfway between the Carnegies in Cadillac and Sparta I took a small detour to pass through the long-forgotten town of Idlewild, the largest resort town in the US for African-Americans for fifty years until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation and freed blacks from around  the country from having to make the effort to get to this out-of-the-way cluster of small lakes in the northern forests of Michigan.  

This once thriving town, founded in 1912 and comprised solely of black-owned businesses, has become a virtual ghost town.  I had this once “Black Eden” virtually to myself as I biked it’s network of residential streets, many unpaved.  There was no one to be seen other than an occasional Black out on foot.  There wasn’t an open store.  The relatively new museum (Historical and Cultural Center) on the outskirts of the town had a sign saying “Closed for the Summer.”  It at least provided a detailed map of the town.

One could tell what homes were presently inhabited by the Biden signs out front.  No Trump signs here. I could thank Jeff H. of Chicago’s “Reader” for suggesting a visit if I was nearby, as I had never heard of it.  Nor had Janina or even Rick, who knows Michigan like the back of his hand.  

It was an otherworldly experience cycling around this largely abandoned town reflecting on its past, that such a place was necessary, but also that it was a place of pride for those who built it and the thousands who had a joyous time there romping in the cool waters of the lakes and horseback riding in the woods and letting it all hang out in the clubs at night and glorying in the floor shows that rivaled anything Las Vegas could offer. 

Plaques scattered about town in front of various buildings and on a walking tour around the largest of the lakes expanded upon its past and what a draw it was for black entertainers including Aretha Franklin, The Four Tops, Sammy Davis Jr.and Louis Armstrong.  Their performances attracted large crowds of blacks and whites, who sat side-by-side.  An Idlewild Review toured the country during the off-season, spreading the word of the resort.

It is still Edenesque, more forest than town with lovely lakes and beaches and dozens of cabins waiting to be renovated.  The most modern complex of buildings is a retirement home, presumably the largest employer in the town.

Jeff also recommended the Hartwick Pines State Park twenty-five miles south of Gaylord, noted for patches of old growth trees.  It was another exemplary experience cycling through its majestic forest of trees.  If a hurricane force wind happened to come through, there might be a neckerchief to be found around it’s entry.

It was a good day’s ride through mostly forested terrain to Cadillac, another town nestled around a cluster of lakes. It’d been three days since I’d coseyed up to a Carnegie.  It was nice to once again feel that surge of pleasure at its first sight, even though this one had let itself go.  It was in desperate need of a make-over.  It had been replaced in 1969 and its next tenant, the police department, had done little to maintain it during its eight years residence.  The biggest travesty was letting the steps to the entry deteriorate and rather than fixing them wiping them out so one wouldn’t have to walk up steps to get into the building.  The entry had been replaced by a window, greatly undermining the beauty and integrity of the building.

It’s been a historical museum since the police left, without the funds to return it to its former glory.  It’s dome is its most notable feature, so much so that the museum’s slogan is “Your history under the dome.”  It had recently been repaired and repainted, unlike the pair of columns flanking the original entrance.  They are badly in need of being painted, as rust is showing through.  

The standard Carnegie portrait greets those mounting the steps to the museum entrance.  It had been amended by a feminist faction with a tiny clipping of a photo of his wife, who he married later in life at the age of fifty-one in 1887 four years after his library-giving began.  She was twenty-one years younger and outlived him by twenty-seven years, dying in 1946.

The following day a couple hours after my time in Idlewild I stopped at a Dollar Store to restock my ramen and take advantage of its electric outlet and WiFi.  With a temperature of 60 I had the rare opportunity to sit outside and eat a peanut butter sandwich while checking my email and the football scores.  And it gave someone an opportunity to make me a charity case, even though the discerning eye would have realized my attire of tights and long-sleeved Garmin winter-jersey, a hand-me-down from Christian Vande Velde, defined me as something other than an indigent with no place to live. 

It wasn’t long before an SUV pulled up in front of me and a kindly lady, after rummaging around in her glove compartment, got out and  approached me with a small cloth pouch.  At first I thought she was offering me a handmade mask, as it had a couple of strings to draw it closed.  But no, it was a bag with about a pound of coins in it—11 quarters, 42 dimes, 19 nickels and 86 pennies, many corroded as if they’d been confined to the bag for quite some time. It wasn’t as much as a similar stash a guy gave me in Ohio earlier this summer, but still a tidy sum, well more than a day’s expenses. Five minutes later she reappeared with two bags of groceries saying “God bless you.”  

They contained two bags of trail mix, beef jerky, cheese sticks, two mini-apple pies and two bottles of water.  I had to struggle to make room for it, as the day before in Cadillac I scored big at an Aldis, just the third I had come upon in this trip.  I harvested four one-pound containers of soup (three chicken-noodle and one tomato), a bag of Halloween candy and a dozen packages of fudge peanut butter clusters.  I could have gotten a year’s worth of the clusters, but that’s all I had space for. The clusters were premium fuel, each in the packs of six provided one hundred calories, just fifty calories less than the chicken noodle soup.  I was sorry there was only one tomato soup, as it contained four hundred calories. The bag of Halloween candy contained an assortment of mini-Snickers  and Milky Ways and bags of M&Ms.

I had a similar bonanza  at the first Aldis I came upon in Owosso.  It offered up several dozen one-pound bags of a deluxe chocolate-coconut granola.  I only took five,  some of which I still have, along with a pound of Colby cheese, four bananas and two quarts of pineapple juice.  The one time I had loads of capacity was at the Gaylord Aldis when I was visiting Rick, but the dumpster had just been emptied.  I had been hoping to come back to Rick’s place with a week’s worth of food for him and Jeanie, as I regularly do for Janina and I.

Twenty miles before Sparta I said hello once again to the Carnegie in Newaygo, which I had visited two years ago when Janina and I were driving up to Traverse City for Michael Moore’s film festival. It had had no more additions than the several it had already had to its back and sides.

The Carnegie in Sparta also had had a significant addition to its side and rear, but its original building retained its regal splendor.  The building didn’t have Carnegie on it, but a sign out front identified it as a Carnegie.

It had greatly reduced hours, not opening up until one on Mondays and Wednesdays and open only four days of the week, so I had to sit outside to use its WiFi and drain my battery.  Hopefully I’ll be able to gain entry to the next Carnegie in Portland, north of Battle Creek, and good ‘ol Kirk from Facets.

Gaylord, Michigan

 

Just as we did in April of 2018 Rick and I met up at a small town library so he could escort me the final twenty-five miles to his home on some of his favorite, lightly-traveled roads. The last time he led me into Lansing, back when it wasn’t under threat from white supremacists. 

This time our destination was his girlfriend’s cottage on the shore of Lake Otsego, outside of Gaylord, 190 miles north of Lansing and 60 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge way north in the state.  The library in Lowells wasn’t our designated meeting point, rather it was wherever we happened to meet up as Rick cycled towards me knowing the route I was coming in on.  I stopped at the dinky library in Lowells, a room in this small town’s offices, to email Rick my location.  Not ten minutes later Rick walked into the library, having spotted my bike out front, not having received my message.

I’d had a wonderful morning ride of twenty-five miles on F97 with hardly a vehicle passing.  I could well understand why Rick was so enamored with this road, enough so that he had biked the 190 miles up to Gaylord from Lansing three times this summer, then driving back to Lansing with Jeanie, his girlfriend of twenty-five years.  He used to make the ride in one day, taking no more than twelve hours, thanks to a lifetime of conditioning that at one time back in the ‘70s had him strong enough to qualify for the national championships on the road and on the track and have Olympic and even Tour de France aspirations.  

He can still ride with the Big Dogs, but rather than making a day of the nearly two hundred mile ride between his residences, he divides it into two, carrying a tent and sleeping bag so he can camp halfway.  His three rides this summer are his most in one summer.  Thanks to Covid allowing him to conduct his business on Zoom and on-line, he had spent more time in Gaylord this summer than he had the previous ten summers combined.

It wasn’t that the biking was so much better up there than in Lansing, as in the summer months the roads are clogged with vacationers, many in grotesquely large “McMansion” RVs.  Even worse are the reckless locals in their black pickup trucks, who he fears all want to run him off the road. He’d love to carry a baseball bat so he could swing it at their heads, just barely missing, so they’d know how he felt when they pass him so closely.  The perils of the road are outweighed by the cozy comfort of Jeanie’s long-time family cottage and its million-dollar view out over the six-mile by one-mile lake. It is nestled right up to the lake and has one of its few beaches a few steps from it’s porch.  

The view to the left isn’t so fabulous, as it is of a recently built, inordinately large house on two lots with a sprawling driveway that takes up a good part of the property to accommodate a three-car garage.  It was made an even worse eyesore with most of the trees on the property having been cut down, in contrast to just about every other residence on the lake clustered with trees. “A Detroiter,” Rick said, just like the neighbor to the right, though that one had a much more civil mindset, kind enough to let them use their WiFi before Rick and Jeanie installed their own.  

Like all the cottages ringing the lake these were close enough that when Rick and Jeanie were on their porch, they could engage in conversation with their neighbors without having to raise their voices.  In the summer months when the lake was crowded Rick had to try to block out all the noise from the neighbor’s socializing along with the near non-stop jet skiers on the lake and leaf-blowers and lawn-mowers.  

Summer was actually his least favorite time to be at their retreat.  He was particularly aggravated by all the “nature-fakers” holidaying there who were always in a hurry to get somewhere or do something and were afflicted by that disease of the “me” in America. They had come to be in nature, but didn’t know how to do it.

Our first ten miles of cycling together on F97 couldn’t have been finer, other than  a three-mile stretch of badly pocked road, as we were able to ride side-by-side chatting away with only two non-aggressive vehicles intruding upon us.  It is hard to find such a road anywhere, at least in the paved universe.   I was in a good mood as I had finally found a Michigan license plate earlier in the day to add to my collection.  It wasn’t the version with the “Pure Michigan” slogan, but it would do.  Rick said he couldn’t recall ever seeing a license plate along the road in his thousands of miles of biking all over the state.  I was delighted to hear him say that, as it was a good omen that I’d find another while riding with him.

And indeed I did the next day, and it was a “Pure” one, when we took a ride to a nearby ski resort on the fringe of what Rick calls the “Otsego Alps.”  Rick rode right past it, not attuned to the offerings of the road.  He was similar to Chris, who I rode with in June.  He hadn’t spotted a single neckerchief in the 9,000 miles he had ridden up to that point on his trip.  But after I gathered a couple in our time together, his eyes were opened and now I hear from him regularly about his latest find as he nears the completion of his ride on the Oregon coast, about to finish up his nine-month circuit of the States at his starting point south of San Francisco.  I’ve gathered three neckerchiefs so far on this trip, including a take on the flag with rows of white stars on three diagonal strips of red and blue.

The road does provide.  I mentioned earlier how I wished I’d brought along heavier gloves with the temperature in just the thirties some mornings. Since then I have found two strays that will do.  They are both left-handed, but one is large enough that I can flip it over and fit my thumb in the thumb slot and little finger in the far right slot.

There is a minimum of aluminum cans along the road, as Michigan has a ten-cent bounty on them.  I didn’t realize that until I noticed a cluster of disheveled folk with shopping carts full of cans gathered in a corner outside a Walmart.  I thought they were an enclave of homeless sheltering themselves from the cold wind.  But then I noticed one gain entry, taking his cart in to feed his cans into a machine.  Since then I’ve spotted lines of people returning cans and bottles outside of grocery stores.

The Treetops ski resort Rick took me to was less than ten miles north of Gaylord.  It didn’t offer much more than two hundred vertical feet, but it had several lifts and a nice selection of trails.  The back road we took to the summit had us straining when it’s twelve per cent grade suddenly ramped up to eighteen per cent.  The views were exceptional out over the colorful forest.  

A golf course adjoined the ski resort.  It was hard for us to fathom why so many guys would want to be hitting golf balls on a driving range when they could be riding bikes, getting their blood flowing, feeling alert and alive and taking in an ever unfolding panorama of fabulous scenery on this gorgeous fall day.  Standing around whacking at balls seemed like a silly endeavor, as they no doubt regarded us riding bikes.  Hadn’t we heard of the automobile?

Over dinner Jeanie lamented that if not for the virus they would be in England.  Rick could lament the cancellation of the 50th DALMAC ride, a four-day ride from Lansing to the Mackinac Bridge that attracts 1,500 riders every year, and that he has ridden almost as many times as anyone.  It was started by a Michigan legislator, Dick Allen, a bicycle advocate.  He gathered a handful of friends in 1971 to “ride all the way to the bridge to prove that bikes and cars could share Michigan’s roads safely.” It has grown considerably since then.

Rick had been on its board of directors and caused a ruckus one year when he refused to ride with the mandatory safety flag on it stick, electing to just have it dangle out of his rear jersey pocket.  A rules-stickler wanted to ban him from the ride.  That led to a “Let Rick Ride” campaign that caused such a stir that one need only type those three words into google search to find out all about it.

As always, it was an enlightening and entertaining time spent with Rick and well worth the swing up to Gaylord into the cold north wind.