67   Wednesday, November 5   Tupper Lake, NY

I have to fight the temptation to start this as I have all the other pages 
so far: "Well, I seem to have made it to Tupper Lake..." Ok, so I said it 
anyway. It just seems so... natural. What a pair of contradictory days I 
have had since I last wrote. I finished off the last entry with "I should 
reach [the border] by this time tomorrow. At least the weather is holding 
out"... I should learn to keep my mouth shut... err... pen still... err... 
something like that, anyway. I awoke the next day (Tuesday) to rain. The 
tent was starting to leak and everything was getting soaked (sound 
familiar?). So, against my better judgement, I packed up and walked the 
2-3 miles into Huntingdon. Arrived absolutely "trempé" -- drenched. Went 
to the only laundrymat in town -- an attempt to dry some stuff out. Closes 
at 3:00. Look at my watch. 3:05 (took me several hours sitting in my tent 
to screw up the courage to get on my way, despite the rain). Damn. Ok, 
into the "Maison de Patates"... and try to drip-dry over poutine. Sort-of 
works. Thing about leaving, get 1/2 a mile, and turn around. Not only is 
it (still) raining, but it's hovering at about 33 degrees (somewhere 
between 0 and 1 celsius). My gloves are soaked, so I take them off, freeze 
my hands. Back to the poutine. Yuck. Slippery roads. At 9:00, it finally 
stops, so I make it across the border at 11:00. Thank goodness the 
crossing is a 24h one. Once in NY, I get to sleep. It's a reasonably dry 
night, the wet tent, sleeping bag, etc... notwithstanding. Woke up this 
morning to bright sunshine. I've made 70 miles today (115km), which 
considering the headwind, is nothing short of phenomenal (if I do say so 
myself). No accounting for the weather. One wonders what tomorrow will 
bring.

   Total change of topic: I find it's almost too bad I've had to leave 
Québec. I've finally regained the ability to speak French "comme
naturel"; my accent isn't so obvious that people automatically switch to
English for me -- I even had one obviously English-speaking waitress 
switch to French when talking to me. O well.

   On-on!