Kyle Banerjee's Blog

One thing that had been driving me crazy lately is the fact that when I travel for work, I never actually get to see the place I’m visiting. I normally start working almost immediately upon arrival and then I get down to business. Even offline time inevitably gets consumed by work.

After leaving the fine city of Boston last month without getting to see anything, I promised myself that I would give myself at least one day to look around the next time I went someplace. As luck would have it, that place was Bozeman, Montana — a destination within spitting distance of Yellowstone Park.

National parks are possibly America’s greatest contribution to the world’s cultural heritage. Many countries have excellent national parks now, but Yellowstone was the first, and it remains an embodiment of the concept at its best.

Great parks like Yellowstone help us renew our bonds with the planet and remind us that we are all just a small part of something much greater worth preserving. They demonstrate what we sacrifice when we develop areas without conscience. In the day and a half I was there, I saw bears, wolves, bison, antelope, and other wildlife too numerous to mention. The variety of plant life is amazing, and the natural wonders are simply awe inspiring.

There is even something for people compelled to think of priceless intangibles in terms of countable money. Yellowstone attracts three million visitors requiring a wide array of services every year, and you don’t have to go far beyond the park’s boundaries see how much value is left after the lands have been logged, mined, and relegated to low cost development.

I typically don’t take many photos when I travel, but I made an exception this time. You can either see all of them in my photo database or you can see the short version posted to my facebook page.

I ride all year, but I still look forward to cycling season. I may be addicted to my riding fix, but even I prefer tooling about in the warm sun to slogging through darkness, cold, wind, and rain — the predominant riding conditions in the winter.

In my own mind, the official beginning of riding season is a local event known as the Monster Cookie. It’s a metric century (62 miles), but I traditionally stretch it out to 100 miles because that’s the only type of century my purist side recognizes. The picture is of me resting at the halfway point — it was cold in the morning so I took my velomobile.

Unfortunately, work has really been getting in the way of my free time. For years, I averaged over 200 miles/week on my bike even in the winter. However, ever since I started a new job a couple years ago, I’ve been putting in barely half that and it shows in my condition.

Ironically, I’ve been getting better bikes as I ride less. Just a couple weeks ago, I sold my trusty commuter. I’ve been trying to retire this thing for a couple years. It was a heavy beast, but it was so dang practical I kept pulling it out.

In the end, I realized I’d have to sell it if I ever wanted to get another commuting rig. So I went to Craigslist and to let people know a well maintained workhorse with over 50,000 miles on it was available. I got 8 calls in within 24 hours, and the first potential buyer gave me a full price offer.

It has a great new home. The guy who bought it really knows his bikes and appreciated the customizations I made, so it gets another lease on life as a hard core touring bike.

Before winter starts, I need to get a new commuter for riding in slop. I’ve narrowed it down to two choices, a cyclocross bike which I’ll get from my favorite shop or a custom built bike from someone who I know will do a great job. If you’re wondering why I don’t just go custom built, it’s because my tastes are more expensive than my budget, so I need to see what I can get for an amount that won’t break the bank.

But in the meantime, there are a lot of great rides to look forward to.

Powder has really been growing fast. In the short time we’ve had her, she’s gone from being one of the smallest and shyest dogs at puppy class to one of the largest and most rambunctious. In this clip, she roughhouses with her new buddy, a lab/Rott mix named Charley. BTW, don’t be mislead by the still in the video. Charley is really a nice guy…

Every year, we try to do something fun for our anniversary. Since we like to ski and hadn’t been out this season yet, we decided to head out to the Cascades where we stayed in the Five Pines Lodge. I can definitely recommend the place.

And what about our puppy? Well, finding someone to take care of her was as hard as giving diamonds away. Terry obliged, so she spent last weekend with two little boys, a golden retriever, and a cat.

Everyone had a great time. We skied more than 10 miles in one day, and Powder was totally zonked after playing with Goldie, Tiger, Kenny and Nathan. We all slept well that night. Next weekend, we return to the beach. Living in an area where you can cycle year ’round in proximity to sand and snow just never gets old.

One of the questions Shirley and I perpetually face is how to make the magic happen year after year. Truth, be told, there never was any secret to it — simply find something to look forward to every day.

At the risk of sounding trite, I learn from my dog. No matter how crummy the day is, she always finds something fun and a reason to believe tomorrow will be even better. In the picture below, Powder and Bo help Shirley eat pizza after a long day of work. May we all learn from their example.

After giving the matter a lot of thought, Shirley and I decided we were finally ready for another dog. No dog will ever replace Keiko, but the house seems terribly empty despite Bo’s nightly visits. It just seems more like home when you have a dog.

We found Powder (shown here with Shirley) at Marion County Animal Control. Some knucklehead left her freezing in a barn covered with mud and fleas.

Since I’m a total sucker for black dogs and plenty of great ones can be found in the shelters, I wasn’t expecting to get a white one. But it was obvious that Powder is a special girl.

I’ve never even heard of a dog that played fetch as well as Keiko. Even after she went blind, she was very good at it if you used a ball with a rattle and used audio signals to guide her.

Despite her young age (animal control estimates her age around 8 weeks), she is off to a spectacular start. As you can see from this video (which was taken immediately before we even entered the house), her fetching skills are way above average.

Powder is a very bright girl. She is not housetrained, but she is already taking care of business outside and eating on command. She’s very sociable. We saw her sniffing a cat (as opposed to chasing it), and we think she’ll do well if we introduce her to lots of people and animals. She did well on her first walk. You can find pictures of her in my photo database if you type in the search “powder.”

Right now, she’s sleeping at my feet. I’m sure she’ll be ready for action very soon.

I’ve finally uploaded a large number of photos from the India trip. To see them, just go click on the photos link above and type “India 2008″ in the search box. There’s still a bunch more to do, but you can browse at least 2/3 of the pictures that we have. I’ll also try to update the India page for my travel section sometime soon, but that might take awhile if I don’t get that done this coming weekend.

On a completely unrelated matter, I wound up dumping my New Year’s resolution before the New Year even started. Originally, I planned to not work nearly as hard on cycling next year — the idea was to do the same rides, but just have more fun.

However, being off the bike for a month has left me in pitiful shape. I lost 6 lbs during our trip (most of it muscle from my legs as far as I can tell), I’ve been hopelessly weak on my commute, and there’s no way I have a chance of completing the more challenging rides that I like.

I’ve kept my goal of having more fun, but the rides are only enjoyable if you’re in good enough condition to do them. I’ll spend the next couple months getting back in shape. Hopefully, I’ll be ready once the real rides start in the spring.

Last night, Shirley and I returned from a one month visit to India to see relatives. I’d been to India three times before, and I plan to return. Nonetheless, this trip was particularly special. This was most likely my dad’s last trip to India — so he will never see his brothers and sisters again. Most of my favorite aunts and uncles are in their 70’s and 80’s, so I need to hurry back if I want to see them myself. As we left, I faced some of the hardest goodbyes of my life.

Technology allows me to yak with the Indian side of our family several times per week via chat, email, SMS, and Skype. However, there’s just no substitute for being there. Many times, I wondered why it took us 10 years to return. I have no intention making the mistake of waiting so long before going back.

I could easily fill several volumes with my impressions of our trip, so I won’t share them here. However, I will say that it was a humbling experience, and I’m glad we went. I’ll post photos as soon as I can.

Despite the fact that people like libraries and say nice things about them, we’ve had our butts handed to us on a platter over the past few years.

We position ourselves as information professionals. However, according to a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, people turn to the Internet, professionals (doctors, financial experts, etc.), friends, family, colleagues, newspapers, magazines, government agencies, TV, and radio before they ask for help from librarians.

The reason people like libraries but don’t really use the information we provide is simple. We recognized sometime back that the morgue-like library atmosphere of yesteryear just wouldn’t cut it. To address this problem, we devoted increasingly large portions of libraries to social spaces. Coffee shops, snack bars, and other amenities became the norm rather than exception. Patrons like what we did.

Unfortunately, we haven’t yet done the same for information services. We may provide access to online resources, but we’re missing the point. People want their information in a social context. That’s why they consult their colleagues, family, and friends. That’s why they go to bulletin boards and a million social networks like Facebook when they need help. That’s why they like online services that know who they are and what interests them.

We won’t provide what patrons need, but we actively encourage them to turn elsewhere.  We tell them they should subscribe to Meebo — a service that keeps track of passwords and conversations across all kinds of systems. We meet with users in social networks that track who our patrons associate with as well as what they say. The web sites we use and recommend to track everything patrons do, down to their physical location. We use insecure email for all kinds conversations that include private data.

At the same time that everyone else not only expects but demands we share information, we go backwards. We pretend we protect patron privacy when we impose the most ridiculous barriers to transmitting any kind of information that would be useful to system integration. Meanwhile, the rest of the world moves forward.

American politics is rarely something to be proud of. Cynicism, divisiveness, and appeals to our worst qualities dominate.  In recent years, we have increasingly used flimsy pretexts to justify morally bankrupt behavior. As a result, our expectations of ourselves and our image abroad have suffered greatly.

Yesterday, we reminded the world of who we can be if we set our minds to it. Whenever there is an election, winners always celebrate, and the losers have long faces. But this last one was very different from the others.

I can’t remember ever sensing so much pride and joy in so many people — especially on the part of members of the defeated party. McCain’s very classy concession speech recognized that something special was achieved.

The best part about the election is that it wasn’t just about breaking the race barrier. Obama inspired millions by appealing to people with a message of hope and an image of who we can become — and who we are becoming.

Like most other people, I think it’s a good idea to be nice to other people. I also like it when people are nice to me (which is practically always). However, there are times when kindness strikes fear into my heart.

Last week, I heard the words I dread most — “How ya doin’? Everything OK?” This may sound like friendly banter, but experience has taught me that people say this only under three circumstances:

1. When they’re checking in on you
2. When you’re styling
3. When you’re falling apart

If one of first two possibilities don’t clearly apply, most likely the third does, and you just don’t realize it yet.  I heard these words just minutes before I succumbed to heat exhaustion on the Ultimate Road Ride last year (I thought I was fine until I almost blacked out on the bike). This year, I heard them again towards the end of the Shasta. This time, I was smart enough to realize people were telling me something.

So when I heard this question in a work context, I was worried. Under normal circumstances, I tell people I’m happy if I fail only 90% of the time. If you look at the great advances made throughout history, it’s pretty clear that progress is what you get when you screw up so many times that you finally learn something useful.

However, sometimes the stakes are high, and the success through iterative failure model can’t be used. I have a project at work that’s like that right now (even if some specific components of it might be improved best by rapid, iterative experimentation). So when more than one person asked me if I was OK in the same week — I had no reason to believe they were checking in on me because I work with them all the time — I took it as a sign of crappy work at best and an early sign of meltdown at worst.

My prescription was to pound out a threshold ride (held the ol’ HR at 170+ for a solid hour maxing out at 184 ), knock back a few beers, and get my head screwed back on. This past week has been much better. No one has been asking except to check in. Good…

Once in a long while, I go on a ride that is truly special. Last weekend was one of those times. Shirley and I drove to California so I could participate in the Everest Challenge. The Everest involves 29,035 feet of climbing on steep roads at high altitude.

The ride hardly could have gone better. I had a blast. Naturally, there was a bit of fatigue, but my legs felt good to the end. I had zero knee pain. Zero numbness. Zero problems with cramping. Zero times with my head in a fog. Zero times wishing it would just end. As I was climbing the last few miles where the average grade is 14%, I found myself thinking “it doesn’t get any better than this.” When you can hold a thought like that after riding so far, you know it must be true.

It has been over 25 years since I felt so good about a ride. When I was 15, I rode my first century — by accident. Although I now think of 100 miles as nothing, I have always regarded that day as one of my great rides because the experience opened my eyes to what was possible. As was the case back then, I didn’t ride the Everest that fast. But unlike most of the other riders who were hurting after finishing, I’m putting in about 200 miles this week.

The only thing that kept the Everest from being an absolutely perfect experience is that despite the fact Shirley provided great support, I drank only a fraction of the liquids I needed and ate practically nothing on the second half of the ride. That was stupid. Shortly after I crossed the finish line, my body decided it had enough so I wound up taking a nap in the gravel for 45 minutes. I wasn’t suffering — I felt as if I was in a feather bed. A few hours later, I had some food and fluids in me and was back to normal.

One thing I didn’t tell anyone is that I was carrying one of Keiko’s old tags for good luck. Despite the fact that my bike computer tells me I’m not nearly as fast as I used to be, this has been my best riding season ever. I’ve had a great time on some real rides, lost no time to injury (something that hasn’t happened for years), and I am dedicating my training effort as well as my performance on the Everest to her memory. There may be no outstanding successes, but there has been a string of consistently good experiences which remind me of why I ride in first place.

I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to do next year. While I like a challenge, I find that riding slower so I can enjoy the experience speaks to me more than pushing my body to its limits. For this reason, I’m thinking of trying my hand at randonneuring (basically, self supported long distance riding). I’m toying with the idea of trying to pull off 600 km in one day. We’ll see.

Starting sometime last year, I started having problems with heat exhaustion on longer, more challenging rides. The funny thing is that no matter how hot it is, it’s not an issue on shorter rides (less than 100 miles). Last week, I found out why.

In preparation for the Everest Challenge, I climb Mary’s Peak 3 times every Saturday or Sunday. Last week, I strapped on a heart rate monitor and rode the same as I normally do just to see how hard I was working. I discovered that even on extended rides, my HR is over 160 a lot of the time and practically never drops below 155 except when I’m going down a hill. That’s fine if I’m on my trainer in the garage for an hour (in fact, I’ll take my HR higher than that). But putting those kind of numbers up hour after hour? I had no idea I was doing that — no wonder I felt so bad.

Today I did Mary’s Peak again with the HRM strapped on and took it easy. I tried to keep my HR around 145 most of the time and didn’t spend much time over 150. It was a totally different type of ride. My second climb was faster than the first, and my third was faster than the second. Plus, I was able to enjoy the scenery.

The bad news is that my average speed that was 0.7mph slower than last week — that’s huge in cycling terms. Nonetheless, I was happy with the results. I could have easily done another lap. Just for the heck of it, I cranked up the effort near the end to see how much strength was left, and there was plenty of gas left in the tank. Even though I lost almost 18 minutes during the ride, I was in MUCH better shape afterwards, so I think I’d recover the lost time if I had to stay out much longer. Things are looking good for the Everest.

Bryan wants to go riding tomorrow and put the hurt on me since he figures I will have ridden too hard today. I’m looking forward to it….

This past weekend, I took part in the Shasta Super Century. It’s challenging, the scenery is fantastic, and its my favorite ride of the year. For the past two years, I’ve been using it as a training ride for the Everest Challenge.

A few minor snafus aside, most of the ride went well. I forgot to fill my water bottles on the day of the ride and dropped my arm warmers into the porta potty (ugh) at the top of the first mountain. Starting around mile 80, my left knee started acting up, but I cut through the first 100 miles in my fastest time yet by a significant margin.

As I started the final climb, things rapidly fell apart. Heat exhaustion symptoms set in and my legs started cramping. I didn’t take breaks on any of the other climbs, but I wound up stopping numerous times on the last one — including taking a half hour nap on the side of the road only 1.5 miles from the finish. I decided to scrub my plans for the Everest.

I often forget how tough the Shasta is — the whole point of rides like these is to challenge strong riders. The first year, I did the entire final climb in a stupor, my legs were screaming in pain when I reached the top, and I almost didn’t make it. Looking at my blog posting for the Shasta last year, I see I did better then I did the first year, but that pain and heat exhaustion were major issues.  I also see that despite all the problems I had yesterday, I did much better this year.

In short, the Everest is still on. There are 5 weeks to train, and too many things could happen before or during the ride for me to predict an outcome, but my chances at this point in time look decent.

This weekend, we scattered Keiko’s ashes at her favorite place to play in the whole world. It’s near the end of the beach just north of Manzanita, Oregon at the foot of Neahkannie Mountain. Even though we routinely played fetch until my arm was sore and she couldn’t stand, she always resisted when it was time to go home. Today, I let her stay to play in the sand and waves with all dogs and people who go there.

The walk down to the beach made me a little sad. This is the first time in 11 years that I’ve gone to the beach without Keiko, and I can say that she was with me at least 90% of the times I’ve been at any beach over the course of my entire life. Games of fetch and long walks may have been the highlight of her day, but I’m sure I enjoyed it every bit as much as she did. Saying goodbye to all of that is hard, but I felt a strange weight lift from my shoulders when we let her go for good.

The rest of the weekend went pretty well. I’m preparing for a tough ride next weekend, so I rode just shy of 100 miles along the coast to test my legs and equipment. Bad luck could shut me down, but I’m feeling good about my prospects.