Atlantic, Iowa

  

Unlike my previous excursions on Amtrak this year (to Little Rock and back from Baton Rouge), I had to share a seat on my latest trip, this one to Omaha.  The train was fully booked and seats were assigned.  It was no hardship, as it wasn’t an over-nighter for me, just nine hours, arriving in Omaha at eleven p.m.

The mask mandate had been lifted and most passengers were revealing their full face.  The conductors though remained masked.  The conductor making the announcements may have been auditioning to host the Oscars.  As we approached the Mississippi, he gave the startling news that we were about to cross the Atlantic Ocean and would be arriving in Cuba shortly.  

At the stations where the train stopped long enough for passengers to step out for a smoke, referred to as “fresh air” and “stretch your legs” breaks, he said that passengers were welcome “to try out some dance moves.”  One of the smokers was excited about our arrival in Omaha, and said, “I’ve never been to Nebraska and I’ve been to thirty-seven of the fifty.”

I too was eager to set foot in Omaha and to take to its streets on my bike.  I’d passed through many a time when taking the California Zephr to and from Colorado, but had never made it my destination.  I would have disembarked in Council Bluffs in Iowa, just across the Missouri River, but the train didn’t stop there.  I’d just have to bike back over the river for the first of seventeen Carnegie libraries awaiting me in the northwest corner of Iowa.  

There are another eighty-one scattered about the state, all of which I’ve visited, many in the fall of 2019, except one on the campus of Upper Iowa University in Fayette in the northeast corner of the state.  I plan to get to all of them on this outing along with a couple dozen more in Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota just over the border from Iowa in thIs four corners region, though Nebraska doesn’t quite extend all the way to Minnesota making an official”four corners” as with Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

The highlight of the trip might be a visit to Elk Horn in Iowa.  It doesn’t have a Carnegie, but is the small farming community where my father grew up and is home to the only Danish museum in the US.  It’s six miles north of Interstate 80.  I can vaguely recall visiting my grandparents there in my youth, the last time when I was twelve, nearly sixty years ago.  My strongest memory is the steep hills leading into the town and thinking it would be fun to bike down them.  I’m finally going to get that chance.

The small Amtrak station in Omaha remained open all night, but it was too brightly lit and had no secluded corners and no WiFi, so it offered no temptation to linger until daylight.  Instead I had the pleasure of finding a place to pitch my tent in the midnight hour. I had no worries whatsoever when I set out from the station eager for what would reveal itself as a place to camp, elated that “now the adventure starts,”  fully confident I’d find a nook to pitch my tent. 

There was a patch of wilderness just across a pedestrian and bicyclist bridge to Council Bluffs.  I feared it might be steep terrain, a bluff, so I kept my eyes peeled for what might offer itself on the three mile stretch to the bridge.  There were some possibilities at a construction site and amongst some trees along the train tracks by a vast empty parking lot by a stadium, but I wasn’t so desperate to avail myself of them, and deny myself the pleasure of riding over the Missouri in the dark.

It actually wasn’t all that dark, as the bridge was illuminated with alternating pink and blue spot lights to show off it’s award-winning architecture.  The bridge was completed in 2008 and received the Project of the Year Award from the American Public Works Association.  “Travel and Leisure” magazine named it one of the world’s most spectacular pedestrian bridges.  It is one of the longest at 2,300 feet.  I wasn’t the only one crossing it in the midnight hour, sharing it with another cyclist and a young couple strolling along holding hands.

I was happy to see the wilderness area below the bridge as I entered Iowa was relatively flat, and was relieved that it wasn’t swampy when I ventured into it.  The ground was plenty soft.  I had no concerns of being spotted, as a fog had settled in and was still thick in the morning.  As I pedaled into downtown Council Bluffs and the Carnegie in the morning, four miles away, I kept waiting for the sun to burn off the fog giving me a clear view of the library.  It somewhat dissipated, but not fully until ten, well after my rendezvous with the library.  

Council Bluffs was a significant river front city in the early 1900s, earning it a sizable grant from Carnegie for a much more grand building than those gracing smaller towns, almost too much so.  It was now the Union Pacific Museum, though it retained “Free Public Library” high above its entrance.  

The next Carnegie was in Atlantic, forty-five miles east through quite hilly terrain awaiting to be planted.  Though my legs strained, my spirit soared, delighted to be off pedaling on roads new to me and that I pretty much had to myself. As always, I gloried in being footloose and worry-free and blessed my good fortune, especially after a retired friend who’s finding it a challenge to find things to do with his time had recently told me I was lucky to have a hobby.  Hobby!!!  Riding my bike is no hobby.  It’s my passion, my calling, my purpose, my raison d’etre.  Hobby it is not.  

But I appreciated his sentiments and do indeed consider myself lucky to have something I look forward to doing when I awake every morning.  And so it was too during my years as a bicycle messenger. That was no more of a job than biking is a hobby. As I biked in to the Loop every morning, whether rain or shine, hot or cold, I exalted at being able to ride my bike all day with purpose and at accelerated speeds. The Loop was my playground, and I was as gleeful as a kid at an amusement park as I galavanted about it all day. Hail, hail to the bicycle.

The Carnegie in Atlantic further emphasized the pleasure of being on the bike, as it brought me to another gem of a building.  Its quiet dignity lent stature to this small town and pride to every citizen that their town had such a noble structure full of books.  It still served as a library and identified itself as simply “Carnegie Library.”  Its orignal entrance had been usurped by an addition to its side in 1996.  The elevated area around the entrance was now a fenced-in picnic area.  A table with a fireplace in the background had a display of weather-related books under a “Spring Forcast” sign and a prediction of “One hundred per cent chance of reading.”  

I didn’t have the heart to tell them their “forecast“ was missing a letter.