Across Kentucky

Tim and I were all set to spend the night in an abandoned house on a trickle of a dirt road that headed into the hills.  We didn't fear anyone driving by, as the road was covered with leaves and turned sharply upwards past the house.  It didn't look as if it had been driven for quite a while.  We were well off the main road and even felt it safe for Tim to park his car right alongside the house as if we were the proud owners of this debacle.

I had brought my sleeping bag and panniers in and brushed the debris from the room we intended to make our sleeping quarters for the night.  A few empty cigarette packs and beer cans and packs of condiments littered the floors, indicating someone had occasionally used it as a refuge, but not for awhile.  No furniture remained nor was there evidence of any bedding.  With the temperature near freezing, there was no likelihood of anyone dropping in to hang out.  

Then I heard an urgent call from Tim, "Come look at this."  Tacked to the wall was a paper plate with the inscription in red magic marker, "If I see you I will shoot you muh fucka."  

That gave us pause.  When we saw another identical plate laying on the floor in another room, we figured that was fair warning and maybe we better find somewhere else to spend the night.  We had twenty minutes before dark to find something better.  First we decided to see where our dirt road led.  I pushed my bike up, confident we'd find something, even if it meant venturing off into the forest.  The road flattened out on a ridge line.  An open-sided barn surrounded by weeds was nearby.  A very dirty sleeping bag and collapsed tent that hadn't been used in weeks lay in one corner.  We noticed no warning signs, so agreed this would suit us.  Tim went back for his car.  

Ten minutes later Tim was back saying it was too steep for his car.   There was no place nearby he felt comfortable leaving it, so for the first time, after camping jointly seven straight nights, we were on our own.  Tim thought maybe he would just sleep in his car in the next town.  It would be the second night in a row he would have forsaken his tent, as the night before we accepted the invitation of the very friendly proprietor of the Pioneer Playhouse campgrounds to put our sleeping bags down on one of the communal buildings at her complex, whose primary function was a venue for outdoor stage shows during the summer months. 

Rain threatened, and freezing temperatures.  No one else was tenting at her compound and she didn't think we really should either.  Only one bathroom with showers was open, making it unisex, as is the custom in Europe, though the squeamish had the option of locking the door, as the four shower stalls didn't provide much privacy.

It was our second night in seven of sanctioned camping, something I rarely do, preferring to place my head on ground that maybe only a deer had previously slept upon, not wishing to absorb the bad dreams that could have seeped into the ground from previous campers.  Campgrounds do have their amenities, not only the luxury of an actual shower, rather than improvising in some manner or another, but more importantly, they allowed Tim and I to be more sociable in the evening hours.  When we've been wild camping in the cold that has afflicted us, we confine ourselves to our tents.  If they are close enough, we can still maintain a conversation, but its not as convivial as at a campgrounds where we can sit at a fire or at a table. It was too wet and windy for a fire here, so we sat at a table and ate our dinners together.

Tim has been surprised at the universal positive reaction he has received from everyone he tells that he's tagging along with someone on a Carnegie Library quest.  Until he learned of Carnegie's unparalleled philanthropy and began seeing his libraries and how warmly they are embraced in their communities, his immediate reaction to Carnegie was "robber baron" and "exploiter of the workers" and "murderer of workers during the Homestead strike" and he thought others would have a similar response. But Tim had never read anything about the true nature of Carnegie and that he was simply an extraordinary businessman and that he made a concerted effort from the beginning of his wealth to put it to a positive use for the betterment of man.

Tim could be accused of being an exploiter of workers himself.  Though he was as considerate of his workers as a boss as one could be during his years of owning a bike shop, one could certainly find those who would say he could have paid his workers more and treated them better and that he didn't need to take as much of a profit as he did.  Anyone who truly knows Tim would never say such a thing, because he has always been, and continues to be, generous with his time and his money.  Those in charge and with more money than others have always been and always will be a target of some, and sometimes with justification.  Carnegie may not have been a saint, even though he has been called the Patron Saint of Libraries, but in many respects he had the inclinations of a saint and it is wonderful to see how positively regarded he is by so many, including Tim now.

If I didn't know Tim as well as I do, I might be suspicious that he has been shadowing me to verify that my life as a touring cyclist is legit, that I'm actually biking the distances I claim to be and that I'm not staying in hotels and feasting on hearty meals in restaurants. He's repeatedly tempted me with offers of a lift or carrying my gear or to take me on a side trip and then return me to my route, as if testing me.  When he does, I hold up my fingers in a cross to fend him off. However, offers of food I do not turn down.  If nothing else, he has been impressed by the quantity of food that I put away,  as I'm constantly munching, even in libraries where eating is prohibited.  He provided a lemon and a pecan pie, compliments of Trader Joe's, this evening.  He had to put them aside before I polished them off.

We haven't been seeing as much of each other during the day since Louisville, as the Carnegies are few and far between in Kentucky.  Besides the nine in Louisville, there were only eighteen others built  in the state, three of which have been razed.  None of the five on our route to Pineville at the eastern end of the state still functioned as libraries, so couldn't really serve as meeting points.  

The first in Lawrenceburg had been transformed into the Anderson County History Museum in 1996, a perfect use for this historic building.  Its simple dignity retained a frontier aura.  Its peeling white wooden pillars heartened back to its roots.  It wasn't open, so I couldn't ask if its bricks were originally painted white or if that came later.  It stood alone across the street from the town barbershop.  

The young, long-haired barber didn't know. Carnegie had been chiseled into its lower left corner and Piernian Club, a local service club still in existence, was chiseled into the opposite corner with the year 1908.

My route to the next Carnegie in Danville took me through Harrodsburg.  A local guest house advertised rooms starting at $75 a week.   When I reached Danville I passed a string of women on the Centre College cross country team running at a good clip all with bobbing pony tails. We were all caught at the same red light and they could give me directions to the former Carnegie Library on their campus.  A wooden sign dangled over its entry identifying it as "Old Carnegie."  Chiseled into its facade was simply "Library," though it had been replaced in 1967.  A plaque stated it dated to 1913 and had been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.  It was now inhabited by the Center for Global Citizenship and the Center for Career and Professional Development.

Tim awaited me at the local library, open on Veteran's Day, unlike the library in Lawrenceburg.  He was on his bike and led me to the Pioneer Playhouse campground in the waning light, where he had left his car and arranged our evening's accommodations.  The temperature had plunged during the night. For the first time I wore wind-breaking pants over my tights. My feet were slightly chilly, but I held off on wearing booties, saving them for the 20s to come.

It was a one-Carnegie Day, another academic library at Berea College.  I swung by Richmond to give Eastern Kentucky College a look and make it a trio of colleges, knowing small towns with colleges all had a vibrancy to them.  Besides the noteworthy theater outside of Danville, it had a significant art gallery with a bicycle sculpture out front.

I had to ask the whereabouts of the Berea College Carnegie at its present library.  I had biked right past it and surmised that it might be the Carnegie, but it didn't have anything identifying it as such other than its majesty.  It is now a building of classrooms.

It was late afternoon and I hadn't intersected with Tim all day nor had we any communication.  The Internet was down at the Berea public library so we had to resort to our cell phones once again.  Tim had gone exploring down the road and was driving back towards me.  We met shortly before five.  Tim had noticed a county road a little ways back that he thought might lead to camping.  It was a little earlier than I prefer to stop, but since we weren't pressed for time, agreed to give it a look.  And that's where we found the abandoned house with the threat of gunfire sign.

My night on my own was the coldest yet.  I awoke with a lining of ice in my water bottles. In the first town I came to a bank gave a temperature of 27 degrees.  A few stray snow flakes were falling.  It didn't rise above freezing all day, as indicated by snow along the road and on rooftops of abandoned, unheated homes.

The hilly terrain kept me warm.  I could even pare down to a lighter pair of gloves after starting the day with my hefty semi-arctic gloves.  The roads were a geologist's dream with many cuts through the hils revealing many layers of rocks formed over the eons.

The day's lone Carnegie came in Somerset.  It was the only Carnegie ever built attached to a school.  An historic sign out front stated that the town mayor at the time resisted the library, as he feared it would "appeal to the classes rather than the masses."  Inscribed above the entry was the same quotation inlaid in the floor of the Shelbyville library, "Advancement to Learning," that now also applied to the high school students who now entered through its door to their school.

The large current library near the town center, like all the Kentucky libraries, was sparse on bike books. At least it had a couple, as some of the libraries had none.  A sign above the urinal in the men's room, discouraging the spitting of tobacco, reminded me I was I tobacco country.  Out west in gun county it is common to see signs forbidding firearms.  Now every Chicago public library has such a warning.

My final few hours of the day were through the Daniel Boone State Park, where I camped upon leaves with a smattering of snow.

My final Carnegie in Kentucky was less than ten miles away in Corbin.  It was across the street from a Baptist church which had appropriated it for a food pantry, open only one hour per week.  I peered in and saw tables lined with large paper bags filled with food.  The new library was just a block away.  It didn't open until ten.  It was too cold to sit outside and wait for it to open so I treated myself to a stack of hotcakes at the Dixie Diner on Main Street.

Louisville

If the short-lived PBS television show from a couple of years ago that featured biking in different locales had out-lived its first six episodes, Louisville would have been a worthy subject, especially after the just completed conversion of an old railway bridge to a pedestrian and cycling bridge over the Ohio River connecting Jeffersonville, Indiana to Louisville.  Any community would be proud of the new bridge.  Lights in deluxe fixtures hang from crossbeams every thirty feet and music is piped in. The pavement is smooth and the views sensational. A trickle of pedestrians were putting it to use when I made my crossing early Monday morning.

It gave a nice vantage of the equally world-class renovated river front in downtown Louisville complete with a performance venue and parkland and walkways and flowing water and a long row of plaques identifying corporations and individuals who had contributed thousands of dollars each to fund it.

A first-rate bicycle path intersected it and followed the river for several miles, some of it through wooded terrain. I startled a beaver moseying beside the path and then another, further down the road.  I wasn't as surprised as I might have been to see such creatures as I had just learned from Ralph Nader on one of his weekly podcasts that the once nearly extinct species were making a strong comeback.  Back before the white man invaded their domain millions inhabited North American.  Ralph called them brilliant civil engineers, as their dams nurtured the landscape. When their furs became a much valued product, they were nearly wiped out, just as happened to the buffalo.   

At one time their numbers had declined to not much more than 100,000.  But now they are back up to over six million.  Ralph went on and on, as is his custom, extolling the virtues of the beaver and lamenting what a travesty it was that we no longer benefited from their engineering prowess.  But he was most incensed that he hadn't been taught this as a schoolboy and took mighty offense that it was excluded from textbooks.

His podcasts are a non-stop stream of all that he regards wrong in the world, not the least of which is that no one pays him any attention. He has written letters to every president in his lifetime making suggestions about things that could be improved, but not once has he received a response.  Senators and Congressional Representatives don't return his calls.  He can't understand why he isn't invited to appear on the Sunday talk shows.  He's equally upset that Charlie Rose has only had him on twice and Terri Gross not once.  At least he can vent once a week for an hour on his podcast.  They are highly informative and entertaining, but not always sensible.  

I was unaware of them until Tim mentioned they are part of his weekly diet of information.  They have provided me with much listening pleasure the past few days, as there is a large library of them available.  I have yet to come upon a mention of round-abouts, something that Ralph ought to champion, as the man who hounded Congress into mandating all cars be equipped with seatbelts in 1966.  Not only do they make the roads safer, one of his high priorities, preventing motorists from running red lights and stop signs, they increase fuel efficiency allowing motorists to maintain their momentum and not having to stop. and they also beautify the landscape.  I'll be putting Ralph on the case if he fails to bring them up.  They ought to merit a mention as often as his many favorite subjects of corporate crime, corporate welfare, repeal of the 1947 Taft/Hartley Act, Dick Chaney the war criminal and on and on.

I followed the bike path west without Ralph in my ear or anyone else. enjoying a tranquil ride to the first of the nine libraries Carnegie funded in Louisville.  Only four still serve as libraries, but at least none have been torn down, as was the case with two of the five he provided Indianapolis.  I'd already had a Carnegie for the day in Jeffersonville before I crossed the river.  It was a domed beauty overlooking Warder Park in the town center.  Lights at its base illuminated its bright white limestone at night.   It is now a state building where psychiatric evaluations are conducted.  Two homeless guys in the park directed me to the bridge just a few blocks away and also told me where the best place was to take wire for recycling, though I had only asked about the bridge.

I wasn't sure how far to follow the bike path before turning off to find the Portland Branch and there was no one on the path after I'd gone a couple of miles to ask and began to start wondering.  But then the path ended feeding me onto Northwestern Parkway, the street the library was on just a few blocks further.  

It was perched on a slight rise in a residential neighborhood on a corner lot with a few trees that had already begun shedding their leaves.  Metal grates covered the lower windows and a bright yellow sign besides the entry identified it as a "Safe Place."  The neighborhood didn't look so dangerous, but maybe it was.  The library didn't open until noon on Mondays.  I took a photo and then made my usual walk around its perimeter searching for any distinguishing features.  As I returned to my bike a young woman approached the library and turned up its walkway.  "Are you the librarian?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm arriving a little early.  You can come back at noon if you'd like to come in."  

I told her I was biking around to the Carnegies in town. She blurted, "I love Carnegies. I have a PowerPoint presentation of all the branch Carnegies in Louisville.  I could email it to your if you'd like."  She went on to tell me about upcoming events at her library with the enthusiasm of a schoolchild and advised me on the best route to take to the next one.  She couldn't have been more charming.  All had been friendly in Indiana, but this was my first dose of Southern Hospitality that I know so well from previous trips.

I followed 35th street for two miles to Virginia and then continued a mile to the Parkland Branch, now the quarters for the police professional standards unit.  Its upper facade still identified it as "Louisville Free Public Library."  Below the roof line on the front and the two sides were chiseled Literature, Philosophy, History, Art, Travel, Biography, Religion, Science, Art.  It was a nice contrast to the usual authors that more often identify libraries.  

I interrupted a somewhat heated argument of a young couple walking past to ask directions to the next library.  I figured I was doing them a favor to distract them.  They immediately let their anger subside and tried to decide whether Jefferson Street was four or five blocks away.  They ended their debate,  proving they could come to an agreeable decision, by deciding that one of the blocks was a short one, so it was four-and-half blocks away.  It was more like fourteen, but at least they pointed me in the right direction to the Jefferson  Branch four blocks after Muhammad Ali Boulevard.

Jefferson was a main boulevard leading downtown.  The library adjoined a cemetery that went on for two blocks.  It too was referred to as a "Louisville Free Public Library," even though it was presently vacant despite its prime location and most dignified exterior, the most impressive of the three so far.

It was less than three miles to the  palatial main library, completed in 1905, with the first batch of the branch libraries following three years later.  The main library too had a "Safe Place" marker on its exterior.  The interior included a grand marble staircase flanked by murals.  It was huge to begin with, but had an even larger modern addition to its backside filling out an entire city block.  It was a most worthy library for any city.

Less than a mile to its west was a branch that was the first Carnegie, and perhaps the first library of any sort, built for African Americans.  

At the time of its construction it was known as the "Colored Library," as chiseled over its door, though now removed.  The library is now known as the Western Branch.

Its librarian was intensely proud of her library and its heritage.  She said that the African American community of Louisville put in a strong bid of having a library of their own, not feeling overly welcome at the main library.  They took great pride in this library.  She took me downstairs to a room full of framed photos from the early years of the library and an extensive archive.  She said when she gives tours to fellow African Americans and recounts the history of the library, it often brings them to tears.  She had my eyes crinkling too at her sincere passion.  One photo was of the first librarian and his staff.

Crystal was as warm and hospitable as had been Kate earlier in the day and urged me to return to spend more time with her archives and in Louisville itself, especially to see the Muhammad Ali Museum, which I didn't have time for.  Her father went to school with Ali and gave her the middle name of Ali's second wife--Belinda.  Crystal felt honored to have charge of this historic library and recalled with equal fondness growing up with the Parkland Library.  She knew it was no longer a library, but didn't know that the police department now had offices there.

My route to the next Carnegie took me past the childhood home of Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, who was born in Louisville in 1856 and served on the Court from 1916 to 1939, two years before his death.  One of the many historical markers all over Louisville called my attention to his home.  I also passed a Franciscan soup kitchen with a crowd gathered outside.

Just a few blocks further stood the east-side "Colored" library built six years after the west side library, and the last of the Carnegies constructed in Louisville. It was a very austere, unornamented box of a building, the most plain of any Carnegie I've seen.  It was presently closed and unoccupied.

It was a strong indication of the lack of equal treatment of African Americans in pre-World War I America, as a much nicer Carnegie branch was available just four blocks away in Shelby Park, where evidently the African American community didn't feel welcome.  It is now a community center.

I continued my tour of Louisville heading east a couple of miles to the former Highland Branch in an affluent neighborhood of mini-mansions. The library had been converted into deluxe offices.  One was an investment firm that had a large portrait of Carnegie at its entrance, as if to imply it could make one a Carnegie.  There was also a design firm and a real estate office among the eight tenants.  Unlike most of the other branch libraries it only identified itself as a "Public Library" without the "Free" qualifier.

I arrived at the ninth and final of Louisville's Carnegies shortly before two a little later than I anticipated I would, where Tim awaited me. It had been a fabulous circuit on bike paths and bike lanes and sharrowed lanes for at least some of the way that could be completed in less than twenty-five miles starting and finishing at the bike bridge.

Tim had restricted himself to just two of the libraries, the pair that were closest to the river.  He had left his car in Jeffersonville and biked over the bridge and then biked along the river up to the Portland library, the first one I had visited, and then back and on to the Crescent Hill Branch, also in a nice enough neighborhood that it did not bear the "Safe Zone" emblem as did all the other still functioning libraries.  

After he heard my enthusiasm for the Western Branch and its treasure of a  librarian, he decided to swing by it before returning over the bridge to his car.  And I was glad that he did, as I was regretting that I hadn't given Kate at the Portland library my email address so she could send me her Carnegie presentation.  Crystal at the Western library told me Kate was a good friend, so I knew she would be happy to forward my email address on to her.

Out front of the Crescent Hill library was a message board encouraging the book life--"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.  The man who never reads leads only one."

Tim and I arranged to meet next at the Shelbyville Carnegie thirty miles away.  It had warmed up to over sixty.   I was glad to shed my tights for the first time since I left Chicago a week ago.  I had already stripped down to just one layer on top after starting the day with five.  It was the last gasp of summer, as a polar vortex down from Alaska would plummet temperatures to below freezing by Wednesday, as we had been hearing in the news and from friends as far distant as Ecuador for several days as if it were a marching army of doom.

As I neared Shelbyville with the sun nearing the horizon, I was sorry I hadn't thought to suggest to Tim that he have his bike loaded up and ready to bike out of town with me for a few miles where we could surely find a place to camp.  He had had a similar idea and was getting ready to assemble his gear for the night, feeling no concern about leaving his car parked overnight in front of the library in this small town.  

Its library had the majesty of a larger town library with a dome and a couple of undetectable additions.

It also featured a tiled mosaic under the dome as one entered acknowledging the library was a gift from Carnegie for "the advancement of learning."  His portrait hung in the reference and genealogy room.

On the outskirts of town we passed a large cemetery that went over a hill that we could have easily disappeared into except that the gate was closed and there was a stone fence around the front of it.  We could have gone around the fence when it ended, but there were a couple nearby houses and it was still light enough for us to be seen, especially Tim, who was wearing a reflective vest.  We weren't desperate for a place to camp just yet, so continued on.  Less than a mile later we came to a dirt road that wound its way though fields of cut corn and still standing wheat.  It might have led to someone's homestead, but we saw a couple patches of trees that promised possible camping not too far off.  When we stopped to check we discovered a creek and terrain too marshy for our tents.  We walked around the side to higher ground and found just what we were looking for, some flat clear patches through the bushy exterior of this cluster of trees well hidden from anyone's eyes.  

It was our best camp site yet, even with a skunk coming by and giving us a blast some time during the night and a deer barking its disapproval and a farmer doing some post-sunset harvesting of his wheat.  Tim was at first worried the tractor headlight might catch the reflective tape on the sidewall of his tires, but when he exited from the relative warmth of his tent to lay his bike down he could tell we were well recessed and protected by our forest to have any worries.  And in the morning he was raving once again at what a marvelous campsite this was.  If he had been on his own, he would have spent the evening in town at a bar or restaurant and then pitched his tent in some dark corner in the town proper, protected by the late hour, rather than the seclusion of his campsite.  He agreed this was as good as it gets.

Southern Indiana

I had the rare treat of a riding through a series of round-abouts on American spoil as I headed into Greenfield on West McKenzie Road to start my day.  They were the first, and what will probably be the only, round-abouts of this trip.  I could have had a bunch more if I had dropped into Indianapolis via Carmel, just to its north, as Carmel is the American capital of round-abouts, hosting international conferences promoting them.  I had the supreme pleasure of Carmel's round-abouts two-and-a-half years ago when I biked there for a hard-to-find book on the Giro d'Italia at its library.  It wasn't a Carnegie, as Carmel had long ago outgrown it.  Its Carnegie had been transformed into a restaurant.

Not only did Greenfield share an enlightenment to round-abouts with Carmel, though on a much, much lesser scale, it also shared having its Carnegie transformed into a restaurant, the only two I have come upon. I am always saddened when a Carnegie no longer serves as it was intended, but it is also fascinating to discover what new use it has been put to.  This restaurant by no means turned its back on its heritage, but rather honored it, taking the name "Carnegie's."

The building looked as magnificent as it must have been at its unveiling and still bore the identity of Public Library. About its interior, I can not say, as  I could only take a peek inside, as it was only open for dinner, and I was there at the top of the day.

There were tables out front for outdoor dining.  It appeared to be the finest dining establishment in town, and elegant enough to attract diners, bibliophiles or not, from Indianapolis, twenty-five miles to the west. 

I was sorry not to be able to share the delight of it with Tim, as he had doubled back to Indianapolis for a day-long Kurt Vonnegut-fest.  My thoughts were certainly with him, trying to imagine the experience he was having and the wacky characters drawn to the event.  Tim also missed out on the first domed Carnegie of the eleven so far on our itinerary, the next one down the road in Shelbyville.  It had a plaque out front stating Carnegie's guiding philosophy in dispensing his fortune, which at the time was the largest in the US.

The plaque had a position of prominence in front of the former entrance, replaced by one at street level to its right in the first of two additions greatly expanding the library.

Shelbyville also was a step above most Carnegies with a larger and more serene portrait of its benefactor, forsaking the standard portrait that the Carnegie foundation offered to all the libraries in 1935 on the hundredth anniversary of Carnegie's birth.  I spent a pleasant hour warming up while reading and snacking on handfuls of energy-rich dry Cheerios that Tim had rescued from an Aldis dumpster the day before.

It was better than forty miles to the next Carnegie in North Vernon, the longest stretch between Carnegies since I crossed into Indiana, the land of Carnegies.  Its 166 are the most of any state except for New York, with 172, of which 66 are branch libraries in the boroughs of the city that shares the state's name.  

A not uncommon feature of the American landscape these days are homes that have seen better days.   I look at each and think they were once someone's pride and joy...and may still be.

Half-way to North Vernon I took a break at a service station, plopping down against one of its side walls for a sandwich.  It was barely forty but I could retain the warmth generated by my exertion for the time it took me to eat.  Evidently I bore the look of a forlorn figure, though I felt just the opposite, privileged to be spending my day biking roads I'd never biked.  

While I was still spreading my peanut butter a thirty-year old guy approached with a ten dollar bill in his hand.  "Here, this is for you," he said.  I was so surprised, I couldn't react in time to refuse it.  It is best anyway, to kindly accept such generosity, so such good-hearted people aren't discouraged from such acts.  A couple minutes later when he returned to his car parked near me he asked, "Are you looking for a job?"

"Not yet," I replied.  "I'm headed south."

He wasn't the only sensitive soul looking out for me.  Earlier a lady called out to me from her car, as I sat at a picnic table in the cold eating, that the local church offered lunch if I were hungry.

After I resumed riding another good Samaritan drove past me and then pulled over--my own private good Samaritan, Tim.  It was after four and he was heading to our meeting point in North Vernon with his radar out looking for me.  Though we both have cell phones and GPS devices we don't know how to track each other with the chips we're carrying, though the NSA probably does.  He gave me a quick report on his day of Vonnegut.  There weren't as many devotees as he had hoped, no more than twenty at any of the events, and only two entrants to the Vonnegut look-alike contest, which Tim wasn't one of.  The highlight of the day for Tim was meeting a librarian from the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. who amazingly was also a Carnegie enthusiast.  He had been to Carnegie's hometown in Scotland, where he funded the first of his 2,500 libraries and had been to quite a few in the US.  Tim will be in D.C. for Thanksgiving and hopes to see him again then.

It looked as if Tim and I were on schedule to meet up in North Vernon before dark, that is until a few miles down the road when I came upon a sign saying it was a few miles further than we realized.  Once again I was going to have to bike past nightfall.  At least this time I had my tent and sleeping bag and could make camp if the riding seemed too treacherous.  

North Vernon sprawled for a couple of miles.  Since Carnegies are always built within a block or two of a town's center, one of Carnegie's stipulations, that is always my destination.  With the town center not evident here, especially in the dark, I stopped to ask at a Walgreen's after I feared I had passed it.  Neither of the two people in the store knew where Walnut Street was, the address of the Carnegie, but at least knew where the library was.  When I doubled back to it, I made the unfortunate discovery that it was a new library and not what I was looking for.

So it was the phone to the rescue again.  If Janina hadn't encouraged me to finally join the twenty-first century, we would have had to wait until the next day to connect when I had access to WIFI.  Tim had been awaiting me for over half an hour.  He was there at the Carnegie, now a city office, just around the corner from the Walgreens.  If it had still been light I would have noticed the pillared building or perhaps spotted Tim's car with its pair of large roof ornaments out front.  

It may have been for the best, though, that I hadn't found Tim and ended up at the new library, as it was on the fringe of a forest where we had the best camping of our trip so far.  We also thought we might have the bonus of a stash of food, but the nearby grocery store had one of those dreaded industrial dumpsters that are attached directly to the store and provide no access to us foragers.  It would have been suspicious to park his car at the library or the grocery store overnight, so he availed himself of a nearby Walmart, which Tim ordinarily avoids, as it maintained around-the-clock hours.

The next day got off to a dandy start with a visit to the Carnegie with the sun rising behind it.

Then it was a fine hour's ride through forests and fields to Seymour and its grand Carnegie embellished by a fully integrated addition that didn't look tacked on as many do.

Light fixtures similar to the original ones flanking the now sealed off entry surrounded the building and the new entry on the opposite side of the building featured pillars similar to those out front.  The transformation of the former entrance was accomplished tastefully with landscaping.  We sat in the sun and ate breakfast by the new entrance with the library's WIFI all to ourselves on a quiet Sunday morning.

When I arrived at the Scottsburg Carnegie a couple hours later, Tim was seated on a doorstep across the street in the sun googling whatever had lately captured his curiosity while a trio of high school students were engaged in a photo shoot--a chubby guy with a camera shooting a cute girl in a slinky black dress walking across an intersection and posing in various nooks of the library while another girl held a large round white reflective device to enhance the lighting.  They too recognized the beauty of the Carnegie.  It was built on a diagonal so it could directly face the town square.

In front a plaque gave its history and identified its architects and its style of architecture--"Renaissance Revival."  The town raised $7,500 to supplement the $12,500 given by Carnegie, giving them a budget of about double that of most Carnegies to make theirs a little extra special.  Towns did vye to make theirs the equal, if not the better, of their neighbors.  This one was commissioned in 1917 towards the end of Carnegie's library beneficence, so the town had many to compare itself to.

We were nearing the tip of Indiana.  Only one more Carnegie awaited us before we crossed into Kentucky at Jeffersonville.  If the winds weren't contrary I could make it before dark.  Unfortunately they didn't give me the assist I needed, so I fell five miles short.  Tim had made it to the library and was awaiting me.  We had agreed that if I couldn't make it, I would give Tim a call and let him know if I found a suitable campsite for him and his car to join me, otherwise we would be on our own.

Luckily I did, in a corridor of bushes behind an x-rated video and peep show store that had a large parking lot for 18-wheelers to overnight at.  Tim could either park in the lot there or at a nearby cheap motel or possibly drive into the overgrown gravel roadway that the bushes were taking over. He chose the bushes and agreed that this was another classic campsite.  I had found a couple of tokens on the road near the store good for a few minutes of peeping, but neither of us felt inclined to put them to use.  Nothing could beat our campsite.  We went to sleep excited about crossing the Ohio River the next day into Louisville, where a cluster of nine Carnegies awaited us.

Indianapolis

The moment Tim and I met up on day two of these travels, Tim offered to lighten my load and carry some, if not the majority, of my gear since we'd be meeting up several times a day as we cut a swath through Indiana hopping from Carnegie to Carnegie and on across Kentucky and then down to Fort Benning.  I wasn't even tempted.  I had no desire to be transformed from a fully self-sufficient touring cyclist, to one dependent upon a support vehicle.  Not only would it violate my core of beliefs, but it would also prevent me from being prepared for any eventuality, whether a shift in the weather or some mechanical mishap or strike of hunger.  And further, I didn't wish to be concerned about the possibility of failing to meet up.

However, after my down sleeping bag soaked in some water during a prolonged hard night rain when I didn't fully stake down my rain fly, preferring to let it hug the main body of the tent to make it warmer, I took Tim up on his offer to let it dry in his car.  I was prepared to let my body heat dry it as I slept, but that might be a bit risky in near freezing temperatures, even if I wrapped myself in a few extra layers.  So when Tim made the offer at noon the day after the rain outside the Flora Carnegie, I submitted to my better sense and relinquished my bag and damp sleeping pad to his care and car.  We'd be meeting two hours later at the next Carnegie, where we would make arrangements for our evening camp site further down the road.

Tim's easily identifiable car with bike and cargo carrier atop awaited me at the large Frankfort Carnegie that had a huge addition tacked onto its side.

It took a longer hunt than usual to find Tim in the library.  Usually he was sitting in a cushy chair by the library's long defunct fireplace. Here at Frankfort, I found him in the lowest of the library's three levels seated at a table near the non-fiction books reading the "New York Times."  He had already scouted camping spots around Kirklin twelve miles away using google earth.  He'd zip there in twenty minutes giving him half an hour or more until I arrived to check out a couple of prospective sites--one beyond a cemetery and another near a river and dumpsite down a side road.  As always, before we made our departure I ventured to the 796.6 shelf to see what bike books there might be.  I occasionally find one I didn't know about and so it happened here--"Biking to the Arctic Circle," a self-published book by Allen Johnson from 2000. It was my second such luck of the day, as at the previous Carnegie in Flora I had found another--"Muck, Sweat and Tears" by Alan Anderson, a Brit.

It had a legitimate English publisher and was a compilation of capsule comments and quotes on cycling.  It looked well worth reading.  Across the street from the Flora library was an IGA grocery store whose dumpster provided us with a bag of potatoes, pea pods, muffins and cookies.

It was about an hour before sunset when we made our departure from Frankfort, so when we met up at the Kirklin library we wouldn't have to wait to make camp in the waning light, as we had to do the night before.  I knew Kirklin was twelve miles away.  But after I had gone twelve miles just as dark was descending there was no sign of Kirklin, just more cornfields.  I stopped to check my GPS device.  I discovered I had missed the slant in the road seven miles back that led to Franklin, evidently distracted by listening to the day's podcast of Democracy Now.  Rather than doubling back I headed east seven miles and then due north five miles into a severe headwind.  Better that than seven miles into a headwind and then a southeast slant of seven miles.

I pulled out my phone to tell Tim of my predicament.  It wouldn't turn on as the cold had frozen it up. Though it was dangerously dark, I had lights and plenty of reflective material front and rear on my panniers and shoes and tights.  After five miles with the phone pressed against my thigh it had not warmed enough to function.  Though I was in a nasty predicament, I felt sympathy for Tim, no doubt concerned for me, and on the verge of going in search for me.  If I'd had my tent and sleeping bag I could have camped in various clumps of trees or amongst the tall corn stalks, and reconnected with Tim the next day.   Instead, I had to push on in the dark.  No one honked their horn and all passed with ample room to spare. I could navigate just fine with a white line along the road's edge.

All was tolerable until I had to turn north and was blasted by a ferocious wind. I was soon working up the first sweat of the trip pushing into the wind.  Just as nasty as the wind was the rumpled traffic calming strip along the road's edge.  Gusts of winds forced me into it, jarring me worse than the cobbles of Paris Roubaix that I have ridden tagging along with The Tour de France.  I was barely managing eight miles per hour, so at least I wasn't hitting them with much velocity.  But at one point I  hit the rumples hard enough to knock the headlight off my bike.  When it hit the pavement the top separated from the bottom and the two batteries scattered.  I could only find one, so had to continue on with my headlamp strapped around my handlebar bag.

I arrived in Kirklin at 6:40, over an hour late.  Tim was not at our meeting point, the library, nor was it open.  Luckily my phone had warmed up enough to come to our rescue.  Tim had backtracked all the way to Frankfort.  There was a small pizza place where I could wait for him.  My pizza hadn't arrived when he walked in at seven.  We were quite happy to see one another after our hour of purgatory thanks to me going astray and a non-functioning phone and Tim having my tent and sleeping bag.  I wouldn't relinquish them again.  But at least we could enjoy a nice small cafe meal rather than Ramon in our tents.  

When the cafe closed at eight Tim loaded his bike with his gear for the night and we cycled half a mile to a spot he had located on the town's outskirts on a grassy patch besides a corn field.  We didn't realize until the morning light we were in someone's backyard.  Tim was up early, but I was still sound asleep after my hard effort of the day before when I was awoken by a woman shouting, "If you're not gone in five minutes, I'm calling the police."  Tim had taken down his tent and was ready to go.  It would take me at least ten minutes to pack.  Tim took off to appease the woman.  When I finished up, as I biked past her house, she shouted at me, "Don't you ever trespass here again."  I just waved.  Two blocks down the road a police car pulled up alongside me and motioned me over.  I was a bit chagrined, but knew the drill--remain calm and respectful and unargumentative. He was a nice young guy who politely asked me where I had spent the night.   I told him that my friend and I had been caught by the dark and had camped beside a cornfield not realizing it was someone's backyard.  I told him he had made an early departure, as he was a coffee drinker.

He wanted to know where I was from and where I was going and if I had any ID.  When he ran a check of my driver's license I feared that he might learn that this was the fourth time in a little more than a year that it had been done and  that I was indeed a suspicious character--in a small town in Illinois last September on my return from Telluride when I inadvertently camped on someone's property, at O'Hare Airport in April when I attempted to ride from the International Terminal to Terminal Three on the shoulder of a main highway, and then in a small Colorado town this past September when I proceeded through a red light when there was no traffic. None resulted in a ticket, nor did this one.  The officer's final question for me was, "Have you ever undertaken such a long ride before?"  When I mentioned a few he said he could hardly believe it.  I told him he could google George the Cyclist and he wrote it down on the palm of his hand.

Tim was awaiting me at his car unaware of my little escapade, though much less concerned than he had been the night before.  We would have been spared this too if I hadn't missed that turn, as we would have been seeking a campsite in enough light not to have camped so close to someone's home.  But it was nothing to be upset about.  We both had had a good night's sleep and were ready for another day of Carnegies.  We had hit four the day before and had four on our itinerary this day.

The first of the Carnegies the day before in Monticello was the only one that was no longer a library, and was a rare former library that the new tenants, the White County Historical Society had gone to the effort to buff off its former identity, though curiously it had left the book drop, now rusting, intact out front.

It was a lovely building on a bluff overlooking the Tippecanoe River that we had camped along a few miles upriver.  On the way out of town I passed an advertisement for a chiropractor that read "We've got your back."  A while later was a large billboard featuring the entire staff of a dental office and the phrase, "May the floss be with you."  I took a photo to send to George Lucas.  He might want to include it in the "Star Wars" Museum soon to be built on Chicago's Museum Campus.

The next Carnegie town, Delphi, featured a large Civil War monument in its central square with famous battles inscribed on it--Gettysburg, Antiem, Vicksburg.

A couple blocks further stood its stately Carnegie with a large addition hidden behind.

AC, Carnegie's initials, was inscribed over the entry.

Tim was settled into a soft chair in the magazine room.  An Amish couple were seated nearby.  Tim let me know the password for the WIFI was Read2me. Then it was on to Flora and Frankfort, already mentioned.

The next morning began with Sheridan.  Its Carnegie had been replaced by a large suburban-style library with a big parking lot on its outskirts.  Wikipedia incorrectly gave its address as the address for the Carnegie, so when I biked up to it at 8:30 and saw no evidence of the original Carnegie, I feared it had been torn town. I headed into the central business district to ask.  As I did, I noticed Tim's car parked in front of the Carnegie at 214 S. Main, now the offices of an agri-business company that specializes in animal nutrition, advising farmers on how to best feed their animals.  Tim had already gotten a tour of the building and spoken with a PhD in animal nutrition who was a Carnegie enthusiast and fascinated by our quest. 

From Sheridan it was on to Indianapolis.  I took Mulebarn Road, which led me to a sculpture garden along the road on a farmer's property similar to the one I happened upon in Kansas on my way back from Telluride in September.  It featured dinosaurs and a few bikes and a wide assortment of other figures, another outlet for some eccentric who I wished I had the time to meet. 

Next on the itinerary were three Carnegie branch libraries in Indianapolis. He had provided the funds for five, two of which had been razed.  On my way to the first on the west side of town I passed a street named for Oscar  Robertson.  The library was now the Hawthorne Center for Working Families in a largely black neighborhood.  It was honored with a plaque designating it a National Historic Place. 

It was just off Washington Street, a main thoroughfare through the heart of the city.  It was my avenue to the next Carnegie on the east side of the city taking me past the downtown baseball stadium, called Victory, and large hotels and a homeless fellow at a downtown intersection with a sign reading "What can I say, my wife had a better lawyer."  If the artist who goes around the country giving $20 for such signs for a project had seen it, he would certainly have added it to his collection.  I saw one lone rack of yellow rental bikes, but none in use on this cold 40 degree day.  A few people were out sunning in front of the Washington Branch Library.

It was distinguished by a pair of gargoyles over its entry holding books.

I then proceeded north three miles to the Spades Park Carnegie where Tim awaited me.

He'd had a fine day exploring Indianapolis and stopping off at a wooded area where he'd had a good conversation with a naturalist who approved of dumpster diving.  Tim had scored a bag of breads and croissants that he had left in the park with a sign "Help Yourself."  It was appropriated shortly after he had left it off.  Like me, Tim had passed through Indianapolis many a time but hadn't lingered.  He was happy for this opportunity.  "I've always thought Indianapolis was a town I should know more about," he said, one of his mottoes about just about anywhere and a sentiment similar to Janina's, that makes the both of them the ultimate of traveling companions, as the three of us have been on occasion.

Among the things he learned was that it was the home town of Kurt Vonnegut and the next day there were a series of seminars and events honoring him, tying into Veteran's Day and his strong aversion to war.  Tim thought he'd attend a few of the events and meet up with me towards the end of the day down the road. He would be doing something I'd love to do if I weren't committed to the biking.  Its too bad he's not blogging, as he'd have plenty of fascinating commentary.

Tim had located a campground seventeen miles east on the road to Greenfield, site of the next Carnegie.  Rather than wild camping, he proposed we camp legitimately so we could have a fire and bake the five pounds of potatoes he had scored the day before.  I was all for that and for my first shower in four days.  When I arrived at the campgrounds right at dark, I could see his roaring fire.  It hadn't provided the coals for the potato baking quite yet, but after I returned from my shower they were well on their way to being baked.  When they were, they provided a most tasty meal.  They were embellished by packs of salad dressing he'd scavenged from the campground dumpster.  And so ended Another Great Day on the Bike.