Brainerd, Minnesota

 

And I cross the Mississippi again.  It divided Brainerd with the old part of the city to the east along with its Carnegie Library, and all the new developments, including a Walmart, to the west.  I’m closing in on its headwaters, but it’s a significant river even this far north.   It’s not quite cold enough for ice to be flowing, though I awoke to the first frost on my tent.  I’m almost as far north as Duluth, a latitude I’ll be exceeding today.

It’s unseasonably cold.  Even the locals are complaining.  It’s been forty-five degrees the past two nights when I retreated to my tent at dusk.  The wind has been blowing from the north the past six days, bringing colder and colder air.  It is due to switch today bringing some warmer southern air and a welcome tailwind. 

I’ve had to supplement my Marlboro sleeping bag with some snow pants and a down vest from a Salvation Army thrift store, as well as most of the clothes I’ve brought and the fleece blanket I bought at a Dollar Store and a slightly heartier blanket I found discarded along the road.  I checked the internet to see if it might reveal what temperature the bag is rated to, probably not even fifty degrees. Quite a few people are selling this vintage 1990 bag on eBay and Etsy, but no where could I find a temperature rating for it, not that that would make any difference. 

Usually when I crawl into my sleeping bag at night I initially warm up.  I feel no warmth from this one.  Since I know the night is only going to get colder, I save a layer or two to add later.  By morning I have no more layers other than my Goretex jacket, which I put on as I emerge into the cold.  As always, moving about warms me up.

 

Brainerd’s Carnegie was on its busy four-lane Main Street and had become a “Retirement Learning Center.”  A side entrance had been added for those seniors who would have difficulty mounting the usual dozen or so steps to the building’s entrance as is characteristic of most Carnegies.  It further embraced the norm with a quartet of columns and a pair of noble light fixtures and further distinguished itself with a mini-dome. 

I appreciated it all the more after the desecration of the Carnegie in Fergus Falls, ninety-five miles to the west. An appalling glassy addition to the front of the building was such an insult that it would almost have been better if the building had been razed rather than be subjected to such ignominy. The only saving grace was its relatively unmarred backside, which gave a hint of its former magnificence.  

 

None of the new tenants (the local newspaper, an insurance company and a law firm) would accept blame for the abomination the building had become, all claiming they had moved in after it had been plastered with the unsightly addition to its front side.  It’s unimaginable that whoever was in charge of building permits at the time would have allowed this to happen.  

The city ought to be raising funds to buy the building and return it to its former glory.  It was high on the magnificence scale of Carnegies with a rare arched backside to go along with its dome.   It is now an eyesore and embarrassment that has to appall one and all.  I have come upon a handful of other irresponsible and shameful additions or alterations of Carnegies, some that have been totally swallowed up by an addition, but nothing as repulsive as this, as hints of the building’s nobility have been allowed to peek through. 

My visit to Fergus Falls wasn’t all bad, as it offered up a thrift store on its outskirts, so I didn’t have to go searching for one.  It provided me with a down vest and bright purple snow pants that any Viking fan would be proud to wear to a game in winters arctic temperatures. I was lucky to get them for $1.99.  They have kept at least my bottom half toasty warm.  My visit to the store wasn’t without mishap, as the zipper of the first down vest I tried on made it up to my throat but wouldn’t unzip.  One of the sales ladies had to reach up to my throat with a pair of scissors to cut it off, first asking if if I trusted her to be careful.  It would have been a disaster had I not tested it and been shackled with it later in my tent.  It was so tight I couldn’t pull it over my head. 

My seventy-nine miles yesterday put me over 10,000 for the year on Strava, though I would have passed it several days before if not for two or three hundred missed miles.  I had been on a pace for 15,000 miles for the year but less than two hundred miles during my month in Telluride derailed that effort unless I extend this trip longer than planned. That’s not likely this far north with it only getting colder,