Kyle Banerjee's Blog

This past week, we finally sold our trusty Honda shown here with Shirley in this 12 year old photo. We’d been thinking about getting a new car for some time, but wanted to wait until we passed 200,000 miles. Once we reached that milestone, the problem was figuring out what to do. The reality is that it was a great car. It had always been insanely reliable and still got more than 40mpg — which is nice if your office is 64 miles away from home like mine. It’s hard to justify getting rid of a car like that.

However, it was literally the bottom of the line model, and driving 3 hours a day in a poorly ventilated spartan econobox on noisy highways in the summer ain’t exactly my idea of fahrvergnügen. Now we have a Subaru Outback Sport Special Edition (no photos yet). Basically, it’s an Impreza with some nice features such as all wheel drive, satellite radio, automatic climate control, and some other bells and whistles. I love it.

At the same time, Shirley and I were both sad to see the Honda go. I regret not taking a picture on the final day so you could see how good it still looked. And man, what a car. It still had the original clutch. The interior looked great and it the exterior still shone even if it had a few chips. The engine still purred. The entire time we owned it, we only paid for one repair that wasn’t scheduled maintenance — one of the CV boots cracked at 165,000 miles so we replaced that for $90. Arguably, that’s just wear and tear. We replaced the original equipment battery only last year and we were only on our second set of brake pads.

So I think it was very fitting to pull it onto the exact same lot as it had been purchased from almost exactly 12 years to the day (the Subaru dealership there was formerly a Honda dealership). I’ve never heard of anyone driving as far as we did on one clutch, one battery, or with as few problems. And while part of me wanted to hold onto it for awhile longer, I’m happy the Honda could retire gracefully with a spectacular and untarnished service record.

I don’t know what will happen to it in the end. The dealer will sell it to a wholesaler, and that particular model is preferred by kids who like to race cars because the body is light and cheap. Maybe it will get a new lease on life with a powerful engine, new transmission and suspension, and a wild paint job. Even if it just winds up running short errands in town until it stops, we’ll remember it fondly.

Yesterday, I took part in a conference call with one of our vendors. Our relationship has gone sour lately, and I was hoping this would be an opportunity for everyone to see things from the other side and start working better together. For most part, the discussions were very frank — a euphemism for saying that everyone was telling each other how it is.

That’s fair enough. While I believe that our vendors are business partners and we must work with them productively, our interests will not always align. This inevitably will result in frustration from time to time on both sides.

However, yesterday looked like it might be the beginning of the end. Multiple times, a high ranking representative on the other end referred to us “untrustworthy.”

I’ve heard similar accusations leveled at the company, but rather than get into a pissing contest over who is right, I think the more important issue is what happens when business partners don’t trust each other. Things are hard enough when everyone tries their best and presumes good intentions. As soon as you view your partner with suspicion, hedge your bets, and do the minimum to avoid being screwed yourself, you have a one way ticket to failure. That strategy is poison, and rarely leads to a good outcome. The discipline of game theory is practically dedicated to describing why this is the case.

The reality is that this vendor plays a key role in our operations, but we are a huge customer. Our relationship is somewhat like a couple navigating a major river in a canoe. If both people don’t work together, they wind up in the drink. It’s a dangerous situation, but probably survivable even if it’s pretty miserable in the short term.

However, there is a point when you have to ask yourself if you’re on the right path. I’ve stuck up for this company many times when I hear people razzing them. I think most people don’t appreciate how tough their position is.

On the other hand, this company has changed with time. Their outstanding strength has always been to provide powerful tools that let you do things they didn’t think up first. Now they seem more interested in keeping things locked up in proprietary structures that make it difficult to work in practical environments.

Nowadays, information comes from many sources and institutions need products from different vendors to work well together. Even Google doesn’t have the ability to do everything well, so they keep their focus on search. A small company that has far fewer resources will not be able to provide everything libraries need in a black box.

Whatever the case, I see storm clouds on the horizon. If things don’t get better soon, it will be a wild ride. Either we’ll be in a partnership that works much better, or we can find out what we’re really capable of when a long term partner pulls out. I’m looking forward to whatever happens.

After a disappointing performance on the Oregon Ultimate earlier this year, I was eager to do well on a big ride. This past weekend, I took part in the Shasta Super Century. Basically, you ride to the top of four mountains in one day. The roads are steep, so it’s challenging.

Having learned from my earlier DNF, I formulated a strategy for completing the Shasta and stuck to it. The first half of the day couldn’t have gone better. I moved right along and felt like a million bucks. Somewhere on the third mountain, I started feeling sick and actually took a 5-10 min nap at the top (something the other riders found funny). For most of the final mountain, I was in a daze and experiencing heat exhaustion symptoms even though it wasn’t hot.

Although I completed the ride with time to spare, midway through the final climb on the Shasta, I thought about scrubbing my plans for taking part in the Everest Challenge (my riding goal for the year). The Everest is roughly as bad as two Shastas spread out over two days.

Ever since I got my new job, I’ve been riding half as much as I normally do, and the resulting loss of conditioning was hurting my performance. As I slogged through the final 2 miles of the Shasta, I calculated that I might be able to complete the Everest, but even under the best circumstances, I’d probably feel the worst I’ve ever felt on a ride. Since I already felt terrible as I thought about this, it didn’t sound very tempting.

After I finished the ride, I realized that completing goals requires us to go well beyond our comfort zones. By definition, anything in our comfort zone is something we know we can do, and there’s not much point in setting goals if there’s no doubt about the outcome — it’s hard to get much sense of accomplishment from shooting fish in a barrel.

It’s much more satisfying to try things where the outcome is unknown. If I do my best to prepare for the Everest, formulate a good riding and nutrition strategy, give my best effort, and am willing to possibly feel worse than I ever have on a ride before, I might be able to finish the Everest. I’ll be pretty happy if I can pull that off.

I won’t feel bad if I don’t make it to the end. When you explore your limits, you find what you’re made of, and you can use the knowledge you gain to improve yourself whether or not you succeed. Besides, plenty of strong cyclists in their 20’s and 30’s don’t reach the finish. I’ll have lots of good company regardless of the outcome.

I’m lazy by disposition, so I like to do things the easy way. For example, every year, Shirley and I paint one side of our house. The idea is simple. If every side gets painted every 4 years, the whole house looks pretty good, and it doesn’t take much time or money to keep it looking that way. All you have to do is be willing to keep things the same color.

This year, we had a new helper shown here with me. Normally, we don’t borrow other peoples’ dogs for home improvement projects, but Bo’s owners just had a baby so we took care of him for a few days while they got things set up.

While I dealt with the bees’ nests and the painted the high places, Shirley worked on the low places. It was hot that day, so Keiko just rested in the back yard. Bo contributed to the effort by making sure we didn’t have too much leftover paint — about 1/2 hour into the job, he dragged his cable across my paint bucket and dumped it all in the yard.

As you can see, all turned out well. Now I can turn my attention to my next project (which is actually a bike ride in California this weekend). We’ll see how that goes.