ChuckDoherty.com

I recently purchased a map update for the GPS on my motorcycle through Amazon.com. After a year or so, the map data becomes noticeably out of synch with reality, especially in areas where there is a great deal of road construction. Plus, businesses such as gas stations open and close fairly regularly, meaning you can’t always trust the old map data to get you to a gas station in the boonies when you are running on fumes.  I have never faced a close call myself, but it has directed me to a few stations with tumbleweeds rolling past rusty stumps of abandoned pumps.

What I actually bought was the license to visit their website and download updated map data up to four times each year for the usable lifetime (as defined by Garmin) of my GPS device.  The right to do this costs about $100, as opposed to shelling out around $59 for each one-time purchase.  What you actually receive for your money is simply a seven-digit alphanumeric code (like “JGKDFED”) which you then type in at the Garmin website. 

This code could very easily have been sent to me in real-time via email. Instead, the code arrived printed on the back of a plastic card similar to a credit card or gift card, and covered with scratch-off latex like you would see on a lottery ticket.

The card was in turn mounted on a piece of cardboard and, along with a shoplifting detection device, encased in one of those infuriating clamshell packages that are the bane of modern consumerism not to mention being responsible for a large number of injuries on the part of people trying to open them.

The clamshell, which could  have been shipped in a padded envelope, was instead nested at the bottom of a shoebox-sized cardboard box, and the remaining 95% of the volume in the box was taken up by a few of those plastic bag balloons that have recently replaced foam peanuts as the padding of choice.  The box, weighing all of about two ounces,  was then shipped to me via UPS and arrived at my back door about a week after I placed the order.

Putting aside all of the global warming, wasted materials, recycling, and fuel usages issues that surround this, it is frustrating to realize that the shipping and handling charges applied to this virtual item, as well as the delay in getting it, were totally unnecessary. 

The entire transaction should have lasted 15 seconds and gone like this;

“Here’s $100.” 

“Thanks. Now go to the website and type: ‘IAMASAP’ and you can download your maps.” 

</bitching>

I rode up to the Americade motorcycle rally in Lake George New York for the first two days of the week-long event. The folks from the local riders’ group that put this together go early in the week, before it gets too crowded and crazy.

Unlike Sturgis, Laconia, Daytona and other “bike” events, Americade is much less Harley-centric and geared more toward touring motorcycles and the folks who ride them, including many trikes, trailers, and sidecar rigs. But that does not mean that the event was biker-free.  There was no shortage of geniuses sporting straight-pipe bikes and riding down the street like a kid with baseball cards clothes-pinned to their spokes.  I have to admit feeling a delightful wave of Schadenfreude when one overly loud rider astride a Japanese Harley clone was followed into the motel parking lot by a cop who wrote him up for excessive noise.  Apparently excessive assholeness is not in itself a ticketable offense.

The heart of the event is a huge market / trade-show at which vendors of all stripes hawk their wares. If there is something that can be attached to a motorcycle, it was for sale there along with the ubiquitous Sham-Wow, magnetic bracelet, and beef jerky vendors that seem to be at every event, no matter the theme.  I was a bit disappointed that many of the vendors were selling at their regular retail prices instead of offering the expected show special, so there was no real point in buying products that I could get later on and not have to schlep home.

On the way back, Nurse N and I stopped in at the French Hollow Alpaca Farm in Cambridge NY where I learned: a) alpacas are among the sweetest, cutest things on earth, and b) I am alergic to alpacas.  We also enjoyed a coffee and a delicious muffin (probably hemp-based) at a twee coffee shop in downtown Cambridge that looked like a retirement home for Hobbits on the inside. It was run by the just-too-friendly members of a local commune.