Tarikere 400 km Brevet ride

Randonneuring as a sport is really catching on in India and we have a huge number of participants, especially in the bigger cities like Bangalore, Delhi and Chennai. Before this year, I had never ridden more than 200 km at a time, but inspired by the stories of people who did multiple SRs and brevets of 1000-1200 km, I decided to attempt the SR this season. I began with a 300 when the season opened and completed it fairly comfortably. The next ride in Bangalore was a 1000 km, which I felt was way beyond my capabilities. The upcoming ride is a 200 km one, which I intend to complete.

In the meantime, there was a 400 km brevet organized in Mysore (Tarikere 400 brevet). So, I signed up, loaded my bike in my car and started off. I had done my 300 BRM on my roadbike and didn't feel very comfortable at the end as my upper body was really stiff. So, I decided to see if I can complete it on my MTB which I had fitted with semi slick tyres. Unlike the 300 where I just turned up without preparation (and almost got booted for having inadequate lights), I made a rudimentary plan (that saying is true, your plans go out of the window when the first punch makes contact)

My plan

The ride started off promptly at 6 am. I got in with the leading group and continued with them for the first 5 km. It was still a bit dark and I stopped to fix my headlight. At that time, I lost touch with the lead group and went along with a group further back. We made good progress covering 24 km in the first hour. As I hadn't had anything to eat in the morning, I stopped for some tea and biscuits. By that time, I was the last rider on the road as the others pressed on. Not to worry, I told myself, I may catch up with them when they stop and even if I don't this is not a race.

From then on, I decided to go at a comfortable pace at around 70-80 % of my regular speed. I was maintaing an average speed of around 21.5 kmph through this period. The key thing about the route was that it was a completely rolling terrain and I did not find many sections that were flat. As we were going to do a U turn at the 200 km mark, each long and fast downhill filled me with dread as I would have to climb back in the middle of the night. 

I stopped for breakfast at 8:30, having covered around 55 km. After a healthy breakfast of 3 set dosas and some rice that I packed in my backpack, I resumed riding. 10 km later, I realized that I had forgotten my gloves in the restaurant. I considered turning back, but it would take me almost an extra hour, so I decided to go forward and if I was lucky, the restaurant would be open on the way back and I could pick up the gloves.

At the first checkpoint

I stopped briefly to have the packed lunch at 12. At every small town on the way, I purchased bottles of water to refill my bottles. By now, my phone's battery was at less than 50%, so I decided to leave it in the bike bag and charge it with my powerbank. To my dismay, I found that the plug was not a tight fit and while riding, the jerks were breaking the contact and it would stop charging. I decided the way out was to have it charge whenever I stopped.

The rest of the first half passed without incident with 2-3 breaks to have fruits and other snacks. I had initially set a target to reach the halfway point by 3:30 pm. But the rolling terrain and the average road surface slowed me considerably and I finally reached Tarikere around 5:30 pm along with 3 other riders. My phone had run out of battery at 187 km and lost the GPS signal, so I saved the strava ride and started another one for the return. (Link :  187 km @ 21.3 average)

At the halfway U turn point

There I made the first big mistake of the ride. The other 3 riders had stopped for a meal just a couple of hours back and decided to start riding back. I decided to stay back and have a dosa and packed some ghee rice as emergency nutrition for the night. By the time I started back at 6:30 pm, it was dark and I needed both my headlights. The road from Tarikere to Kadur was around 30 km and a fairly steady climb for most of that distance. The problem was the opposing traffic, as it was a long downhill for them, they were coming down at a high speed with their headlights at high beam. Each time a vehicle passed, I would be blinded and slow down my pedalling momentarily. As a result I took almost 2 hours to cover the 30 km. I was falling further behind my plan for the ride and realized I would have to cut down on the halts and keep pedalling to be able to complete it in time.

I reached the Arasikere at around 11 pm, which was a full 3 hours after my planned time of 8 pm. It had taken me close to 4.5 hours to cover 65 km, an average of just 15 kmph. I stopped at a restaurant and had some coffee and cake and asked if I could lie down for a few minutes. During that time, I plugged in my phone and headlight to the wall outlet and had it charge. I started off at 11:30 and pedalled slowly. At around 1:30 am, I realized that I had covered just 22 km in the last 2 hours and was never going to finish at this rate. I was sleepy, my pedal strokes had no power. 

I briefly thought of giving up but then decided that even if I do, I was in the middle of nowhere with no one around and would have to wait till morning. So, I decided to find a place to lie down for an hour and hope that I would recover my energy. 

I was at 290 km and had to complete the 118 km in around 6.5 hours which seemed doable. I stopped Strava as my powerbank was also losing charge and I wanted the phone to be active if I needed it for an emergency.I found a shop where the owner had piled up 50 kg sacks of salt outside, so I climbed up, set alarms for 2:30 and every 10 minutes hence. The "bed" was extremely comfortable and I fell fast asleep in no time. I would've continued sleeping but for a fellow rider who saw me and came over to check if I was ok. I woke up with a start and realized it is 2:52, so I had missed all the alarms. (Link:  87km @ 15.3 kmph)

I now had 5.5 hours to do 118 km and 3.5 hours to reach the last CP, which was 66 km away. Thankfully, I found that my energy levels were much higher and I pedalled on, reaching the final CP with just a few minutes to spare. After some tea and biscuits and time to charge my phone to 15%, I started riding again. It was 7:00 am and I had 2 hours to cover the balance 38 km.

At the final checkpoint

Or did I? As I found out later, the distance between the last CP and the finish was 55 km instead of 38 and the cue sheet was just inaccurate. Simply irresponsible from the organizers.

I was still pedalling like crazy, as much as my energy levels would allow. But at the cutoff, I found myself around 15 km from the finish line. I was shocked, there was no way that I had just covered 23 km in the two hours. I decided I would take it up with the organizers once I reached.

Then disaster.

A few km later, still 12-13 km from the finish line, my left side pedal just came off from the bike. The spindle was still attached to the crank and I tried pedalling with that, but it was very tough going, especially as the last 20 km was a continuous uphill. Finally with around 10 km to go, I figured I just couldn't continue and picked up my phone to inform the organizer. It was completely dead, which pretty much summed up my luck. I asked a local if I can park and lock my bike there while I go to the hotel to get my car to retrieve the bike.

The pedal

A few lessons that I will definitely take to my next BRM

- Do your homework with regard to the route. Never trust the cue sheet blindly

- While planning the ride, pay more attention to the latter part of the ride. The first part usually goes well, it is in the second half when you are tired, cold that a written down plan could come in handy

- Take a fast charging power adapter and cables for each one of your phone/bike computer and headlights. It will be useful when you need to juice it up really fast

- Do not trust an older powerbank. Though my mi bank has a good capacity of 10000 mAH, it doesn't really power anything beyond the first 3 lights

- Consider your choice of bike. A road bike or a hybrid will allow for higher sustained speeds which can provide that invaluable buffer later on in the ride.
- Don't ever think of giving up on a brevet. The slope from thinking about giving up and actually giving up is extremely rapid and you will be hanging up your gloves in no time

Though the DNF was a blow, my SR dream is still alive, it has given me a lot of confidence in my next attempt at a 400. As they say, you learn more from a single mistake than a 100 successes.

iPhone vs Android - a tipping point

I've been seeing a trend in the group of lot of long time Android users switching to the iphone recently either with the 8/8 plus or the iphone X. While Android still holds an insurmountable lead, it has been mainly in the low end whereas both platforms were fairly equal at the high end. Now, I wonder if the iphone is firmly moving to take control of the higher end market.

Consider my situation, I've been a primary Android user since 2010, started with the Nexus One and then moved through various phones (mainly Nexus phones, but a few Samsung, LG and Motorola). Over the years, I've had a few iphones but they never had my primary sim for more than a few days.

There were a few reasons why I preferred the Android over the iphone

- Google maps location history : I have this saved since 2010 and its great to go back through the years and see all the places I have been. I have no concerns about privacy really, I trust Google and my life is fairly mundane
- Keyboard with swipe : Though I can get it on the iphone, gboard on Android is just such a complete experience. The stock iphone keyboard still makes you peck like its 2007
- Google Launcher with Google now cards : I love being able to swipe to the left of my main screen and get this information so easily
- Whatsapp : My main communicator of choice, while the features are common across both platforms, I feel that it is an android first app

But why did I shift? First my story
- My main phone was the nexus 6p which has a bad reputation for reliability. While mine still works, it seems to be just be a matter of time before it dies. My backup was an iphone 6
- So, I decided to move to a new phone for my main one. At that time, my choice was to go for a higher end iphone (7 or 7 plus) or a more recent android (pixel or LG G6)
- I usually buy second hand and was negotiating with a few people. I ended up buying a LG G6 through a good deal (4 month old at 26K compared to the launch price of 41K)
- I thought I was set for quite a few months. I had a fairly good flagship in the G6 plus a great backup in the iphone 6
- Then disaster, I went on a trip to Europe where I used the G6 to hold a local sim. The iphone held my India sim. When I got back to India, I wanted to swap the sims but the sim tray would not come out.
- I took the LG to an authorized service centre. He got the sim tray out but then found that the SIM slot was damaged and required a motherboard change (15K). To add insult to the injury, he didn't have a spare tray and asked me to wait a few days. So, I was basically left with a wifi device
- As I used the iphone 6, I realized that some of the points that drove me to Android each time didn't trouble me as much. Maybe it was genuine improvements with ios11 or my frustration with Android, I decided I could live with the iphone as primaty if I could get a more recent model
- So I decided to resume my search for an iphone. Last time, I was looking at an iphone 7 at around 40K, but prices have come down since then. I found a good iphone 7 plus and got it down to 38K
- I couldn't justify 2 iphones so placed an ad for the iphone 6 and managed to sell it within a day. I lost just 2K for the 6 months I owned it for (second hand phones rock!)
- I now have 2 android phones, the G6 and the Nexus 6p. I got the replacement sim tray, luckily the primary sim slot works but the secondary and SD card don't.
- I need to give away one of the androids. I like both phones equally but prefer the Nexus 6p. However, the uncertain reliability and the heavier depreciation I will take with the LG means that it is the 6p that has to go.

Coming to the iphone, why did I make the switch
- Google Maps Location history : I found that the iphone support for this has been moved to the Google Maps app rather than the Google app. Though it is not as good as Android (less granular info), its still enough for me
- Google Now cards : with Google deemphasizing the development of Google Now cards, I realize I only use one of the cards which gives me the time for my commute. I get that on the iphone widgets or the Google app. Not as convenient but it is there
- Swipe keyboard is something I sorely miss and hope Apple brings it. However, I find Apple's word prediction to be quite decent
- In addition, I get several advantages with the iphone. The smoothness is unbelievable, I need to get to the pixel for similar levels with Android and I am not paying that kind of money. Plus I think iphones last longer, so hoping my luck holds out with the iphone 7 plus I got (it is out of warranty)

My experience with Airtel fraudbytes

November was spent mostly outside Bangalore, primarily in Mumbai. I had agreed to be part of the team for our organization’s CMMi Services Level 5 appraisal (it is commonly and wrongly referred to as Level 5 certification, there is no such ‘certificate’ given by CMMi.  It was a good experience, I will detail that in another post, but the primary purpose of this post is to highlight my not-so-pleasant experience with Airtel’s services.

I subscribe to a 3G data pack costing 250 rupees a month, which gives me a data allowance of 1 GB. Normally, I consume 300-400 MB during the month, but given that I was going to be in Mumbai for most of the bill cycle, I expected to cross that limit easily. Airtel has a service called Smartbytes, which allows you to buy additional data usage beyond your monthly limit. Luckily for me, the excellent data usage monitor that is part of Android since 4.0 allows me to keep a close watch on my usage on a real time basis, so my plan was to monitor the usage and once I reach the limit, subscribe to a Smartbytes pack costing 300 rupees that would give me an extra 1 GB of data.

I was naïve to think that it would all work perfectly. Here is what actually happened

-  I reached the limit around the 2nd of December. So, I went over to their page and attempted to subscribe but got an error that my unbilled had exceeded my Credit limit. That was strange, as my bill usually is around 1100-1200 rupees. So, I logged onto their portal and checked the unbilled amount, which was 3500 rupees. Apparently, their unbilled figure calculates data charges at the usual rate of 3 ps/10KB, which works out to 3000 Rs/GB.

- As I wanted to get the Smartbytes activated, I logged into the self service portal and paid 1500 rupees into my account, thinking it would solve the issue. Unfortunately, it did not and I was not able to activate the package.

- Over the next 2 days, I called Airtel thrice and spoke to their customer service rep (and paid for the privilege). Each time, they assured me that it would get activated but it did not.

- I also contacted them on twitter through their customer care as well as sent them an email. Other than meaningless assurances, there was no action taken

- Finally, on 6th, I gave up and told them not to bother, as my billing cycle was ending on that day. I’d consumed around 1.2 GB of data for which I would have to pay an extra 600+ rupees instead of the 300 that I would have paid.

While I have no way of knowing for sure, I feel that I have been made a victim of a deliberate strategy to overcharge. While their credit limits may be in force, it would have been very easy for their CC to override and enable the package, but they chose not to do it. After I got my bill, I tweeted about this and had 2-3 meaningless conversations with some person without any action. If they really cared about a customer who gives them 3000 rupees every month, they would’ve said “Sir, we’re very sorry that you could not activate Smartbytes, to compensate, we will retrospectively apply the package from the date you requested and give you a credit for the difference”. I don’t really expect it from them, though.

 

Work Life Balance

A friend recently put up a post commenting on work life balance. I generally agree but have a slightly different angle on it. This is relevant primarily to the IT services industry, based on my experience, but may be applicable to others as well.

My view is that most of the people who complain about work life balance hate their jobs. They hate it so much that it becomes a chore and drains them physically and mentally. This is especially prevalent among the people in their late 20s and 30s. A big reason for this is the monotony of most IT careers, most projects are very similar in nature and with the industry trying to get into longer term outsourcing contracts, people spending 3-4 years in the same work environment is not unheard of. The solution is to change how people feel about their work. A way to tackle this is to rotate staff between assignments, our PSU banks used to do this on a regular basis in the past and we never heard about people complaining of work-life balance out there. New assignments bring new challenges and helps motivate and keep people on their toes.

Then there are the numbers, the actual time you spend on work versus personal activities. Undeniably, Indian IT workers work harder when compared to their Western peers (I'm not even going into whether the hours spent are all productive), but if you compare it to other categories like the Chinese factory worker or the worker in Indian industry, we are a pampered lot, with pay substantially above the national average for working conditions that are far better than the average. For this privilege, there is a price you pay, and that is a choice that each individual makes.

Toshiba Thrive : Comparision with the ipad

People who know me well are aware that I am one of the biggest admirers of the ipad. Though I was very sceptical of the ipad before it launched and openly pooh-poohed it after the unveiling , I had to eat crow once I got my hands on it. I was in love and over the past year and a half, have been dellighted and amazed by the device on innumerable occasions.


But, I'm not one of the ios fanboys, or the more Indian term, a member of the iMafia. I've been using an android phone as my daily driver for the past year and find a lot of areas where Android is far superior to ios. This is reflected in the sales numbers, where android has taken the lead and is pulling away. But, in the tablet market, the ipad is dominant, the 800 pound gorilla in a room full of tarsiers. So, I was very curious to find out why. Are Android tablets really that bad that they haven't been able to make any headway against the ipad? Opportunity came knocking in terms of the Thanksgiving Black Friday sales, where the retailers had heavy discounts on the Android tablets. I was able to pick up a Toshiba Thrive for around 300$. My brother, who lives in Boston, picked it up and I finally got my hands on it last weekend.


The Thrive was(is) one of the most unappealing of the Android tablets. It's bulky(looks like something made in Soviet Russia), was plagued by quality issues at launch and was expensive to boot. A perfect trifecta which caused it to quickly sink to the bottom of the also rans. But, my reasoning went, flaws that are killers at a 500$ price point could be bearable when the price drops to 300. They had also cured the sleep of death issue and it had a few redeeming qualities like a full sized USB, HDMI and SD card slot plus a replacable battery. All these factors made me choose the Thrive over the competition. And the fact that the discounted price was a full 100$ less than the others. Never discount the importance of a good bargain.


The Short Verdict
Now that I have it, what's the verdict. The short answer is that If the ipad 2 is a 10, I'd rate the ipad as a 9. When I first got my hands on the thrive on saturday, my first impression was so negative, that i would have given it a 5. But as I got used to it and understood it a little better, I'll change it to a 6. With the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, which fixes a lot of the issues that have plagues Honeycomb, that'll move to a 7. But, it is a big question mark whether the Thrive will ever get ICS. 


Does this mean that Android tablets have no chance, if even with the latest software, they don't even come close to the ipad? I don't think so. Remember, the Thrive is not even the best tablet, there are tablets like the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Asus Transformer Prime that have far better screens and build quality and would rate a 8 or 9 with the ICS build. But, the issue is that Apple is very close to releasing the ipad 3, which going by past history, would rate as a 11 or 12 at the minimum. How will the manufacturer's be able to counter that? I'm glad that it is someone else's problem and I do not envy them.


The Longer Version


Here's the long version of what I thought of the Thrive


Size (B): My brother had bought the original Toshiba case and boy, was it a piece of crap. Contrast to the original ipad case, which is a piece of art and looks as good as new even after 18 months. The case made the already thick tablet even thicker and was a pain to actually use. I got rid of it and found it quite usable without the case. In terms of thickness, it is not too different from the original ipad. The ipad2, however, takes it to a totally new level.

Sound (F C): I have never heard a speaker that is as bad as the Thrive. It gives the word tinny a whole new meaning. I think 2000 rupee mobile phones have better sounding speakers.


UPDATE: I discovered that Toshiba has its sound enhancement on this tablet and be default, the bass is at the lowest level. Once, I turned off the default and turned up the bass, the quality and volume improved significantly.  I'd have given it a B, but toshiba should be ashamed to have set the default this low.


Display (C): I didn't have high hopes for the display as it wasn't an IPS screen. I was pleasantly surprised, as it looked quite nice. Here are a couple of comparisions with the ipad. The ipad has much better viewing angles, though.

Thrive on the left, ipad to the right

 Thrive at an extreme viewing angle

ipad at an extreme viewing angle, is far better

Software (D): There's no other way to put it, Honeycomb is unfinished software and should never have been released. In just a couple of days of usage, I had multiple apps force closing, including standard apps like Music. Performance was very average, and wasn't much faster than my ipad 1G. 


App Selection (D): Android does scale better than ios to higher resolution, but you still need apps that are designed for the larger screen. Simply stretching out the app to the wider screen is not sufficient. A few like Plume had resigned the app to make use of the wider screen, but they were few and far inbetween. I was very surprised to see the Google + app have a lot of issues just displaying the stream.


It wasn't all negative, though. Here's what I liked
SD Card: I was able to pop in the SD card from my camera and view the pictures immediately
HDMI/USB: I connected my wireless mouse and the tablet to my TV and was able to get a fairly good video watching experience
Sadly for the Thrive, I cannot think of many more positives at this point.

Trip to Munnar

We travelled to Munnar for a 4 day trip from 25/12. We decided against the train as even the train would require a 3-4 hour journey by taxi, having seen the way the tourist taxi guys drive, I just wasn't prepared to take my chances and decided to drive.

Some memories from the trip

- We left Bangalore at 5:45 am. At Hosur, there was a massive jam caused by an accident where a bus was blocking the entire highway. But, we got very lucky as we hit the jam just near a break in the road divider. We crossed over to the service lane on the other side and rejoined after the accident scene.

- I have a lot of memories of the Bangalore-Salem road, as we used to drive to my uncle’s place in Thanjavur regularly during the 80’s. More recently, we had a nightmare drive from Krishnagiri to Salem, when the 4 lane was being constructed. With the construction complete, the drive was a pleasure. I was easily cruising at 110-120 kmph, which enabled us to reach Salem in 2.5 hours.

- We took the Perundurai-Kangeyam-Dharapuram-Udumalpetai-Chinar-Marayoor-Munnar route to avoid any potential problems due to the Mullaperiyar dam issue. There were absolutely no problems and we crossed over into Kerala with ease

- The forest section through Annamalai Tiger reserve and Chinar national park was a bit of a disappointment on the way out. I was hoping to see some wildlife but some birds and a chameleon that I almost ran over was as close as we got.

- The Club Mahindra resort is almost 20 km beyond Munnar. Since the Marayoor and

Theni routes to Munnar are almost the same distance, going via Theni means that you save almost 45 km if you’re going to the resorts at Chinnakanal. No wonder, many of the people at team-bhp were recommending this. Atleast, we got to see some of the spectacular views over Lockhart Valley

- We stayed in a small hotel unit room for the first 2 days and then shifted to a 1 bedroom unit. The resort was good, but not very kid friendly. My son is at an age where he gives up and wants to be lifted whenever he feels like. Usually, this happens when there are steps to be climbed or a steep slope. Lifting a 15 kg child and walking up a 25-30 degree slope is no fun. I can’t wait for the day when he is embarrassed to be lifted.

- As the driver, I hardly got to see any of the views. So, we decided to take the tour offered by the resort. This had another advantage, as we didn’t have to worry about parking the car at the spots.

- The tour was a little disappointing, we went to an area with elephant rides which was quite nice. The next spot was the Mattupettu dam, we were really looking forward to taking the speedboat ride, but it had almost a 3 hour wait. Having already waited 1.5 hours for the elephant ride, we decided to skip and left after taking a few snaps.

- Day 2 was spent mainly at the resort, where we visited the model village set up by the resort.

- On Day 3, we went to the Erivakulam National Park, home of the Nilgiri tahir. We found a huge traffic jam as we neared the NP. Following the cue of other vehicles, we parked right there itself and walked the final 1 km to the entrance. Near the NP entrance, the cause of the problem was clear, the road was only wide enough for a single bus, but there were 2 huge buses on either side of the entrance wanting to get through. On reaching the park, we found a huge line which extended halfway up the side of the mountain. On enquiring with people, we found that it would take almost 4-5 hours to get the bus and decided to just head back. Our decision to park away proved a blessing as we could easily reverse and head back avoiding the jam completely.

- Club Mahindra resort was excellent as always with good food, generally great facilities. However, the activity room was very poor compared to their resort in Coorg and Goa with almost no facilities for infants. As a result, we avoided it completely.

- In view of the jam at Erivakulam, we decided to start back early hoping to avoid the Erivakulam jam and see some wildlife on the way. Till we entered the Annamalai reserve, we did not see even a single eee-kaaka. To our luck, as soon as we entered the reserve, I spotted a movement on the right and sure enough, there were two elephants making their way up the mountain. Further on, we hit paydirt, there was a single wild elephant on the side of the road eating his/her breakfast.

- On the way back, we stopped for 4 hours at Tirrupur, got some good bargains on clothes at a factory outlet and ate a big lunch at Sree Saravana Bhavan. This delayed our return to late evening, and as I am not very comfortable with night driving, dropped our average speed significantly. We finally made it home at 9:45 pm.

- I was very happy with my car's mileage during the trip. With all the high speed cruising and the ghat roads, we still ended up with a little over 14 kmpl. Not bad for a 1.6l engine.

An ode to the n82

Why a post on the n82 out of the blue? After all, it's been 8 months since I stopped using it full time and around 4 months since I gave it to my mother. Something happened in the last few days that made me realize that there is no turning back.

That something was a little option hidden in my Galaxy S camera app, the anti-shake. Until now, most of my photos were blurry, mainly caused by the fact that the SGS doesn't have a dedicated camera button and when you tap the on-screen shutter, it shakes the phone a little bit. But once I enabled this option, my photos became much sharper.

What does it have to do with the n82? Well, the camera on that little gem is a piece of art and a part of me always missed it, no matter how much I like the SGS in other respects. But now, I've realized that it is time to move on.

But there was one last hurrah for the n82. Last sunday, we bought a new cycle for my daughter. Like any normal kid, she wanted to ride it "Right NOW". It was around 6:15 pm and unfortunately, my camera's battery was out of charge. So which phone did I pick up? You guessed it.