I'm originally from Canada. There are plenty of places that have no access to things like 1/4 to 1/8 adapters. Sure one could drive for a couple hours or more and find something. I spent several months in a small town on the Saskchewan prairie about 60 to 70 miles away from a city where I could find a Radio Shack. In the winter, I'd be snowed in. I bought my groceries at a general store (work gloves, beer, Scotch, Smedley's beef steak and kidney pie in a tin, eggs, back bacon, cereal, veggies, socks, shirts, meat, etc.) most of the time. I had 3 stores nearby. One 14 miles away on washboard roads and one 11 miles away on something resembling blacktop or 33 miles away on gravel (I took the 33 mile route because I could actually go to a Chinese restaurant or an Italian one and even see a movie (i.e, Sheena the She-Wolf of Siberia or some other major motion picture). None of these towns sold 1/4 to 1/8 adaptors (this was back in the mid 1980s--these places have shrunk in size and there are probably less places to shop, except for the 33 mile away town which was a regional centre of sorts--it now probably has a Radio Shack).
In such little podunk towns, we really liked getting mail. Summers were okay and we thought little of driving 2 hours to get to the capital of the province where we could shop 'til we drop or whatever. It'd probably be quicker if one of us sent the fellow one of those cheap adaptors (which we all probably have a couple or more) and call it a day than playing the mail order game, though with the internet (just rememberd that it exists--I was back in the mid 80's at the salt mine where I used to work) I suppose our fellow could have had it pretty quick (and he did offer to pay). Oh hell, I'm just blithering on and on. Oh well....
