guess our friendship started when he showed curiosity on my extensive research on bicycle building/tuning. i hand centered and aligned my wheels from the scratch and i was always on the look out of some needed lubrication or micro tuning of my brakes, which saved me from trouble at least twice. i wasn't an aggressive cyclist on the streets and i guess the courier bag helped me have some respect. maybe i would even be dead if wasn't for my care. the most surprising thing was building my first bicycle from the scratch (minus soldering the frame, which was something i ever wanted but completely unfeasible both from literature, equipment and resources. i guess shipping 41xx steel from far away would break my tiny little bicycle courier account) and Buzz followed every step. when i finished i had my front brake at the right hand and the rear at left. i let it be that way as i was tired of messing with bicycles for so long. i guessed i could get used to it (i still use this configuration to this day). and impressively the 2 times i saved my life by breaking fast enough to not get into a crash, i had my front brake (the most efficient way to stop a bicycle) on my right hand. i probably also saved by the fact (this is not an Ad.) i had Kool Stop braking pads. they are out of this world. i still use the same pads after probably + 35000 kilometers. i have 2 spare sets that i guess it will never be used. if i miss-tune my brake, a gentle grip is enough to lock the front wheel. but a good tuned brake allows some modulation, so you don't necessarily apply the biggest force out of the sudden. i like rim brakes and i miss Buzz. the day he died i was sure i would take him to hang out with capybaras on the nearby park. i aborted the visit the day before because it was too windy. he didn't liked the wind. always hiding from it. i feel everyone's skeptical when i tell this story but once i took him to the capybaras (we used to go there past 1 or 2 am., where capybaras were fairly active eating their grass) and the group we found was really big. i didn't felt at ease on letting him there. Buzz had quite amount of fear on being alone on environments he didn't knew. always running to my feet and trying to squeeze himself there when i walked away. so that day i decided to cycle towards another part of the park which would give us access to the highway to return home and we found a single capybara. a lone male. they have a scent gland on their forehead. easy to spot. so i let Buzz near him. and when i went back to my bicycle to grab my water bottle, i saw Buzz running into the direction of the capybara. i froze instantaneously. i guess my body was processing if i should start running towards the capybara to fight it in case something weird happened. Buzz always kept distance from them. they started to play tag. i couldn't believe. the capybara was just behaving like a dog running away, stopping, inclining his head down waiting for buzz till he reached him and he jumped a little jump and ran away to another spot. i got so excited i went running and jumping there too. i thought i would be able to play. i scared the capybara. the play was over. the capybara still went close and started sniffing Buzz but this time i intervened. i knew capybaras host a parasite (Amblyomma cajennense) that could easily kill a human. so i guess Buzz wouldn't have a good time with one. i guess that day was the highlight of my life. i always joked internally Buzz was visiting god when we went cycling to them, as capybaras are the biggest rodents in the world and Buzz is a rodent too. we visited capybaras some other days. much less than i wanted but putting Buzz on a tiny hydration backpack with his head out while i cycled, wasn't a super comfortable way of moving around. we also were tied to warm and clear nights. Buzz felt a great amount of stress cycling in noisy/crowed places and capybaras sleep during the day, mostly. Buzz died out of the blue. the day before i did the usual. before i went to sleep, i cleaned his cage one last time, put food and set his tent (if it was not set already). he was completely normal. he loved sleeping on a tent. once he sniffed the smoke out of a cannabis cigarette. took him a while to realize the thing i smoked wasn't harmful or at least not that much for us. he didn't liked the jazz genre by the first time we heard an album of but it was the only genre i heard him singing over. unique (in a steady pitch) but very regular paced noise. my family doubted he had a span of 30 minutes watching animation movies and they had their mouth shut when we put Disney's Luca to play and he just sat on his cushion looking at the screen. strange to think i was so embedded on his love that on the day he died (~ 4 years ago) i realized i lost my only IRL friend. a sincerely fuck you to my mother, which made me return Buzz's friend Simba because when i read about guinea-pigs being highly social creatures, i had to buy one. bought because i wasn't even aware the right thing would be to adopt or rescue one. i exchanged Simba's return into flower seeds (~ 80 packages) and let them rot on the attic. and to my sister which by the workload of trying to get into various universities, left her pet to me. guess you wouldn't abandon Buzz if i didn't naturally started to care of him but still: fuck you too. to think a mammal doesn't have feelings is much more naive to think i'm lying when i saw him play tag with a different unknown specimen (although it wasn't our 1° visit to capybaras that day). he was 6.5 years of age and will be greatly missed. please never ever have a new pet, it isn't hard to befriend a wild animal. even mockingbirds but also don't befriend them too. wild animals used to humans can get in trouble by some other humans