In the middle of translating and editing a book under significant pressure, I discovered that I had a needed file in a format that could not be opened. After doing everything possible to open the file in other programs that I owned, the only option left was to find a copy of the software that would open it: Corel Draw 12.
So I raced to town on my bike as it is normally the fastest option. Today was different. Today it broke; right at the beginning of my ride.
But since it only broke the bearings in my rear wheel, and since my need was urgent, and since I had very few other options of continuing my work without the software... I continued on.
The damaged hub and (obviously obliterated) bearing that failed.
It was still 6kms before town when my rear bearing broke and the tyre started rubbing noisily against the frame of my bike, slowing everything down tremendously. Hobbling into town, my first stop was the bike shop to get replacement parts. Then it was off to see if somebody could help me with the software I needed. Living in Argentina has its benefits, depending on how you look at it. Illegal software is one of them. Virtually every computer shop I entered had pirated software available to sell to me. Some wanted to charge a lot, others just a little; some had a recent version, others had the latest version: but every place I went had it. To be honest it really surprised me. I expected some unscrupulous shops to have a copy, but some of these places were quite upstream shops. In the end I settled on a copy from a shop who gave me a CD with the latest version for $2.70 USD.
Hobbling back on my broken, noisy, slow bike I could not help but wonder why anybody living in this country would opt to pay the hundreds of USD for a legitimate copy when these pirate copies are so easy to come by. Obviously, if you want to live honestly and with a clear conscious then you would, but after living here for a number of years I can see that many people do not even know that it is wrong. To them, this IS the software that they buy. Some are even shocked to discover that they have "pirated" software and even more shocked to know that their software costs so much to actually purchase... especially when they already have it installed on their computer.
Riding the bike was possible on the flat sections, which includes most of the town, but the rise back to our outlying suburb seemed almost impossible. Fortunately a friend found me and carried me and the bike back to base. How refreshing and encouraging it is to find a friend when you are in need.
Needless to say, the bike is now repaired with the best hub money can buy ($7 USD) without moving into Shimano Cassette (read very expensive to change everything needed to do this) hubs and systems.
The new hub that will hopefully give me many months of pain-free cycling.
Oh, and if you were wondering about the software that I purchased, it was installed on a virtual machine and the entire machine with the software was deleted after I had been able to read that rogue file for the book. Now, I wonder if companies would offer throw-away-licenses where you could use their software for just a couple of days, or to accomplish a specific task... just how many people would buy them?