Brainerd, Minnesota

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Alexandria, Minnesota

 

Rather than beginning this post with an exaltation of all the tributes to Sinclair Lewis in Sauk Centre, his hometown, I must first report on the theft of my sleeping bag, the second time such a travesty has befallen me in the past two years.  The first was outside a supermarket on the outskirts of Washington D. C. as I was winding up a trip, so it was no dire disaster.  

This time, however, I wasn’t so fortunate.  It happened at a MacDonalds in the small town of Morris on a Sunday when no stores were open that might have had a replacement.  The best I could come up with was a fleece blanket at a Dollar Store.  The nearest larger town was Alexandria, forty-five miles away, where I could resort to a hotel if I couldn’t find a sleeping bag for the night. It would be a hard push into a stiff headwind to make it by dark.  With the temperature dropping to forty at night I doubt the fleece blanket and all my clothes would suffice.

Fifteen miles before Alexandria I took a break at a convenience store in the tiny town of Kensington.  An older guy on a tricycle arrived just as I did.  He had a bundle of advertisements on the back of his bike that he was delivering about town.  I asked if Alexandria might have a Walmart where I could replace my sleeping bag, telling him mine had just been stolen a few hours ago.  He said it did, but he had an extra I could have.  That was too good to be true.  He said he lived nearby so we went straight there.

He didn’t have to go into the house to find it, as it was on the shelf in his garage. It was in a bright red stuff sack with a Marlboro insignia which I instantly recognized as an item from the long-gone Marlboro catalogue full of useful, well-made gear that one could acquire with the UPC code torn from the cigarette packs, which I knew all too well.  I was never a smoker, but I collected hundreds of discarded packs along the road for a period of several years, one of the best things I ever scavenged.  I redeemed them for jackets and shorts and watches and many other items.  

It was a sad, sad  day when Congress banned cigarette companies from giving smokers the incentive to smoke more with these coupons.  Camel and Newport and Virginia Slims and Benson and Hedges and all of the brands competed with one another to have the most enticing stuff. It was a much anticipated day each year when Marlboro released its new catalogue.  Newport for a while gave out movie passes for a certain number of packs.  The value of most coupons was about twenty-five cents, so it was like stopping to pick up a quarter.  A friend and I would bike around the city on Sunday mornings and harvest forty or more. 

It’s been a couple decades since they were banned, so this sleeping bag was a relic.  We unrolled it to make sure it wasn’t bug-infested.  It looked brand new and had a heavy-duty zipper and clips to synch it down, not cheap at all.  It had a fleece liner, probably not as warm as the down bag that had been stolen, but with the Dollar Store blanket it could be warm enough.  If not, I’d just have to wear some clothes.   My good fortune in coming upon this sleeping bag didn’t wholly blunt the indignity of being robbed, but it helped.  Henceforth I will have to better secure my tent and sleeping bag on the back of my bike so thieves can’t so easily detach them.  It is certainly disheartening though  that such thievery could happen even in small town America.

Anyway, great thanks to Greg, who works as a lift-operator for the nearby ski resort of Andes Tower Hills.  His ski season can start as early as Halloween if a cold spell hits, though usually not until well into November.  His resort has snow-making capabilities, so when sub-freezing temperatures come around he can be called to work any time.  He goes to work with a bundle of clothes, not knowing how many layers he might need. 

The down sleeping bag I had stolen hadn’t been warm enough the night before, as I needed to put on my sweater during the night as I slept, as the temperature nudged below forty.  I camped in a narrow band between two corn fields.  As I returned to the road,  a pickup truck turned onto the small path between the fields.  I expected a reprimand or a stern query from the burly driver, but he shockingly greeted me most cordially, saying his son had been out bow hunting in the morning and had seen my tent.  He hoped he hadn’t disturbed me.  I assured him he hadn’t and asked if his son had had any luck as I’d noticed quite a few ears of corn nibbled on.  He acknowledged the deer were a menace and was sorry his son hadn’t seen any.  It was a pleasant bookend to a day that had a calamitous middle.

I had camped a few miles past Glenwood, where I’d visited my second Carnegie of the day.  Carnegie was so synonymous with libraries in this region, that his name over the entry was in larger letters than the “Glenwood Public Library” above it. 

The Sauk Centre Carnegie twenty-five miles before it was bereft of any lettering on the building or acknowledgement of Carnegie, letting its identify be known by a sign out front calling it the Bryant Library.  A statue of Sinclair Lewis and a plaque relating the significance of his book “Main Street” also graced its grounds.  Lewis didn’t grow up with the library, as he entered Yale in 1903, the year it was constructed.  A plaque on the library quotes him as saying that growing up reading was his “greatest adventure.” 

Lewis had the impetus to succeed as his father was the town physician and he was another example of the third-born son syndrome, striving to outdo his older brothers.  His major breakthrough didn’t come until 1920 when he was thirty-four with the publication of “Main Street” loosely based on his home town.  It was the best-selling book of the time and made him a wealthy man.  Its less than flattering portrayal of his home town, named Gopher Prairie in the book, didn’t initially sit well with Sauk Centre.  The local newspaper went six months before it acknowledged it.  In time though Sauk Centre fully embraced him.  He followed up “Main Street” with five best selling novels almost one per year and in 1930 became the first American awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

There is no indication that he was a cyclist, though he might have been, as he was a great admirer of the ardent cyclist H. G. Wells, so much so that he named his son Wells.  H. L. Mencken referred to Lewis as “the red-haired tornado from the Minnesota woods.”

The intersection in the middle of town is Sinclair Lewis Avenue and Original Main Street, not merely Main Street.  In 1994 the Main Street was placed on the National Register of 
Historic Places.  Sinclair Lewis Avenue leads a mile east to the cemetery where Lewis is buried.  He died in Rome in 1951 at the age of sixty-four succumbing to alcohol.  His ashes were brought to the family plot where they reside between his mother and father.  I didn’t have to search hard to find his modest marker, as a plaque at the entry to the cemetery indicated it could be found “three rows in, eight monuments to the left.”

Two murals in town  honor him and quotes from “Main Street” adorn benches. 

The campground on the town lake is named for him. 

The home he grew up in can be visited.  Unfortunately I can’t report on it, nor the museum in the library or how the library honored him, as they closed at noon on Saturday, shortly before I pulled into town following a magnificent bike path for over twenty miles.

I followed up my two Carnegies on Saturday with two more on Sunday, neither of which continue to serve as libraries.  The Carnegie in Morris is now the Stevens County Historical Society and Museum.  It was more emphatic than Glenwood with its acknowledgment of Carnegie, letting his name suffice as to the identity of the building.

The Carnegie in Alexandria now is residence to several businesses and is inscribed with “Carnegie Building” over its entry.

St. Cloud, Minnesota

 

 The Mississippi continues to be my companion.  I crossed it five times in my perambulations about the Twin Cities tracking down the seven Carnegies scattered about its neighborhoods, and I continued to follow it along the Great River Road for seventy miles to St. Cloud, where I will bid it farewell as I head west to Sauk Centre for the next Carnegie.

There are more than twenty bridges over its serpentine route through the metropolis, most of which have a bike lane in this very bike-friendly community.  Many of the lanes about the city had plastic posts separating them from motorized traffic.  Signs occasionally affirmed cyclists the right to take over an entire lane when there wasn’t space for an actual bike lane.  And for once on this trip I wasn’t a lone cyclist.

I was glad for the opportunity to explore the city hopping from Carnegie to Carnegie, most of which were in quiet residential neighborhoods.  The first was in a Hmong community in the northeast of St. Paul.  It was initially known as the Arlington Hills Branch.  It had been replaced in 2014 and became a private library taking the name of the East Side Freedom Library serving as an archive of Hmong materials.

I crossed the Mississippi for the first time heading south five miles to the Riverview Branch, also in St. Paul, on George Street.  It was a similar design of one large room with high ceilings and large arched windows letting in loads of light.  The library is soon to be expanded when the funds can be found.  Plans for the expansion have already been drawn up, though there are still community meetings seeking more input from library patrons.

It was twelve miles, mostly west, to the next Carnegie, this one in Minneapolis with two crossings of the Mississippi.  My climb to the first of two bridges over the River gave a panoramic view of the skylines of the two cities.  St. Paul was dominated by the dome of a large cathedral, as is common in France, while Minneapolis was highlighted by a cluster of mini-skyscrapers, at least in comparison to Chicago.  

The Hosmer Branch was similar to the previous two and likewise in a quiet residential neighborhood, though my route there took me on busy streets.  I had to remind myself that I was in a large city, as it’s streets were lined with small, well-tended homes, a sharp contrast to Chicago.  There was hardly a two-flat to be seen or an apartment building of any sort.  It looked like a most liveable city.  

It was a quick three miles northeast without having to cross the River to the Franklin Carnegie on Franklin Street, a busy, four-lane thoroughfare.  An Aldi was across the street.  It was nearing dinner time, but it’s dumpster was behind a high fence with a hefty lock, so there was no supplementing my ramen and beans.  

It was nearly ten miles to the next Carnegie back in St. Paul and over the River for the fourth time.  It was nearly an hour until dark and I became reconciled to having to find a motel for the night, as it wasn’t likely I’d have time to slip out of the city before dark with three Carnegies still on my agenda.

Wikipedia gave a faulty address for the Hamline University Carnegie, the only academic library he funded in Minnesota.  It clearly wasn’t the towering three-story building with an address of 1536 Hewitt.  A librarian at the nearby new, modern library said the former library was just across the quad, and it was indeed much more recognizable as a building that Carnegie would have funded.  It is now the Giddens/Alumni Learning Center.

I still had ample light to reach the next Carnegie just two miles away, but just past the university I came upon the first motel I had seen in nearly four hours of biking around the cities, so seized upon it.  I had been hoping to hold off on the first motel of these travels until the next night as rain was predicted for much of the day, but I let my better judgment prevail, though I had been looking forward to the challenge of finding a place to camp on the outskirts of the metropolis.

The forecast called for the rain to start at ten the next morning and to continue all day.  My hope was to be well out of the metropolis by the time the rain started. I began the day with the St. Anthony Park Branch.  It was in a more affluent part of St. Paul than the previous Carnegies.  It was well-maintained and featured well-tended landscaping with a variety of flowers. 

It was then seven miles through the heart of Minneapolis, over the River one last time and past the University of Minnesota campus, to the Sumner Branch on the four-lane Olson Memorial Highway.  It was the morning rush hour, but there was little traffic to speak of, as if everyone was still working at home.  

It was only 8:30 but the sky was growing darker as if the rain could start at any moment.  It held off for an hour, arriving a bit before it was predicted, but was light enough that cars only needed intermittent wipers.  It was just fifty degrees.  The rain dropped the temperature a few degrees keeping it below fifty all day.  The rain varied between a mist and a drizzle with only a couple spells of actual rain drops.  When I reached the large city of St. Cloud an hour before dark I knew I had to take advantage of one of its motels.  Even if the rain had let up, my shoes and gear wasn’t going to dry in my tent.  At least the forecast is rain free for the next week and the temperature will get into the upper sixties, promising the best of cycling.

The inclement weather was bearable knowing I was closing in on Sauk City, birthplace of Sinclair Lewis.  I was eager to see how the Carnegie of his youth honored him.  And beyond Sauk City I would have two or three small-town Carnegies a day to look forward to.  It was good to be back in the business of anticipating the new.

Stillwater, Minnesota

My first encounter with a police officer came as I was investigating an abandoned farmstead as a place to camp. I noticed him stopped at a nearby intersection after I turned away from the dilapidated house unable to penetrate the thick overgrown weeds surrounding its backside.  I thought I’d give the barn a try but the presence of the officer gave me pause.  


I was hoping it was just a coincidence that he was stopped at the intersection but when he didn’t move I had to concede he had spotted me and I needed to clear out.  The only way was to go past him.  He called out through his rolled down passenger window asking if I was returning to the highway I had just exited.  He said he was responding to two calls from motorists who thought it was dangerous for a cyclist to be riding on the shoulder of the road.  

I confessed I was looking for a place to pitch my tent for the night.  He suggested I go back down the side road behind us that had a dead end sign and slip into the forest.  He told me I better hurry as rain was imminent.  He was surprisingly cordial, not asking for ID, or running me off.  And thus I enjoyed my first forest camping and softest ground of the trip, as well as the most secluded.

The previous night I camped along the Mississippi besides a beach and a boat launch.  I had followed a sign to the “recreational area” thinking there might be camping.  There was, but not sanctioned.  I was somewhat hidden by two large fir trees besides a basketball court and a soccer field.  As the light was fading a car pulled into the parking lot and I heard the chatter of young voices and the bounce of a ball.  I feared a group had come to shoot some hoops in the cool of the evening.  Fortunately they went over to the soccer field and only kicked the ball around for a few minutes in the waning light.

My sleep was interrupted by an occasional freight train, indicating the union that had been threatening a strike had ratified the settlement of a few days ago. I was closer to the river than the train tracks, but I didn’t hear any vessels breaking the water.  I could see an occasional barge, but no young boys on rafts.

The road along the river offered occasional overlooks which were generally accompanied by a historical marker relating to logging or the construction of a fort and other incidents in the early history of the region. One was at the site of Maiden Rock where a young Indian woman was said to have lept to her death rather than being forced into marriage with someone she “dispised.”  A famous climb in the Tour de France in the Vosges, La Planche des Belles Filles, also takes its name from a legend of women leaping to their deaths rather than being forced into sexual relations with their conquerors.

Not far south of Maiden Rock along the river i passed thoughnthe small town of Pepin where Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the “Little House on the Prairie” series of books, was born in 1867.  It hosts a museum devoted to her as well as her childhood home.  A gift shop was packed with trinkets and her many books.  It was reminiscent of a museum in Red Cloud, Nebraska devoted to Willa Cather that Janina and I passed on our drive home from Telluride last month.

My long prologue, over 450 miles, to the first Carnegie that was new to me came to an end in Stillwater, just over the border from Wisconsin. But first I renewed acquaintances with a Carnegie in Hudson, just across Lake Saint Croix that separates the states north of the Mississippi.  It was still home to a law firm, which had let  the ivy adorning its exterior cover its designation as a library over its entrance. 

And to welcome me to Minnesota the wind switched the day before from the south to a northerly, dropping the temperature twenty degrees from the 80s to the 60s, and then another twenty degrees during the night. I needed my sweater, a recent addition to my wardrobe thanks to Telluride’s Free Box, for the first time.   I welcomed the cool, but not the head wind, though it wasn’t too severe blunted by the forested terrain.  The further north I venture, the more azure the sky and the fluffier the clouds.  The sky is almost as pleasurable to gaze upon as the countryside.

I crossed into Minnesota on a new pedestrian/bicycle bridge and headed straight to the Carnegie just a few blocks away.  At first I feared it had been razed, but it was only blocked by a huge three-story addition.  It’s frontside retained all its majesty and was unmarred by the addition.  It was an early Carnegie dating to 1902 and had been expanded previously by a pair of matching additions to its sides.  It’s rotunda was surrounded by columns and was under a mini-dome.  It was a good start to my set of new Carnegies on this trip.  Now it’s on to the Twin Cities, twenty five miles away for a quick six more.

LaCrosse, Wisconsin

 

The time of Trump is past.  I have biked three hundred miles in the past four days and haven’t come upon a single Trump sign or flag or proclamation.  For the past six years, and as recently as my spring ride around Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota,  rural America has been thick with Trump mania. No more.  I’ve encountered just one lone tired tirade from one of his ilk who avoided invoking his name and so off-the-wall that one could only question the mental health of whoever might be spewing such ravings.

It is a wonder that the authorities haven’t whitewashed these blathering.  Even those who might agree with his bent would not want to be associated with such crazed forthrightness.

The most common sign on the byways of Wisconsin has been “ATV Route” and in small towns “All streets are ATV routes unless otherwise posted.”  I have yet to see an ATV, only hearing a couple barreling through the forest.  They may be more common in the winter months.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen signs warning of horses and buggies on the roads as they have been a common site.  It may be that motorists are so accustomed to seeing them that there is no need to note their presence.  They frequently overtake me on ascents.  I can hear the clip-clop of horse hooves coming up from behind me at better than ten miles per hour.  I can fly past them on the descents.  All greet me with a smile and a wave, whether passing me from behind or approaching me from the opposite direction.  

The sound of clip-clops is so ubiquitous they’ve even intruded upon my dreams or so I thought, as when I awoke I discovered I wasn’t dreaming as someone was actually trotting by in the midnight hour. I heard them well into the night when I camped along the road in some high weeds behind a pile of rocks when no cornfield offered itself, only soybeans.  So far I’ve only seen one of the clan who forego motorized vehicles on a bike, a woman in a bonnet and dress leisurely pedaling along with a wicker basket on the front of her upright handlebars. 

The landscape has become much hillier and forested after crossing into Wisconsin.  There are patches of corn, but nothing on the scale of the vast fields in Illinois that have narrow grassy breaks amongst them that are ideal for camping.  I’ve camped the past two nights in high weeds shielded from the road by thin bands of trees.  The dew has been heavy and there has been a lingering fog in the morning, not so thick as to limit visibility too much, other than putting a mist on my glasses that I have to wipe every minute or so.

As I closed in on the Mississippi and LaCrosse I had a couple of options of what road to take.  A retired school teacher at a Casey’s General Store where I was taking a break advised me to stick to the main highway rather than going off on the county roads, saying it’d be less hilly.  He returned a couple minutes later saying he’d taken a poll inside and the consensus was it’d be better for me to take the county roads.  No one knew though that ten miles down the road a bridge was out, forcing me to take a detour.  There was no traffic, so I just appreciated the extra miles it allowed me in such a pristine setting.

Only one Carnegie has presented itself so far since crossing into Wisconsin.  It came in Platteville and was as pristine as it was when it opened in 1915 having been recently fully restored.  It had served as the town library until 1975, then had a brief tenure as a teen center before an architectural firm bought it. A plaque gave credit to the present owner of the building, who bought it in 2015, for a six year renovation of the building, completed in 2022. 

Platteville was once prominent in Chicago sports as its college hosted the Bears pre-season training camp during their years under Mike Ditka.  I was among the legions of Chicagoans who made the two hundred mile drive there for a close-up look of those Super Bowl Bears on the practice field.  I took an Australian friend who had a short stint as a professional in Australia Rules Football.  He was astounded at the size of his American counterparts.  He played without pads and couldn’t imagine trying to contend with someone the size of William Perry, the Refrigerator.  

Shortly before LaCrosse I joined up with the Great River Road that will take me along the Mississippi for better than one hundred miles.  I am ready for a cascade of memories of biking it from the opposite direction with Don Jaime twenty years ago.  His account of our journey from Minneapolis to Chicago can be found on the blog in July of 2002, ten posts worth.  You can read of our intrusion upon a church social and finding a Bible along the road and Jim’s time on a nuclear submarine. 

Darlington, Wisconsin

 The first two nights of my annual fall ride have been spent in a Grant Wood painting, as I’ve camped amidst forests of gallant, towering corn stalks awaiting harvest.  Wood has firmly been entrenched in my consciousness after Janina and I visited the largest collection of his works in the Cedar Rapids Art Museum, formerly a Carnegie Library, on our drive out to Telliride a month ago.  Rural Iowa predominated his paintings with fields of corn a common theme.  As I’ve bicycled past miles and miles of cornfields in northwest Illinois on my way to Minnesota I catch one view after another that I’d have to stop and paint if I were Wood. 

I can thank the threat of a rail strike for these miles through the cornfields, as Amtrak cancelled all trains on its Empire Builder route that I’d planned to take to Minneapolis after our return from a month in Telluride, which would have deposited me beyond the corn belt up in the north woods.  I was too eager to be off on my bike to wait around for the strike to be settled or averted.   Even if it were to be settled it could be days before a seat became available, since several days worth of trains had been cancelled creating a backlog of passengers.  

I didn’t mind at all biking the four hundred miles to  Minneapolis, as it allowed me the interlude of five days of rural biking from one huge metropolis to another rather than plunging straight from one into another.  Seven Carnegies await me in the Twin Cities and then fifteen more in the northern tier of the state, then I’ll have completed another state, having already visited the twenty-six in the lower part of the state. I might even slip into Ontario for three more. 

Having completed Illinois and Wisconsin I didn’t have to alter my route for Carnegies, though I’ve been able to revisit a handful that were on my way, always a treat.  It’s surprising how vivid the memories of previous visits can be.  Rather than approaching them with anticipation of what version of grandeur and grace awaits me, I approach with the anticipation of renewing acquaintances.  I’m never disappointed.  They are as noble and stately as I recalled.  

The first in Oregon, on the wide Rock River, had added a bike locked to its bike rack with a wooden box offering free books. It is a rare Carnegie that hasn’t  been expanded, though it did have a couple of alterations—the addition of an elevator and the conversion of its fireplace from wood to gas and a plexiglass window atop its circulation desk, none of which diminished its charm.

The next in Mount Carroll, a town with historic plaques on homes and buildings throughout the small town, was undergoing renovation.  There wasn’t a chance this town with a strong sense of its past would demolish its Carnegie as have eighteen communities in Illinois, the same number as Minnesota.  The  temporary library was half a block away in the former Senior Center across from the County Courthouse, which filled an entire block in the center of the town.  Old cars were lined up on two streets for a vintage car festival with crowds of people giving them a close look.

I had a long fast descent out of Mount Carroll, explaining the town’s name, going over thirty miles per hour for the first time since leaving Chicago.  The misty rain pelted me hard at that speed.  Turning north towards Wisconsin, thirty miles away, I was finally able to take advantage of a slight tailwind after having mostly ridden west.  The forecast called for a slight southerly breeze the next three days, keeping the temperature an unseasonable eighty degrees.

The warmth has had me intent on keeping my thermal water bottles packed with ice from the self-serve fast-food ice dispensers.  The ice can keep for a couple of hours, each sip a divine pleasure.  I was thwarted at my first Taco Bell, as it’s ice-dispenser was out-of-service, and I was only offered a partially-filled small cup of ice with my burrito.  And to add insult to injury, the Taco Bell was further economizing by having done away with its WiFi, not an uncommon act these days with so many people having phone service that provides it.  At least it hadn’t covered it’s electrical outlets, as some do, so I could do some charging.

The last Carnegie in Illinois is the northernmost in the state in Warren just shy of the Wisconsin border.   As with Mount Carroll, this town of 1,500 hadn’t expanded  its Carnegie.  It was just off its Main Street, on the other side of the train tracks beside a history museum. 

After crossing into Wisconsin I was able to take advantage of its lightly traveled county roads designated by capital letters.  They provide as fine cycling as one could ask for.  And it’s only going to get better the further north I venture.  As always, it is a great pleasure  to be off on the bike with nary a concern.

A Tour de France Course Marker for Greg LeMond

The Telluride Film Festival  is the rare film festival that does not announce its schedule in advance, so I didn’t know until the day before the festival started when the schedule was released that a documentary centered on Greg LeMond’s 1989 win of the Tour de France was to play and that LeMond was to be in attendance.  That may have been the most exciting revelation in the thirty years I have been attending the festival, anchoring it’s shipping department for a four-week paid vacation in the spectacular San Juan mountains.  Well knowing the intimacy of the festival I knew I would have the opportunity to meet Greg, a heroic figure who had granted me much happiness during the height of his career, and that had me hopping with delight.

Luckily the first screening of the film, “The Last Rider,” was on the first day of the festival, so I didn’t  have to endure the anticipation of seeing LeMond and his film too deep into the four-day festival.  It would be my second screening on its opening Friday night at 8:45 p.m. in the 60-seat Backlot Theater in the town library.  

By sheer luck I had brought along from Chicago a Tour de France course marker as a gift for a friend from Los Angeles who was an ardent Tour fan.  It was to be a surprise for her.  I had yet to see her, so it remained in my possession and I could offer it to LeMond or maybe have him autograph it for her if he didn’t want it.  I had a similar experience with Christian Vande Velde.  I presented a Tour course marker to him for an autograph when he made an appearance at a Chicago bike shop, not so much for his autograph but out of curiosity to see his reaction to the marker. 

I didn’t know how aware riders were of these bright yellow signs with a black arrow on them pointing the direction at intersections since they were led by a phalanx of motorcycles and hardly needed them to guide the way as they served me when I was riding the Tour route preceding the peloton. I learned from Christian that the riders are fully cognizant of them and regard them as much of a holy relic as fans do.  They are the ultimate souvenir for the fans and the riders, especially since they are not for sale, but must be scavenged after the peloton has passed. Christian has been delighted to accept a handful of them from me over the years.  I wondered if Greg would have a similar reaction. 

He was late arriving at the theater, and I wasn’t even sure if the husky, white-haired masked gentleman was Greg, as he wasn’t accompanied by an entourage, though he did have a blue lanyard around his neck worn by guests of the festival.  I had been waiting in the lobby after claiming a second row seat.  He proceeded into the theater and took one of two seats in the  fourth row that had evidently been reserved for him at the far end from the aisle, as if he wished to be anonymous.  

I went to my seat and dug the course marker out of my backpack and discreetly held it at waist level pointed in his direction.  It immediately caught his attention.  His eyes lit up and he gave me a thumbs up. Hooray, it was him and the marker meant something to him. I sat down to await the introduction of the film.  The director of the film, Alex Holmes, whose previous film was the much acclaimed “Maiden” about a group of women who competed in an around-the-world sailing race, introduced the film.  He told us we were the first audience to see the film and nodded towards Greg and his wife, who had joined him, and said they were seeing it for the first time too.  He didn’t say anything about a Q&A afterwards, so I could ambush Greg when he rose from his seat and came to the aisle.

I couldn’t fully concentrate on the film knowing that when it ended I’d have the chance to meet this three-time winner of The Tour and have a bit of a chat.  The first half of the movie charted LeMond’s career from a youth to  becoming a Tour rider, finishing second to his teammate Bernard Hinault in 1985 and then winning it himself in 1986 in a most agonizing battle with Hinault, who seemingly reneged on his promise to help Greg win after Greg sacrificed himself to help Hinault win in 1985, his fifth Tour title, tying him with Jacques Anquetil and Eddie Merckx for the most ever.  Greg felt betrayed by Hinault and could hardly enjoy his victory, the first by an American.  He didn’t even want to attend the team victory party, putting in just a token appearance.  

Several months after his win he was shot by his brother-in-law in a hunting accident and was lucky to survive.  It took him three years to regain his form.  He was ready to quit the sport when he attempted his first Grand Tour after his shooting riding the Giro in 1989. He struggled mercilessly.  But by the end of the three-week race he had a strong time trial giving him a modicum of confidence going into the Tour de France shortly afterwards.

Fignon won that Giro and was a strong favorite to win The Tour.  He and LeMond traded the Yellow Jersey throughout the race.  It culminated with a time trial from Versailles to the Champs Élysées.  Fignon had a seemingly insurmountable fifty second cushion, but Greg pulled out a miraculous effort defeating Fignon by fifty-eight seconds, winning The Tour by eight seconds, the closest ever.  Fans of the sport know the LeMond story well, but it was still exhilarating to watch it unfold, especially accompanied throughout the movie by commentary from Greg and his wife.

The movie ended with hearty applause.  It was several minutes before I could speak to Greg as others around him engaged him in conversation as he headed in my direction.  With course marker cradled in my arm I said, ‘I didn’t notice any of these in the film.  Did you have something similar to this in your day?”

“Yes we did, I know them well.”

“Do you have any? This is for you if you’d like.”

‘I’d love to have one, but are you sure you want to give it up?”

“I have a few, as I’ve ridden the Tour route as a touring cyclist nearly every year since 2004 when Lance was going for his sixth win and always bring back a few to give to friends, including my favorite bike shop in Chicago, and Christian Vande Velde, a fellow Chicagoan, who I’ve given several to over the years.  He’s always happy for another.”

He wanted to know more about my Tour experience, asking where I camped and how many miles I did and if I shared the experience with others. When I told him I enjoyed that first Tour experience so much that I’d returned for sixteen more, he exclaimed, “That’s more than I’ve ridden.”  He well knew the pleasure of cycling in France and expressed the desire to experience France and The Tour in a similar manner.  

I said the festival director had mentioned that Greg might lead a ride to his final screening in one of the two outdoor theaters on the last day of the festival on Monday.  He said he didn’t know anything about that and that he hadn’t ridden his bike in two months after being diagnosed with leukemia In June. He said he was feeling much better than he had been, as he had started on a new medication.  He looked as if he was in the best of health and was as buoyant and upbeat as could be.  He betrayed no hint of being in ill health in any way. 

Several times more as we talked, while he clutched the course marker, he reiterated, “Are you sure you want to give this to me?”  I assured him that it was an honor to share it with him.  I knew others wanted to have a word or two with him, so after my friend Ralph, who has ridden a few stages of the Tour with me over the years, and is a staff photographer for the festival, posed a photo of us in front of the screen, I stepped aside and let others have the pleasure of time with him.  He seemed to be in no hurry and was as affable as could be.

I had much more to say to him, so I returned the following day for his next screening.  He and his wife and director were half an hour early this time lingering in the lobby.  As I approached them Kathy immediately greeted me with, “That sure was nice of you to give us the course marker.  We really appreciate it.  We already have a spot picked out for it over a doorway.”  

That was music to my ears.  I told them I had a Tour experience that related to Greg.  During my second Tour, which was consumed by Lance mania drawing thousands of Americans to the Tour, an older French cyclist, who wasn’t so enamored with the throngs of Americans new to the sport taking over the Tour, asked me if I’d heard of LeMond.  At first I thought he meant the French newspaper, but then realized he was a typical Frenchman who thought Americans had no appreciation for the past and he was actually referring to Greg.  Rather than taking insult that I wouldn’t know of LeMond, I replied with gusto, “Of course I know LeMond! He won the Tour three times, just like Bobet.”

“You know Bobet,” he replied in shock. “He was my childhood hero.  No one remembers him.”

Having won the Frenchman’s favor he invited me to his home to watch the end of that day’s stage.  I couldn’t take him up on it, as I needed to keep riding to get further down the course to keep up with the peloton. As Greg quizzed me more about my Tour experiences, I told him he could read my daily Tour posts with lots of pictures of course markers and fans along the road and Tour decorations on my blog.  He could find it by simply googling “George the Cyclist.” I said I would turn up, just above George Hincapie.

Kathy chimed in, “As it should be.”

Greg pulled out his phone and immediately googled “George the Cyclist” and there I was.

“You must have two million followers,” he said.

“Not that many,” I replied, “but quite a few around the world.”

I told him that I had emailed Christian to tell him that Greg had joined the fraternity of cyclists who have received a course marker from me. Christian replied, saying I was fortunate to meet Greg and his wife too, adding that she had midwestern roots and that he liked her a lot.  That was no surprise, as she was as easy-going and charming as her husband.

I told them how much I enjoyed Richard Moore’s highly-detailed book “Slaying the Badger” about LeMond’s 1986 win and wondered how much time Moore spent interviewing him.  “Only about an hour, isn’t that right Kathy?,” he replied.

 “Wow’s all.  I figured he must have spent a couple of days with you going through all the twists and turns of that race.”

“No that was it.  You know he died a little while ago.”

“Yes, that was a great tragedy. I’ve met him a couolof times during the Tour.  He was as nice a guy as you.”

In my brief time with them I could clearly see they were warm and caring and kindly folk, just like Christian, who has gone out of his way to acknowledge me a number of times during the Tour, even once breaking from his teammates to greet me during the opening ceremony in Liege as each team slowly rode a route through the city past thousands of fans after they had been introduced on a stage in the city center.

It was a gesture that seemed in character for Greg too, who couldn’t have been more humble and considerate, and like Christian deflecting attention from himself. I greatly look forward to crossing paths with him again, maybe even riding together in France. 

An addendum from a cycling friend and journalist who rode a three-speed coast-to-coast decades ago and holds Greg in the highest of esteem.  He sent me a copy of the note he had written to Greg while he was in the hospital recovering from having been shot.