6/6/22

After a great dinner at Duffs, I had to go to an Amazon locker in downtown Buffalo to pickup an Atlas mechanical cruise control device for my bike. I ordered this back in Raleigh but it wouldn't have been delivered to my home in time before I left so I decided to time it for a delivery to Buffalo. And it actually worked out! I got to the Embassy Suites in downtown Buffalo, found the locker inside the hotel, scanned my QR code at the kiosk and a locker door popped open and inside was my package. Welcome to 2022!

However, as soon as I left the hotel front door, it started to rain. I was sadly not staying at the Embassy Suites and instead had to go across town to my cheaper hotel about 7 miles away. At this point, my bluetooth camera unit was dead so I couldn't get voice directions from the GPS. So I had to navigate to the hotel in a steady rain, poor visibility, barely there lane markings, and constantly glance down at the phone on my handlebar to get visual directions since I had no idea where I was going. Not to mention the impatient Buffalo drivers death honking me for the audacity to change lanes to make a turn. I eventually made it to the hotel soaked. This was the second most precarious moment of the trip so far.

6/7/22

The next morning was more rain. I had to figure out a solution to fix or replace my bluetooth helmet camera. It wasn't charging to full capacity probably due to user error from having the charging cable accidently yanked out a couple times. I googled for electronic repair and actually found some decent reviews for a small shop in Depew, just 10 minutes east from my hotel. I called him on the phone and explained my road trip situation and he was willing to take a look at it that morning. With the rain, I decided to take an Uber over.

Ray runs his repair business out of the basement of his house. The basement has several work benches filled with tools, test meters and items fixed and items waiting repairs. As he was checking out my camera, other customers were dropping off old stereo components and phone callings were ringing requesting him to bring back to old their old electronics. In a world where most of us replace broken TVs, stereos and computers, Ray is a savior to those who doesn't want to just trash and replace. He is a practitioner in a dying craft.

Ray opened up my camera unit and started to disassemble parts to test. I left him alone to work and to find a back up solution in case Ray couldn't fix it. As I worked on my laptop, I could hear beeps and boops from his testing devices. I called up several motorcycle stores around town but no carried the cameras. I then search online on Amazon but their prices were too high for this older model and it wouldn't arrive until Thurs, which meant I would have to stay in Buffalo for two more nights, which meant paying for two more nights of hotel. I finally found the camera from a reseller of Walmart at half the price of Amazon but it be a Thursday delivery. Not ideal.

Ray then came upstairs with my camera and said the battery was fine but an internal part was limiting the charging voltage hence probably why the charging light was not lighting up and it would only charge to 1/3 capacity. He couldn't fix or replace that part since it was a special proprietary part. Well shit. Since he couldn't fix the camera, I had to come up with a solution fast. I decided to order a new camera from Walmart but I had no where to deliver it too. Since it was sold from a reseller, I couldn't ship it to a local store. My only solution was to ask Ray if I could deliver the package to his house. He thought about it for a couple seconds and said, "I don't see why not."

Another crazy situation with a crazy solution. I was ordering a couple hundred dollar camera while on the road and shipping it to a man I've known for an hour. Instead of staying in Buffalo waiting for the delivery. I decided to cross into Canada and stay with my friend Jigger just outside of Toronto. That means a couple days later, I'll have to ride back about two and a half hours to Buffalo, pick up the new camera, and ride back to Toronto all in the same day. Again, not ideal but seems like the best imperfect solution at the moment. At least I'll be able to catch up with my friend for a few days, have a free place to stay and relax for a couple days and deal with some Canadian logistics for the next few weeks.

I Uber-ed back to the hotel, packed up my stuff, loaded the bike, said bye to George and Ben and went off solo to cross into Canada. From this point on, I'll be traveling alone up to Alaska and back.