Antigonish, Nova Scotia

 

Finally, on Day Twenty-six of these travels, I availed myself of a motel.  I held off as long as I could until I was beset by the twin demons of a temperature in the low forties and rain.  The rain came right on schedule a little after noon and was forecast to continue into the night.  I reached the motel I was targeting forty miles down the road just as the rain was commencing.  It was barely a drizzle, not enough to normally derail me, but I wasn’t about to mistrust the prediction of how long it would last, as forecasters don’t much get it wrong these days.

The day had started out with a patchy blue sky and no ominous clouds on the horizon, so I thought maybe the rain had diverted, but knowing the accuracy of the forecast, that was mere wishful thinking, though I did want to have an afternoon off to tend to a host of chores I’d been neglecting for days, including laying all my gear out and letting it thoroughly dry.

The motel offered breakfast, but since I wished a dawn start the next day before breakfast was served, the Asian attendant let me have my breakfast early.  She was most generous asking me how much of each item I wanted, so I got three hard-boiled eggs, two bagels, two cups filled with Raisin Bran, two packets of oatmeal, milk, orange juice, and several containers of peanut butter, cream cheese and jam.  I could feast.

I had a bunch of wash to do and tended to that first so it would have a chance to dry.  It will feel especially nice to put on clean tights in the morning.  I was hoping dumping out my panniers would reveal some food I had forgotten about.  I still had two emergency energy bars I had started with, but no more.  It was hard to tell whether my various items were a bit damp or just cold.

In the parking lot of the sprawling motel was a mini-U-Haul truck.  I had seen many of them on Cape Breton, going in both directions.  Evidently there is a high turnover of labor in Sydney.  Someone asked me when I was headed in that direction if I was planning on spending the winter there, assuming I was another job-seeker drawn by an abundance of jobs.

I found a secondary road with virtually no traffic for fifty miles on my return from Sydney between the two main highways mostly along Grand Lake.  I could truly soak in the pristine scenery.  At the tip of the lake past the town of Grand Narrows I had the option of taking a ferry across Little Narrows or continuing along another lake.  Taking the ferry would lead me to a town with a Tony Hortons, my only opportunity for Wi-Fi for the day, but there was so little traffic I wasn’t sure the ferry would be operating or how often.  The decision was made for me when I came to the intersection where I had to make my choice, as a ragged sign reported the ferry was operating five kilometers up the road.

I had further confirmation when a couple of cars passed me.  The narrows were so narrow  the ferry zipped back and forth whenever a vehicle showed up.  I had no wait, arriving just after two cars had boarded, and in a couple of minutes I was across and back riding.

I wasn’t in dire need of charging at Tony Hortons, as I had stopped at a rural fire station that had an outside outlet.  The station also had a Little Free Library version of a pantry of food.  It was well stocked.  No one stopped while I was there or even drove past.  I was tempted to take a box of breakfast bars to let those maintaining it know that it was being used, but left them for someone else to make that gesture.

While confined to the motel, as I did my wash and other chores, I listened to a tv station broadcasting the proceedings of the parliament in Ottawa.  There were lots of complaints about the price of food.  One representative said his constituents were crossing into the US for their groceries.  I can attest food is more expensive here.  Chocolate milk is double the price of what I pay back home and cereal too and that’s discounting the exchange rate of $1.39 for a US dollar.  Bananas surprisingly are cheaper.  Prime Minister Trudeau had summoned the CEOs of the five largest food chains to put on a show of dealing with the problem.  

Another complaint was the price of heating oil for homes.  The Maritime provinces had waived the considerable tax Trudeau had imposed on it in response to climate change and representatives of other provinces wanted the same benefit.  One representative was reprimanded by calling Trudeau by name. Evidently there is a rule that one can make personal attacks.  One can refer to others only by the title of their office.  There wasn’t a single mention of Israel or Gaza or Palestinians.  Among the dozens of channels at my disposal was one from Boston that was broadcasting Monday Night Football. 

Sydney, Nova Scotia

Wikipedia generally gives the addresses of Carnegie Libraries, which is very helpful, especially when they no longer serve as a library.  It didn’t list the addresses thought of the two in Sydney, just the year the funds were granted, both in 1903, and the architects of each.  Though both were color-coded as still serving as libraries, I wanted to be sure I reached Sydney during their hours when they were open in case there were any complications.  I was set to arrive in Sydney on a Saturday, when smaller town libraries aren’t always open or have limited hours.  Sydney being a sprawling port city with a population of 30,000 thankfully had Saturday hours of ten to four-thirty.

I began the day sixty-two miles east of Sydney.  I had been held under seventy miles the past two days by hilly terrain, which had the possibility of relenting as my route followed the shoreline of scenic Bras d’Or lake. 

But it was still up and down terrain with several six per cent climbs of a mile over high humps gaining three hundred feet each, so I had to limit my breaks and keep plugging away.  I made it to the library with an hour to spare.  At first glance it looked like another Carnegie that had been disfigured/mutilated by multiple-additions as three of the four sides were of somewhat modern brick and glass.  There didn’t seem to be a single feature that made it a historic building other than possibly a back wall of plain red brick that might have dated to 1903.

I asked the pair of librarians at the circulation desk if this library had been funded by Carnegie.  It hadn’t, as it was built in 1960 and replaced a library that had been in the courthouse that had burned down in the ‘50s.  They knew nothing of there having been a Carnegie Library in Sydney.  That was deflating, but I was greatly relieved that I had arrived when the library was open to give me the opportunity to find the Carnegie.

I told them of what I knew from Wikipedia.  The younger male librarian said he vaguely remembered reading a while ago that the city had been granted a Carnegie, but it had never been built.  Meanwhile, both he and the older woman librarian went at their computers trying to solve this mystery.  A third librarian joined in on the search on a third computer, all there at the circulation desk.  They found it highly unlikely that there had been two libraries and speculated that since the two grants were two months apart that the second superseded the first.  One of them found that the architect of the second grant listed his design of the library among his work, though there was no picture of it, the first confirmation that there had been a Carnegie.

The woman librarian disappeared and returned with a manila folder full of yellowing newspaper clippings from the time when the present library was built.  As I rummaged through them I came upon an article titled, “The library that was not built.”  

At the same time the librarian who was on the trail of the architect of the library discovered a 1910 court case before the Nova Scotia Supreme Court of the City of Sydney versus Chappell Brothers and Company with the architect seeking to collect his fee for designing the library.   The three-page judgement that the librarian printed out for me revealed that the city had reneged on its pledge to build the library.

At last, we’d gotten to the bottom of the mystery of the library that wasn’t.  It was almost as thrilling as actually finding the library.  The thrill overcame any feeling that I had wasted a week biking to see something that wasn’t there, as it got me to Nova Scotia and a couple of license plates as souvenirs, including a battered bright yellow commercial one that I rarely saw.  I could only chuckle that this long ride had seemingly been for naught, though no bike ride is ever for naught.

The writer began his story wondering how many citizens of Sydney knew that just after the turn of the century the town had been offered $15,000 by “none other than the late Andrew Carnegie, the famous American industrialist and philanthropist” to build a library in Sydney “long before the era of regional libraries.” It was a good question to ask, as none of these librarians, sixty some years after the article had been written, knew it.

The article stated that the town council gave the go-ahead to purchase a plot of land for the library and pledged an annual sum of $1,500 maintain it.  It went on to say, “Then the roof fell in…one is left in utter bewilderment as to why this splendid and advanced project went up into thin air.  Equally bewildering is why the good town fathers of the day refused to pay for the plans and specifications which had been called for and approved and adopted by the library committee.”

The article then explained that the town refused to pay the architect for his plans forcing him to take the town to court to recover his fee of $426.63.  The court granted him $250.  The town appealed to a higher court, which sided with the architect ordering the town to pay him the full $426.63 plus expenses.  The article concluded, “The architect got his money, but the town didn’t get its library.  Perhaps some student of Sydney’s history might be able to furnish us with the behind the scenes story of the building that was never built.”

It had to have been a highly divisive issue at the time between the readers and non-readers of the community with the non-readers winning out not wishing to raise their taxes a modicum to support the library, no doubt infuriating the readers when they thought they had won the battle to have a temple of a library that would still be standing to this day.  It had usually been women’s groups that spearheaded the drive for a library.  One can well imagine their anger and fury when the male elected officials reneged on their initial promise of accepting Carnegie’s funds and the conditions that came with it of providing land for the library and an annual maintenance fund of ten per cent of his grant.  Several times as we unraveled this story, all three librarians muttered it sounded like current times, as they could use further funding, which the community is disinclined to contribute.

A further mystery is why Wikipedia bungled this issue and that no one has righted it. As we googled Canadian Carnegie libraries, of which there are 125, or rather 123, the several articles all referenced Wikipedia as having the definitive list of the libraries. I would have thought the person who wrote a book on the one hundred or so Carnegie Libraries in Ontario, might have had an interest in the handful of others scattered in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Yukon and New Brunswick, though not Quebec, and righted Wikipedia’s mistake that the duplicate grants to Sydney never resulted in a library.  Evidently whoever posted the list of Carnegies in Canada went by a list of grants Carnegie had given.

I felt no fury towards Wikipedia, just thanked it for providing me a nice ride from one end of Nova Scotia to the other and back.  It’s far from the first mistake I’ve discovered on its addresses and status of Carnegies, but easily the most extreme.  Wikipedia isn’t the only one to make mistakes regarding Carnegies.  Many of the plaques in front of them dispense faulty information.  The Fort Fairfield plaque in Maine said it was one of seventeen Carnegies in the state, when there are actually eighteen plus two more on college campuses.

I asked the senior woman librarian if she knew of a cheap motel.  She said she did but she wouldn’t even send her worst enemy there, as just in the past week it had been in the news with several arrests made there.  She conducted a search similar to the one I had already made and found nothing cheaper than $109 Canadian, about $80 US.  She said she had just returned from a vacation in Perth over in Ontario and the hotel prices had nearly doubled since a year ago, so she wasn’t surprised at there being nothing under $100.  I glanced at her computer screen and noticed one for $99.  She said that was the one she had been telling me about.

I was prepared to pay whatever the going rate was, but with a rare sunny day and a temperature of an unseasonably balmy seventy and two hours of light left I couldn’t resist riding in these ideal conditions.  It would be like wasting a strong tail wind.  Rain is in the forecast for the coming week, so I gladly pocketed my night in a motel for later. I headed out excited with the prospect of a night in my tent rather than in some cell or another.

The librarian recommended the alternate route I had avoided thinking it would attract more trucks and would entail more climbing, but she said locals don’t prefer one over the other and that they are through similar terrain and have an equal amount of traffic. The last twenty miles of the road I had come in on was thick with civilization, which would make for difficult camping,  so I was happy for the other, less developed route. Now it’s four hundred miles to the next Carnegie in St. John, New Brunswick, which Wikipedia provides an address to, then two hundred miles to the next in Maine, where a bunch await me and I don’t have to worry about a day without a Carnegie.

St. Peter’s, Nova Scotia

 

The past two nights I was thwarted by very spongey, marshy turf at my first attempt at a camp site, forcing me to resume riding in the near dark. And both nights within a mile I came upon a dirt road that led to higher, more solid ground.  The first night I stepped into swampy water, meaning I ended the day with one wet shoe and sock.  Wet feet have been one of the themes of these travels.

Now that I’m well out into the North Atlantic, precipitation never seems far away.  Even when there is no rain predicted, that doesn’t mean a heavy mist of near rain won’t settle in.  I’ve been fortunate in my six days in these Maritime Provinces to have suffered nothing worse and have never been soaked, just damp.

I closed to within eighty-five miles of Sydney when I crossed the mile-long Causo Causeway, the lone link of western Nova Scotia with its far eastern island, Cape Breton, separated by the Northumberland Strait.  It seems to be a popular tourist destination, as just across the causeway in Port Hawkesbury I came upon a cluster of motels, both high end and budget.  It was late in the afternoon and though I am in need of a motel I planned to save that for Sydney, where I could celebrate reaching my distant destination.  

I have been making note of the occasional motel I have passed as i’ll be retracing the past 250 miles and could be in need of shelter for the night should the weather turn nasty.  The only alternate route is the divided four-lane Trans Canadien highway.  Bicycles are allowed but it’s not very amiable.  I’ll return to Moncton then turn down to St. John in New Brunswick on the Bay of Fundy for its Carnegie.  Someone corrected me when I referred to it as St. John’s, as there is a St. John’s in Newfoundland, while that of New Brunswick lacks the ending  “s.”  It will be interesting to see if I end up camping at any of the spots I camped on the way out.  I am looking forward to returning to Pugwash as it had an area for a farmer’s market with lots of electrical outlets and water, though its rest room was locked. 

I had the choice of two roads to Sydney when I crossed to Cape Breton Island, one to the north of a cluster of lakes and one south of it.  The northern route was a more recent highway through mostly unsettled terrain.  I was tempted to take it as there was a wind from the south that would have taken me up to it, but I opted for the older, original highway, as I have come to learn that the older roads tend to follow the contour of the land and require less climbing, while the new highways go in a direct line up and over the hills.  The more straight, direct route of the newer roads always look more inviting, but they are more strenuous and take longer, while inflating the number of feet I climb for the day.

Before crossing the causeway I stopped at a Tim Hortons for my daily muffin.  It was the first Hortons that didn’t have Wi-Fi, forcing me to stop at the next one five miles away in Port Hawksbury.  While I was eating, an older gentleman asked if I’d heard about the mass shooting in Maine.  I said yes and that Canada was lucky not to have to worry so much about such things.  He corrected me and said there’d been one over in New Brunswick a year ago and one never knew when the next might occur.

I’ll be passing through Lewiston in a couple of weeks, as there is a Carnegie there, one of a dozen I didn’t get to in my passage of northern Maine.  The town will no doubt still be in mourning.  Though Canada has been most pleasant, I’m looking forward to returning to the States where I will have a Carnegie or two to look forward to every day.  My daily goal in Canada has just been to get as far down the road as I can so I can all the sooner reach my goal of Sydney.  

Though the map would seem to indicate I am way off the beaten path,  there are Walmarts and an occasional McDonald’s and Subway and KFC.  I am just sorry that libraries are such a rarity.  The only one I’ve encountered was part of a Community Center and not open.  I was at least able to take advantage of its Wi-Fi and  left a golf ball by the door in appreciation.   I’d been carrying it since before Burlington when my Warmshowers host didn’t care to accept it as a gift, just a paint brush and heavy vest I’d picked up along the road.  He said he refers to such items he scavenges along the road

as “roadkill.”

It seems as if I’m way north, but I’m not as far north as I was last year when I sought out the Carnegie in Thunder Bay on Lake Superior.  Other than the one night and morning when the temperature dropped to freezing, the cold hasn’t been as much of a factor as it was last fall. I’ve had no concerns of my iPad freezing or having to overly bundle up in the tent at night.  The tent generally warms up comfortably from my breathing and whatever heat my body is radiating.   But November is just around the corner, which is later than I cycled last year.  

Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia

 

The wind persisted from the north for a second day dropping the temperature an additional ten degrees.  It was forty-five degrees at day’s end when I retreated to my tent and just thirty-one the next morning.  For the first time I had ice in the water bottles I left on my bike and the residue of water on my tent poles froze the segments together, requiring a lot of tugging and twisting to disconnect them.  My derailleurs too had frozen in place.  It was cold enough for horses to be garbed.

I too donned garb I had heretofore not needed: heavier socks, heavier gloves, pants rather than tights, an extra layer on my torso, a wool cap and a neckerchief around my neck to pull up over my nose. That and my exertion warded off the cold until the sun rose above the trees and brought some warmth, finally nudging the temperature above freezing nearly an hour since I began riding.

My heavier gloves weren’t quite enough.  I had to wrap plastic bags around them to ward off the wind chill. At least the road was dry, so the only ice was on puddles alongside the road. As the day wore on the wind switched from the south and the west giving me a bit of a tailwind and raising the temperature back to where it had been for much of the travels into the fifties. It was still fifty-one when I ended my riding and didn’t drop much during the night with it a relatively balmy forty-eight when I resumed riding in the morning.

For several days now the towns have been few and far between.  I have yet to be in a library since I crossed into Canada five days ago.  I haven’t come across WI-FI more than once a day and usually thanks to Tim Hortons.  My rest stops have been on the steps of isolated churches or besides abandoned homes or against fence posts or gates.  I had one ten-minute break perched on a guardrail putting considerable effort into unscrewing four rusted screws with a wrench and a Leatherman tool trying to detach a heavy metal plate from a license plate.  It was worth the effort to add a New Brunswick plate to my collection.  It was the second I had come upon, so I have an extra to contribute to Dwight’s barn wall.

When I rode the Ring Road around Iceland twenty years ago I’d ask locals if they ate puetrefied shark, an Icelandic delicacy that has a strong stench but it most pleasing to the tastebuds.  My question here for locals is also food-related—how far it is to the next Tim Hortons?  It can be fifty miles or more.  One lady told me that it was a mystery to her that there wasn’t one in Tatamagouche, forty miles away, as it was the home town of Ron Joyce, one of the founders of Tim Hortons, along with the hockey player who it is named for and who played hockey in the NHL for twenty-four years and is on the list of the one hundred greatest players in league history.  He opened his first restaurant in Hamilton in 1964 and just like McDonald's grew into a massive chain of thousands.  There is no need to put up billboards advertising one is ahead, as all the bright red cups bearing the chain’s name along the road indicate one is near.  It is about the only litter I’ve seen along the road side, as if it is sanctioned advertising.  

There isn’t much traffic, so not only do motorists need not worry about being seen littering, they aren’t always mindful of the speed limit, or else they mistake the speed limit signs of eighty and ninety of being for miles per hour rather than kilometers.  No where else, other than Finland, where maniacal Russians like to test the limits of their cars on the long, flat, smooth roads along the border have I encountered such extreme speeding.  At least it’s not meant to terrorize me, as they make full use of the opposite lane.  And it’s never more than once or twice a day, even though each imparts a strong impression.

I’ve been riding along the northern coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with the province of Prince Edward Island just offshore reachable by a bridge.  The road hasn’t hugged the coast, so I have to be content with distant glimpses of this huge Atlantic bay.  I’m so far down the road by the time I get to Sydney I’ll be closer to Greenland than to Chicago.  Signs along the road advertise lobster for sale.  Commercial signs don’t have to be bilingual.  Almost all those advertising businesses are strictly in English.  The road sign for icy roads avoids having to be in English as well as French.

I’m now within two hundred miles of Sydney at the eastern end of Nova Scotia.  It will have been over a five hundred mile ride from Maine and the last Carnegie Library.  It may seem like a long bike ride to a library, but it pales compared to the four thousand miles I rode from Uruguay across Brazil to the Carnegie in Georgetown of British Guiana.  That was a most worthwhile ride, just as this is, though there I was contending with heat while here it is cold.  Thankfully it’s still October, so winter and real cold is quite distant.

With no Carnegies for days I have had to be mostly content with my podcast listening for “Wow” moments when something surprising is mentioned such as Buster Olney on his Baseball Tonight podcast  going on a grand slam rant revealing Pete Rose and Derek Jeter only hit one each in their long careers, while the pitcher Madison Baumgarner had two in his very limited at bat appearances, or Amy Goodman on Democracy Now revealing that Ken Burns attended a Koch brothers gathering and had his picture taken with Clarence Thomas, or the Irish cyclist Dan Martin, who had a most illustrious career,  telling Bobby Julich and Jens Voigt on their podcast that he always tried to model himself after his teammate Christian Vande Velde.  Bradley Wiggins also paid Christian the ultimate of compliments saying he was his most favored team leader.

Salisbury, New Brunswick

 

The wind from the north flushed out the thick cloud cover and for the first time in what seems like weeks I could bike under a bright blue sky of a deep hue with a minimum of pollution in the air with a minimum of industry and all the forest fires burned out.  An added bonus of fhe clear sky was moonlight, which I needed as I set my tent up in the near dark.  With no traffic on the road and thick forest to disappear into whenever I chose I could ride until the last drops of light lingered in the sky and get to eighty miles for the day for the second day in a row.  The only danger was the occasional deer hopping across the road.  

I needed the sun as I began the day with two pairs of wet socks not including the pair I was wearing that I had to insert into wet shoes.  I had hoped to stay in a motel the night before to dry out all my wet gear, knowing there were a handful to choose from in Frederickton, the capital of New Brunswick, if I could make it before dark.  

I fell eleven miles short.  I had the chance of a motel on its outskirts, but it was closed down, forcing me to camp in a nearby forest.  If I were really desperate I could have pushed on five miles on a road with not much traffic and a wide shoulder, but since the day-long misty-drizzle had stopped, allowing my outer fear to dry a bit, I settled on the tent despite my day-long anticipation of the first motel of these travels and being able to empty my four panniers and dry all.  A shower would have been welcome too.

The next day’s dry roads and sunny skies allowed me to thoroughly dry out.  With a forecast bereft of rain for the rest of the week my riding won’t be limited and I ought to make it to the easternmost point of Nova Scotia and the pair of Carnegies in Sydney by the weekend and mission will be accomplished, other than getting back.

I am far enough east to have passed into another time zone, now two hours ahead of Chicago.  That means I can once again ride until past six-thirty, though sun rise isn’t until after 7:30.  Besides the bi-lingual signs and speeds in kilometers, I know I’m in Canada when I go to weather.com and the temperatures are given in Celsius.  I was alarmed at first when I saw the high for the next day was only going to be ten, but then realized why.

The most Canadien cultural event I’ve experience so far is to eat at a Tim Hortons.  In years past I’ve taken advantage of their bagels and cream cheese, but I opted for a muffin after just hearing Geraint Thomas mention on his podcast that he’d been out on a training ride after not riding much since the Vuelta d’Espagne and had to stop for a muffin and coke after ninety minutes because he was so done in.  The muffin wasn’t a bad choice for me as it had a few more calories than the bagel according to Tim Hortons menu.  It came to $2.29 and for the second time my change didn’t include the penny, evidently worth so little it is no longer used perhaps explaining why I have yet to spot any along the road.

As I ate a white-haired lady came by and asked, “I think I’ve read about you on Facebook.  Don’t you ride all over?”  

“I have ridden all over, so that might have been me,” I replied.

“Well, welcome to the Maritimes. Are you riding for a cause?”

I told her about my Carnegie-quest.  As with most, she was unaware of Carnegie and his unparalleled contribution to the reading public. 

It was nearly one hundred miles from Frederickton to the next town of significance, but with it so cool my four bottles of water would be adequate if I didn’t come upon any services.  I passed one service station when my secondary road intersected with the four-lane transcontinental highway, but didn’t bother to stop.

I’d actually ridden on the highway on Sunday for forty miles thinking there’d be less climbing than the nearby secondary road.  The hills were better graded, but the amount of climbing might have been even more, as the secondary road followed the contours of the terrain, while the four-lane superhighway plowed straight through the ups and downs.  I was hoping I could make better time on the four-lane divided highway so I could reach Frederickton before dark, but my average speed didn’t increase, so I returned to the tranquility and steeper climbs of the old, original highway.

Woodstock, New Brunswick

 

I concluded my five days in Maine with a trio of Carnegies in the northeast corner of the state all within twelve miles of one another.  The area also included a pair of launching sites for balloonists attempting to cross the Atlantic. I wouldn’t have known if there hadn’t been a road sign pointing towards one of them outside of Presque Isle, where I visited the first of the three Carnegies.

With it raining I didn’t care to make a detour to it, and instead let the librarian tell me what he knew of it.  He said the town has had an annual Ballon Festival the past twenty years celebrating the balloon crossings.  The first successful one came in 1978 when a trio of balloonists piloted the Double Eagle II across the ocean, which was a big international media event at the time.  Six years later someone made the first solo balloon crossing, departing from Caribou, twelve miles north, and home to another Carnegie.

The monument to that first crossing might have been more interesting than the Carnegie, as the original basic red brick building had been overwhelmed by two additions to its front side making it look more like a medical facility or retirement home than a library.  At least a painting of the library in its former glory paid it homage.

It was a bit sad to see it’s forlorn backside jutting out from its addition

The next two Carnegies made up for the desecration of Presque Isle.  Their additions were to their backsides and weren’t detectable.  The Caribou library didn’t have Saturday hours so I couldn’t inquire if I were far enough north for there to be caribou in the vicinity.  

It had felt like Alaska at times when I was on a forty-mile stretch between towns the day before leading into Houlton as hardly more than a dozen vehicles passed, partially thanks to a nearby interstate.  Wikipedia offered no answer to the caribou question other than that the town had originally been named Lyndon in 1869 with the residents going back and forth several times between the two names before settling on Caribou in 1877.  Wikipedia acknowledged there was no explanation for why.

The librarian in Fort Fairfield couldn’t tell me if caribou once roamed in these parts, just that someone had bison and a few had been on the loose a couple of years ago.  She showed me a back room that was filled with old books on the Civil War donated by the son of the guy who had collected them decades ago.  A plaque above the fireplace paid tribute to the battleship Maine sunk in the Spanish-American war in 1898.

It was just two miles to Canada.  I asked the librarian if she had much occasion to venture over. She’d been just once since the border had been reopened a year ago to visit a botanical garden.  

I knew Canada was nearby as for the past seventy-five miles after I reached Houlton just across the border I had been seeing bright red Tim Horton cups of the nation’s most popular fast food franchise. 

Houlton offered a Carnegie of native stone that sat at one end of a large park.  Its addition to its backside did not mar one’s view of fhe frontside.  The forty miles north to Presque Isle was through an agricultural corridor of potatoes, pumpkins and squash.  There were still pumpkins to be harvested.

Unlike a year ago when I crossed into Canada in Minnesota, I wasn’t summoned inside for an interrogation before being let in.  I straddled my bike replying in the negative to all the questions of whether I was transporting alcohol or tobacco or cannabis or a firearm or if I had ever been convicted of a crime or if I was bringing anything into the country I intended to leave there.  I was glad not to be asked if I was bringing in any food, as I would have hated to be denied my bananas and bread and nuts and dates and pretzels.  Good too she didn’t care to peruse my panniers, as there’s no telling what she would have made of my license plate collection, now up to five after two more in Maine, one for me and one for Dwight.  

The agent advised me to go south after crossing the border on the old trans-Canada road paralleling the new superhighway rather than heading east through the interior, as she said there were few towns and lots of logging trucks and the terrain was very hilly.  It was to my advantage to be going south as a northerly was predicted for the next day, dropping the temperatures to the thirties for the first time this fall.  She said it would be cold camping and fortunately didn’t object that I intended to camp and not at sanctioned campgrounds.

The southern route followed the wide Saint John River with roads on either side and few bridges crossing it. I had the road on the west side pretty much to myself while I had occasional glimpses of 18-wheelers and other vehicles on the busy highway to my right.  The road wasn’t as flat as I would have liked, but at least the climbs were gradual and gave me easy pedaling on their downsides.

Mattawamkeag, Maine

 The hilly terrain of central Maine dished up the most climbing of any day of the first fifteen of these travels—4,362 feet in seventy-one miles, just the third day of over four thousand feet.  But the day after all the hills the terrain leveled somewhat and I managed the second eighty-mile day since I set out.  Mileage is becoming important as I seek to reach Sydney before the weather gets too nasty, six hundred miles away, at the far tip of Nova Scotia, where two Carnegie Libraries await me, the only two in the province.  There is another in New Brunswick that I’ll drop in on the way back to Maine.

I may get my first rest day this weekend, as I’ve had warnings of a significant storm bearing down on the coast.  I first learned of it from a checkout woman at a Dollar Store and then from Michael Lombardi’s football podcast, as he said rainy and windy conditions could keep the scoring down in games played on the east coast this Sunday.  

So far wind hasn’t been a factor in my first thousand miles, just all the climbing and a few stretches of dirt.  The cool, mostly dank weather has limited those cycling to just about me.  I was very fortunate that Greg back in Vermont was out on his bike late in the day and could provide me directions to Ian Boswell’s remote homestead.

I did come upon a ghost bike shortly after I crossed into Maine, locked up to a guardrail.  When I stopped to pay it my respects, a motorist pulled over and asked if I needed any help.  I asked if he knew anything about the ghost bike.  He did.  It marked the site where an older cyclist had been hit and killed by a truck about five years ago during a big annual bike ride.  A nearby post with the number 1945 on it was the year of his birth.

The second of Maine’s twenty Carnegies on my agenda in Madison was the first stunner of the nineteen I have visited so far, a rare circular building crowned with a second floor that had an interior balcony looking down upon the circulation desk.  It provided a most tranquil spot for a rest.  It also had a spacious basement devoted to children’s books.  A statue in front honored “our boys in blue 1861-1865.”

The next Carnegie in Guilford was built on a slight rise above the road.  The addition to its side was more than just a few rooms tacked on, as so many are, but had some character of its own adding to the luster of the original.   Unfortunately, as all too often on this ride through New England, my visit to a Carnegie did not coincide with its opening hours.

And so it was too in the small town of Milo, whose tiny Carnegie was only open four days a week and not on Thursdays.  I was lucky though that a sewing circle was going on and one of the ladies was arriving as I was.  She let me peek inside at its cozy confines made all the more cozy by its lushly textured wooden desks and shelves and circulation desk and railing up the steps with the usual portrait of Carnegie gazing upon his domain.  The woman also gave me the password to the Wi-Fi so I could linger outside and do some catching up, but without charging, forcing me into a McDonald’s down the road.

A plaque in front of the library celebrated the local volunteer fire department, which was based behind the library.  With wooden buildings dominating the town and surrounding area, fires had been a concern since the town’s origin.  One of its first communal expenditures was for hooks and buckets and ladders for its fire brigade in 1871.  Twelve years later the town purchased a steam-powered pumping engine.  They later excavated an huge hole for a tank to store water to pump.  Even as its equipment improved over the years, the fire department remained staffed by volunteers, a great point of pride.  The plaque concluded its tribute saying, “The volunteer fire department has remained a key element of public safety where the spirit of independence and self-reliance has led people to depend on their own resources.”

I was fortunate to have some sun as I sat outside the library.  Rare patches of blue hovered overhead for the rest of the day allowing me for the first time to see the sun touch the horizon not long after 5:30.  With so few habitations and so much forest and so little traffic I could ride until virtual dark knowing when it became too dark to ride I’d assuredly have a place to camp.  The night before I turned off the road into a cemetery and continued to the forest behind it well from the road.  This night I passed up logging roads every mile or so that would have led to first-rate camping until near absolute dark when I had reached eighty miles for the day and turned off on a side road into the forest, which I had all to myself.

Earlier in the day I came upon a stash of coins strewn along the road, including six quarters, doubling the number I’ve found so far.  When I first spotted the coins I figured they had to be slugs, but no they were all coins, including nine dimes, five nickels and eleven pennies.  I didn’t count them at the time, looking forward to totaling up my haul in the tent.  I also stopped for a bright orange wash cloth tangled in the weeds, which I could use to sop up moisture in my tent left over from a morning dew or rain and also to strap on the back of my bike to make me more visible.  It took a full day for it to dry though after I washed it, even dangling in the wind from the crossbar of my bike.

Rumford, Maine

 

I spent little more than twenty-four hours in New Hampshire cutting across the northern neck of the state, long enough to gather three Carnegies, but not long enough to encounter any presidential hopefuls, though it may be a little early for them.  There were campaign signs to be seen, but all for local elections.

Someone did point out an opera house in Littleton that had been the site of many a debate between those on the presidential trail.  Littleton was the first town on my trail of Carnegies.  It was a quite lively town that had made a recent list of the twelve most quintessential towns in New England.  There were two movie theaters on its Main Street, one of which was playing the Taylor Swift movie.  A church on the street had a full-fledged, help-yourself food pantry.

The Carnegie was also on the Main Street on a slight rise. A plaque out front described it as “an eclectic blend of Georgian and neoclassical styles with decoration of a richness rare for a structure of its size.”  There was no entry as it was closed for the week to replace its carpeting.  While I gazed upon it a fifty-year old guy stopped to ask about my travels and added he’d had a few long tours himself. “Coast-to-coast?” I asked.

“Yes, seven times,” he replied.  “I used to work for a touring company out of Indianapolis and led rides.  On one it rained twice, once for twenty-three days and the other for sixteen.”

Another of his long rides was in Russia in 1991, when it had yet to be westernized with McDonald’s and all.  The roads were bad and the food and accommodations left a lot to be desired.  His group camped as well as stayed in hotels.  When they returned to the US they made the mistake to check the box on their custom forms that they had stayed on farms on occasion and had their bikes impounded for thirty days.

I could only look upon the next Carnegie in Whitefield too, as it wasn’t open on Mondays.  That was extra bad news as I was in need of an electrical outlet to charge.  I had gone all of Sunday without charging, only spending a handful of minutes inside, first at a Dollar Store and then at Ian Boswell’s house.  I was counting on plopping down an hour or so at either the Littleton or Whitefield libraries to catch up.  Whitefield was much smaller and quieter than Littleton and didn’t offer a cafe, so I had to push on hoping what charge I was gaining from my generator hub could keep my iPad alive.

The terrain was hillier than Vermont and the foliage more colorful, but a lot less touristy.  Maybe the threat of moose kept them away.  A sign warned of the many fatalities of those who had plowed into one.  

When it became clear I wasn’t going to make it to the next Carnegie in Berlin in time for some charging I hoped a motel might turn up, as I also had wet shoes and socks that needed drying.  None did so I kept alive my streak of every night in my tent. I was at least able to take advantage of an outlet at a rest area to gain enough juice to use my iPad without worries of draining in the tent that night.  The rest room was the only time I set foot inside all day, a not unworthy accomplishment.

I arrived at the Berlin Carnegie  too early to end my fast of not settimg foot inside a building. Its exterior had some extra adornments, so its interior could have been special too.  The exterior was accompanied by an Oldenburg-inspired over-sized book giving the library’s hours. 

The terrain flattened considerably when I entered Maine, some of it along rivers.  The first Carnegie came in Rumford on the Androssgoggan River.  An addition to its rear had large windows looking down upon the river.  A large sign on the door prohibited food and drink and there were similar signs on all the tables.  I had to be discreet taking an occasional handful of gorp, as I couldn’t sit without fueling.

I keep checking the weather in Nova Scotia.  It’s been very similar to what I’ve been experiencing so far, daily highs in the fifties and night time lows in the forties. I’ve had rain nearly every day, so what rain awaits me there isn’t too daunting so long as it’s no more than the drizzles I’ve mostly been inflicted with.

I won’t reach Canada for five days, as Maine is much larger than Vermont and New Hampshire, and I have seven more Carnegies to get to with one stretch of 155 miles between two of them.  The rain puts a dent into my riding time and also the shortening days.  Heading east adds to the shortness at the end of the day.  I’d been able to ride until nearly seven at the start of these travels.  Now dark is closing in by six.  At least it’s not as cold as last year’s fall ride, when I encountered snow in Canada north of Minnesota.  It’s been no colder than the low forties so far here.

Peachem, Vermont

 

I was delighted that my exit route from Vermont took me through the small town of Peachem, less than ten miles from New Hampshire, as it is the present home of Ian Boswell, former Tour de France rider and now one of the premier gravel riders in the world having won Unbound in Emporia, Kansas last year.  He also hosts a podcast, Breakfast with Bos, that I haven’t missed since he launched it during the 2018 Tour with his friend Marshall, who was following The Tour in his car.  

The two of them would record a chat every morning before each stage, recounting their previous day, Ian in the thick of the race and Marshall trying to follow it.  Ian is also a regular on the British podcast The Cycling Podcast and has joined the podcast crew the past two years in France to cover The Tour.  Though I’d never met Ian, I knew him well enough to consider him a friend.  I was hoping I could track him down in Peachem and thank him for the many hours of listening pleasure he had brought me.  Getting to meet him could well be one of the highlights of these travels.

 

I was on target to arrive in Peachem in the middle of the afternoon, but an excessive amount of climbing, some on dirt roads, delayed my arrival until 5:30, less than an hour before dark.  I felt reluctant to intrude on him at the dinner hour and was resigned to just gaining acquaintance with his out-of-the-way small town.  When I arrived at the main intersection across from its library and by a small inn, I paused at a stop sign wondering if I’d see anyone out and about.  There wasn’t a soul to be seen in this quiet town of 700 residents.  

Before I could even consider ducking into the inn to ask if Ian might live nearby an older guy on a mountain bike wearing a bright orange Arc’Teryx jacket appeared beside me as if he had been sent by a higher authority and asked where I was headed.  I told him Nova Scotia, then asked if he might know Ian.  He said he knew him well, and that he lived just down the road.  It was a little more complicated than that, as he needed to show me on my GPS his precise location two miles away on dirt roads in farm country.  He affirmed that Ian was as nice a guy as he comes across on his podcast, and it would be no imposition to drop in on him.  “Just say Greg sent you,” he said.

His isolated house with accompanying barn was just where Greg said it would be.  There was no indication that it was the residence of a world-class cyclist other than a bicycle wheel with a garland of flowers hanging on a wall to the left of the porch.  Ian’s wife Gretchen, who turns up on his podcast from time to time describing their breakfast that day, answered the door.  I apologized for coming by but said I just happened to be biking through and their friend Greg encouraged me to stop by to say hello and tell Ian how much I enjoyed his podcast.  She said he was in office and would get him.  A skinny, much taller, guy than I expected emerged, greeting me with his distinctive gentle voice and offered his hand.  

 

I told him I hadn’t missed a podcast and wondered if he had ever snagged a Tour course marker in the past two years when he’d been covering it as a journalist.  He said he hadn’t, as he was always ahead of the race, and it was, of course, taboo to grab one until the peloton had passed.  I told him I’d followed The Tour a few times as a touring cyclist and always brought home a few markers that I shared with friends and that I’d even given Greg LeMond one a year ago.  Ian said he’d love to have one and that I knew where to send it.

I told him I was from Chicago and had become friends with Christian Vande Velde and had given him a few markers over the years.  I added that I enjoyed his interview of Christian on his podcast this past year.  Ian immediately replied that he made a faux pas when he introduced Christian as having ridden The Tour “five or seven times,” as Christian corrected him to say he’d ridden it eleven times and had been back ten more times covering the race for NBC.   I was actually going to ask Ian about that, and was impressed that it had made such an impression on him, as it was a nagging embarrassment, that he brought it up himself.  Ian only rode it once, as his road career was curtailed due to concussion issues.  Few riders have done it in double figures, not even Eddie Merckx.

Ian had once used the term “Frenched” on one of his podcasts, the only time I’d heard it.  I knew all too well what it meant, as I feel as if I’m Frenched by over-zealous gendarmes prematurely ordering me off The Tour course.  Ian said it is a common term among American racers living in France coming up against the French bureaucracy and restaurants closing early and other inconveniences.  

His latest podcast was with Lucy Charles-Barclay and her husband.  She is one of the premier female triathletes in the world, finishing second four times at the premier event in Hawaii.  Her husband is a former triathlete who now devotes himself to his wife’s career.  They live in London and have to do a lot of training indoors in what they call their “pain cave.”  With the two of them sweating away in there for hours at a time day after day Ian asked the pertinent question that only a fellow athlete with a “pain cave” of his own would ask—what kind of smell did it have.  They said they have wooden floors and their “pain cave” has no detectable odor.  I congratulated Ian on the imaginative question.  He replied that Lucy had just won the triathlon in Hawaii this weekend, which she said would be the highlight of her career.

I could have talked and talked as I once did when I visited Christian at his house delivering a couple of course markers, but I didn’t want Ian to feel obligated to invite me for dinner or to pitch my tent on his property, so I said I needed to get going as I was hoping to make it to New Hampshire before dark.  As he led me back to my bike I asked if he flew in and out of Burlington for his extensive travels.  Usually he does, as it’s just an hour and fifteen minutes away, but he resorts to Boston from time to time as well. As he bid me farewell, he said he’d be looking for me at The Tour next year.  He’s as anxious as I am to see its route, which will be announced in a week or so.  We know it will start in Italy and end in Nice, not in Paris for the first time ever, so as not to conflict with the Olympics.  

Greg, who provided me the directions to Ian, wasn’t the only person to come to my assistance this day.  A couple hours earlier a white-haired lady was awaiting me at the top of a climb with a bottle of water and an orange.  She wanted to tell me about a rails-to-trails path up ahead and query me about my travels.  She was aghast that I had bicycled from Rochester, seven hundred miles away and that I was headed to Nova Scotia. I told her nothing of my previous travels, just that I was seeking out Carnegie libraries and the last one I had visited was in Northfield at Norwich College, though it was now Chaplin Hall housing the art and architecture department.  It faced a large quad surrounded by red brick buildings with none of the ornamentation of the Carnegie.

After a few minutes the woman introduced herself as George and asked my name.  After a few more minutes of conversation beside her car she excused herself and said she wanted to give me something more.  She ducked into the front seat and returned with another tangerine and a banana and several pieces of chocolate and $3.50 for a slice of pizza or something she said, while apologizing that was all she had to offer.  I didn’t know it at the time, but it is money I can earmark for the course marker I’ll be sending Ian. 

Vermont was living up to its reputation for friendliness.  It was no wonder that the roads on Saturday and Sunday were clogged with motorists from neighboring states.  Traffic was backed up for two miles just inching along into Stowe.  More than half the license plates were from out-of-state, one from as far as California and another from Utah, a Backroads van of the bicycle touring company with three bikes atop it.  Fortunately there was a wide shoulder so I could fly by them all. 

Traffic had been equally thick for miles between Burlington and Morristown, where I ventured for its classic Carnegie, complete with a plaque describing its architecture in detail.  

The small town, like most I’d passed through, had small shops catering to tourists.  Besides the signs advertising maple syrup, shops were packed with knickknacks of all sorts.

An Art Park (myearthwork.com) was among the attractions in the area on the road from the north into Stowe, a ski town that was the epicenter of it all.  The Art Park was full of Andy Goldsworthy inspired constructions of rocks.

The town was bulging with people, including a wedding party, despite the cold, dank weather.  A little sunlight would have enhanced the fall foliage, but it was still a pleasure to behold.