Day 13 – July 10, 2003

Lake Ontario

We left early and headed east. We had to pay a toll to get off the freeway. It was a whopping 30 cents. I thought the chill was just due to being close to the lakes, but it stayed with us, so we pulled over and got our coats on. After a couple of hours, we stopped for breakfast and afterwards the sun was out.

I am still amazed every time I talk to someone at these little restaurants. This one again had a great breakfast, although one egg was a little more done than the other. I guess the odds finally caught up with me. The server, a pretty gal with great legs, told us she was from northern California and had moved out here 11 years ago. I should have gotten her name, but I guess I wasn’t thinking. Maybe she’ll read this and drop me a line. (I’m sorry about the picture, I seem to be blearing a lot of them lately.) I ask her which she liked best and I got that answer, always a little different, but always the same. She said she liked it better because, “It’s like Cheers, everyone knows your name.” I think that pretty much says it all. We all want to live in a community where we are part of the community. Yet somehow we seem to gravitate to the cities where we become lost in a sea of people.

After breakfast, we stopped for a few minutes at a Moto-Guzi dealer around the corner just to see what they had. Then it was back on the road. I am always surprised by the differences in the cemeteries around the country. Some are so well maintained, and others are always flowered.

The weather today is a little cloudy compared with most of the trip. I am expecting to outrun the storms today, but run into them tomorrow. We’ll see.

The roads in this part of the country are almost agonizing. It seems that every time I forget about the pain in my back, I hit another of those raised places in the road that just jars my whole body. The manhole covers all seem to be sunken enough to hammer you. It seems like they could have found a way to correct that but I guess it is just not important enough in this climate.

We ended up seeing more of Lake Ontario than I thought we would, and for a minute I thought we had turned the wrong way when I saw a sign that said Mexico. Then I realized it said Village of Mexico. There are a lot of Villages around here, I guess they don’t see things the same out here as on the west coast.

Well, lots of water, lakes, rivers, streams, and water falls later, we arrive for the night in a place in the mountains of New York called Tupper Lake. It is supposed to rain tonight and part of tomorrow, and I cannot upload here cause there are no local internet connections. Well it’ll have to be tomorrow night. Till then, I’ll see you on the byways…