March 2010: Toyota, Ford & GM – Where to from here?

Everyone is talking about Toyota. It is amazing to me that the car company most known for quality, reliability, low cost of maintenance, and hence long term value has such significant and serious quality problems. Think about it. Cars exist to safely get people from point A to point B. That is their main purpose. Secondary to this, and probably now primary, is to get people from point A to point B comfortably. There has been a long history of innovations from power assisted steering and braking, to automatic climate control, window defoggers, and sound systems.

The recent problems with Toyota are fundamental. Some cars accelerate on their own. Other cars do not stop soon enough. The starting and stopping are fundamental to getting safely from point A to point B. Drivers need to be able to do both reliably. That Toyota is having problems at this basic level, albeit at very low incident rates, is quite concerning to me.

No one ever accused Toyota of producing exciting cars. In fact, that has always been a rap against the company. “Sure they are reliable and effectively do what they are supposed to do. But where is the ‘wow’?” I have heard and read some variation of this many times over the years.

This was especially true when Toyotas were compared against cars from Germany. The German cars, especially Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and Volkswagon have that special excitement that connects the driver to the road and the driving experience… so I had been told. I was not really sure what that meant until I had the chance to drive a company car of my choosing. Having always wanted to have a German car, I selected the VW Passat. I opted for the 3.5 liter engine. And I basically experienced that “wow” and the connection with the road and a different driving experience.

Here is my assessment of the difference. Toyota was designing and making cars for the masses that would serve their basic everyday needs reliably and with low cost of ownership. No one did it better. The Germans on the other hand were designing cars that could be taken on the Autobahns where there is essentially no speed limit. These cars have to hug the road and handle well at 110 mph. The windshield wipers have to stay glued to the windshield at those speeds and not flap and vibrate like most other cars would do.

The Passat did all this. It was a screamer and a road hugger. It growled and responded. I could beat most cars from a standstill with no issues. Even more impressively, I could be cruising at 80 mph and if I decided to pass another car, it was like they were standing still. It was an impressive car for the money. I can only imagine the performance of the high end BMWs and Mercedes. Yet, because of the over engineering, the German cars require expensive maintenance. The cost of ownership is higher than say my 2002 Toyota 4Runner.

My 4Runner is a great little truck. It has 65,000 miles and I know with basic maintenance it can last until over 200,000 miles. I may well need it to do that. It has given me no problems and already outlasted the 1995 and 2001 Chevy Blazers that we owned. It is fine on the highway but in no way compares to the excitement of the Passat. I just keep repeating 200,000 miles and smile to myself as cars pass by while I am cruising along at 80 mph.

My appreciation for Toyota Motors go back a long way. It goes back to well before I began buying them.

When Toyota was really emerging in the US, I began working at Ford Motor Company. It was my first job and Ford was an exalted company within our family. My grandfather worked there and many Armenians of my parent’s generation worked there in various engineering and management capacities.

I had a great opportunity to make a trip to dealerships that sold both Fords and Toyotas. Our mission was to create a quality database on Toyotas so we could really and truly compare their quality to ours. We wanted to see if the anecdotal quality reputation was deserved or not. It was an eye opening trip. Simply stated, the reputation was real and most deserved. I quickly realized that I could just open a drawer containing maintenance records in a dealership and quickly tell which folders were Ford vehicles and which were Toyota. The Toyota folders were visibly thinner than the Ford folders. There were little to no warranty repairs compared to the Fords and thus way less paper in the folders. It was very sobering. The model had changed dramatically.

Back in the mid-1980s I had a great opportunity to take a trip to Japan. It was a study mission sponsored by the American Supplier Institute in conjunction with the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). I was then an employee of Rockwell Automotive who paid for the trip.

The American Supplier Institute was a spin-off from Ford Motor Company. Larry Sullivan was a manager at the Automotive Assembly Division of Ford. He was responsible for Warranty Analysis. I was a Warranty Analyst at the Body and Electric Product Engineering Division at Ford in the late 1970s and early 1980s and knew Larry by name. When the Quality Revolution revved up in the early 1980s, Larry really took the bull by the horns and became a fanatic advocate of Statistical Process Control and then the Taguchi Method of Designed Experiments. In short order, he became an advisor to senior management and in charge of quality training, benchmarking, and study missions to Japan to learn even more.

Larry made great connections in Japan and created such a little fiefdom within Ford that he had influence beyond his rank. He parlayed that into spinning off what he did for Ford as a separate business, American Supplier Institute (ASI), with Ford as its main client. Soon ASIs business expanded to Ford’s supply base. Ford used ASI to mandate quality training and methods to their suppliers. It was very successful and through the mid-1990s ASIs influence was huge in the Auto Industry. General Motors and Chrysler even became customers of ASI.

Our director of Quality at Rockwell, Jim Warren, was associated with ASI on a board of advisors. He participated on these study missions and I was delighted when it became my turn to go. I had been a great student of Quality and Reliability for over five years. In those days, a trip to Japan was like a trip to Graceland for an Elvis fan. It was a special opportunity and I was very excited.

Jim is a reader of this letter and I guess this is my way of thanking him once more for allowing me the opportunity to participate in that study mission. It certainly accelerated my Quality education and made me a lifelong devotee to the fields of quality assurance and process improvement.

The trip started and ended in Nagoya, the hometown of Toyota. We were lectured to by the JUSE hosts and toured many Toyota and Toyota suppliers all connected to Toyota via the Keiretsu structure unique to Japan. It was a fascinating trip on both business and cultural levels.

It was during this trip that I developed a true passion for quality and learned about Total Quality. I truly began to understand that it was a system of management and not simply the application of any specific tool. Many people on our trip were looking for some kind of “magic bullet” or “magic formula,” a missing piece of the puzzle that would enable them to go back and immediately begin to compete with the Japanese. One fellow even got up at the end of the study mission when we all took a turn thanking our hosts. He thanked the JUSE and Toyota hosts, he mentioned that it was his fifth study mission to Japan, and then asked, “When I come back next year what new tool will you show us?” Five study mission and he had missed the whole point. It was not Quality Circles, Statistical Quality Control, Taguchi Experimental Design, Quality Function Deployment or any specific tool. It was how a business, a management team, approached quality and used it to design and produce products that met or exceeded customer needs. They wanted to meet and exceed customer needs at the time of purchase in terms of features and prices. But, more importantly, they wanted a customer’s satisfaction with their purchase to increase over the entire time they owned the car. You do not get this kind of satisfaction by having Quality Circles or mandating that every department do two Taguchi Experiments in the next fiscal year.

Yet, silly mandates like this did have an impact. Ford learned from the American Supplier Institute study missions. They did do silly things like mandating the that each engineering department conduct at least two Taguchi Experiments in the next year. They embraced Quality Function Deployment and eventually put it all together and designed the first Taurus in the 1980s. The realized that they had to design and build cars that customers would value and appreciate. The Taurus was that car. Ford did it right and were rewarded for it. It was the bestselling car in the US for a few years. It was the first Ford to achieve that honor in many years and it was probably the last Big Three car to achieve that honor.

When Ford went to redesign the Taurus, they forgot the prime message of Total Quality which was to find the Voice of the Customer and develop and produce products that meet or exceed customer expectations. They returned to allowing the Voice of the Engineer and Designer reign. The second generation Taurus did not come close to the success of the first. Ford lost their leadership to the Toyota Camry which was the bestselling car in the US in most of the 1990s and early 2000s. Ford learned the lesson and then forgot it.

The same was true for General Motors. After Deming spent time at Ford, General Motors hired him. He provided his tough love and quality message to them. He worked with them to improve their two seat sports car, the Pontiac Fiero. The Fiero was a great looking car and had initial success based the look of the car and, I believe, pricing. It did not deliver in terms of quality and reliability. Deming helped them get this right. It was, however, too little too late. Sales had dropped to the point that General Motors pulled the plug on the car. More than one General Motors employee told me what a shame this was because they had finally gotten the Fiero right just before it was discontinued.

The General Motors story fascinates me. They were the dominant car company in the world, in terms of number of vehicles sold and profits, for decades. Their dominance peaked in the post-World War II years. In the 1950s, they seemed invincible. They felt they were invincible. The head of the company was quoted as saying “What is good for General Motors was good the country.” I am not sure how that attitude was viewed when it was stated. But by the time I was in college in the early 1970s, most of us looked at it a sign of incredible arrogance and lack of corporate conscience.

The arrogance of General Motors seemed very real to me. I saw it in their employees and it never waned even as their market share eroded steadily over the next thirty years. At the beginning of the Japanese onslaught, they truly felt they could turn it around with the next model of vehicles. Most everyone thought that the Japanese had just awoken the giant and now that they were focused… watch out. It became painfully obvious to everyone not working for General Motors that their entire business organization and philosophy was flawed and could not deliver the kinds of cars that could compete with Toyota and Honda.

The American car companies were saved when SUVs and mini-vans took over the market. The US companies were better prepared to own and profit from this trend than the Japanese and Germans. While they owned these markets, they did profit immensely and it gave a false sense of security and a return to dominance. It lasted only until the foreign competitors began to catch up and produce these kinds of vehicles that were equal to or better than the Big Three offerings. It all came tumbling down with oil price increases and tougher competition caused SUV sales to sag. It all came to a head in early 2008 when the unthinkable actually happened and General Motors declared bankruptcy. No one would have even conceived of such a thing in the 1950s or even early 2000s. General Motors declared bankruptcy. Wow.

My good friend, my best man, Jack Hachigian and I talk often. He began working for General Motors shortly after graduating from Michigan State University. It is the only company he has worked for. He brother Levon works there as did his Father Onnig. They are a General Motors family. Over the past few years, Jack and I have talked a lot about this and he has two very good points and I paraphrase:

1. Deming was right. It is simple. We just need to make good quality cars that appeal to customers.

2. Our quality has gotten better. The public just doesn’t know how much better we have gotten. We are as good or better than the Japanese.

There is a great graphic in an article in the Sunday, March 7, 2010 New York Times: Channeling Toyota to Best Toyota. The graphic shows two trends relating to the performance of Ford, General Motors and Toyota thus far in the century. First, is that the number of consumer complaints about the Ford and General Motor cars has declined dramatically in the past ten years to levels below Toyota which has remained low but flat over the same period of time. Secondly, there is a bar chart showing the steady growth in Toyota’s US market share in the US while Ford and General Motors have steadily declined in the same period. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/business/07quality.html?scp=2&sq=david%20segal&st=cse The graphic at the beginning of this posting can be found there.

I am not sure about long term reliability but we could definitely conclude from the graphic that initial quality has certainly improved at Ford and General Motors. Is it sustainable? Will it change their fortunes moving forward? Only time will tell. I certainly hope so. In my years of Quality Management, I have long held a belief. The belief is that companies get stuck in their ways. This is especially true for successful companies. If a company is successful, why change the formula away from something that worked and brought great reward to executives and shareholders alike. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” may be the colloquial way of stating this. Executives get promoted for adhering to and excelling in the proven formula. There is such momentum around this that the company cannot change, and may not even realize it has to change, until it is too late. People outside the company can see this and wonder why the leadership does not do something. Sears was not able to change and adapt to the Wal-Mart model. Zenith, RCA, and General Electric were not able to change and adapt to the Sony and Panasonic approach to consumer electronics. Sony later stumbled when Apple changed the model dramatically with the iPod.

The question I have regarding Toyota is twofold. One, is the Toyota model for success outmoded? Have Ford and General Motors gotten leaner and passed them in Quality? The second part of the question assumes that the first part is true. Can Toyota adapt and return to Quality and Reliability dominance in the automotive industry? I cannot believe I am even asking these questions. But, then I never ever would have guessed that General Motors would lose half of their market share in thirty years and declare bankruptcy.

I do not profess to know the answers to these questions. I think it is too early to tell. But it is a something I am definitely going to follow with great interest.
I lived through the emergence of the Japanese Auto Companies. At the time, we were still equating Made in Japan with the poor quality reputation that was established in the years right after World War II. We did not take them seriously. When the 1970s oil crisis hit and sales of their smaller more fuel efficient cars took off, we all still assumed that all they had done was wake up the sleeping giants who would crush these foreign upstarts with their next models. It became painfully clear this was not the case and that the market had profoundly changed. Ford and General Motors could not and did not adapt quickly culminating in the eventual bankruptcy last year.

The question I end this letter with is whether Toyota is, now, in the same position that General Motors was in 1975? People will say NO! Toyota is the Quality and Reliability Company. They set the standard. They are the standard. They are the company of Taiichi Ohno and the renowned Toyota Production system. All that has happened is that the sleeping giant has awoken… watch out what happens next when they put their minds to it and fix things. They will crush the competition again.

It all sounds eerily familiar.

Indeed I will watch because I have no idea where all of this is heading. It is still too early to tell. I do believe it will be most interesting to watch unfold. No matter, it should bode well for consumers.

Ecology 101 & The Island of Trash

I remember first hearing the term Ecology when I was in High School. It was back when there were actual Hippies running around. It was a time when Ecology or Environmental this or that was not something one could easily major in. Maybe you could major in Forestry, Oceanography, or Geology at a few special places. I remember Ecology sounding like something good, wholesome, and necessary. As a society, we were awakening to the hazards of air and water pollution. MIT had just published their Limits to Growth study that applied an exponential growth model to natural resource usage and spoilage painting a rather dim picture if we, mankind, did not change our ways.

I never did major in Ecology. But in studying mathematics and then operations research, I came to appreciate the complexities and interactions of trying to allow commerce while also trying to better manage the environment. Many interacting systems and forces are at play with the underlying reality of an exponentially growing human population worldwide. It is truly an issue to be concerned about and truly a difficult problem to solve.

I do not believe it is easy to comprehend the entirety of it all. We are all subject our own biases. Are we pro-business and pro-development? Or are we pro-environment? Will capitalism and the free market get us to solutions? Or do we really need live with a lot less, real soon? These are hard questions to answer democratically with all the various constituencies involved.

We are human and as such we tend to look and react at things we can easily see in the short term. There are debates about global warming. Is it real? Is it a fabrication of uber-environmentalists? If we have a really hot summer, we jump to one conclusion. A really cold and snowy winter will alleviate the concern. We see a video clip about a few polar bears struggling to get onto a melting ice floe and suddenly global warming is back at the top of our minds not to mention a huge concern for the polar bear population as their habitat melts away.

No one ever mentions the island of garbage the size of Texas floating and growing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Island of what? Where? The size of Texas? 3.5 million tons of plastic? Wow. Is this true? Does such a thing really exist? If so, it doesn’t sound very good at all.

How can such a thing exist and we not know about it? OK, it is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is out of sight and thus out of mind. But come on, the size of the state of Texas. How the heck are we every going to clean that up and if we did where would we put all that… stuff. It is the size of the state of Texas. What kind of boats and equipment are needed for this job? How many would be needed? Again where would we put the trash? There are a million questions and no one seems to be talking about this. Learning about this really raises a lot of questions.

How did I find out about this Semi-Continent of Trash?

A geology professor and I were talking at The College of Lake County where I am an adjunct in the Math Department. We were chatting about experiences. He is also an adjunct and we were discussing his many experiences and my one in dealing with toxic sites. In the course of conversation, he mentioned the Island of Trash in passing. Astonished at the scope and size, I kept asking probing questions like Huh? Are you kidding me? How come I have never heard of this before?

Are you skeptical? Are you asking the same kinds of questions? Just go to your favorite search engine and type in “Island of Trash” and see what pops-up. You will be amazed by what I believe is a humungous environmental story that is basically unreported by the mainstream media and hence unknown to the vast majority of people. Oddly, when I searched for Island or Trash, Pacific Ocean Trash, and other variants at nytimes.com and nothing came up.

Is this story real? Is it a hoax? Is it hyperbole? Is it just not newsworthy? Here are some sites and a little commentary on them.

• http://geography.about.com/od/globalproblemsandissues/a/trashislands.htm
  “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (also sometimes called the Eastern Garbage Patch) is an area with an intense concentration of marine trash located between Hawaii and California. The exact size of the patch is unknown however because it is constantly growing.”
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt-MivNezes
  This is a youtube of a 5:12 minute CNN report. It is pretty informative and makes clear that the “island” is more a soupy mess than an actually visable land mass. The soupy mess is in the North Pacific Sup-tropical Gyre. A gyre is a giant eddy or circular ocean currents. It makes sense that if we tons of garbage a year makes it into our oceans, the stuff that doesn’t biodegrade could amass in a gyre. The stuff that doesn’t biodegrade is plastic, hence the island of plastic.
• http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/10/giant-island-of.html
  “A heap of trash that's twice the size of Texas is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it's called, is 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons. Trapped in a circular course by winds and currents, it's been around since the 1950s, and has been growing tenfold every decade. It's not a dumping ground in the sense that people are flying or boating by and throwing their refuse into the heap. Instead, it's picking up trash that originates onshore, and has since made its way out into the Pacific. Cleaning it up doesn't sound too likely, since the effort would cost billions, but it would be nice if we figured out a way to stop adding to it. Another possibility: turning it into a sort of anti-Disney World. Surely that would convert even the worst plastic-wasting offenders among us into ardent environmentalists.”—Gregory Mone
• http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/23-10-2007/99346-island_trash-0
  Pravda, yes Pravda, basically reports the same statistics as Mr. Mone. They quote Marcus Eriksen of the Agalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach and Chris Parry of the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco.

I would read the Pravda story and watch the youtube. They seem to be the most informative and balanced in their reporting of the story. My feel for this Island of Trash that seems to be a “soupy mess” that is in the North Pacific Sup-tropical Gyre. I am sure there is a lot of plastic in the soupy mess but I am not sure how it was determined to be 3.5 million tons and growing by a factor of 10 every decade. I am sure it is indicative of the amount of plastic that is discarded every year. I am also certain that this is another excellent example of trading off the convenience and lower cost of plastic containers vs the right thing to do ecologically.

Going forward? I am definitely going to be a better recycler even though there is no guarantee where the plastics go after I dutifully put the green bin at the end of the driveway every Tuesday morning.

Olympic Hockey

February 28, 2010: I am watching Olympic Hockey. It is the finals between the US and Canada. It is an exciting game truly. Canada scored the first two goals. The US scored later in the second period to close the gap. In the third period, the play became even more furious. The US played with abandon to try to tie the game. Time was running out and it looked Canada might just win 2-1. At least that was my thoughts with three minutes and change left in the game. With less than two minutes left, there was a stoppage in the play with a face off pending in the Canadian end. The US called a time out. Well someone called a time out. (Can you call a time out in hockey?)

Coming out of the time out, the US pulled their goalie to begin play with an advantage of six skaters to five. I thought the chances were more likely that the Canadians would score an empty net goal to win 3-1 rather than the US score to take the game to overtime. Well probabilities are one thing, reality is another. The US scored with forty some seconds left in a period. The only strategy the US could follow worked and the game was sent into overtime.

The overtime period began with Canada playing more aggressively and putting a lot of pressure on the US. The reason for the intensity is because the overtime play in Olympic Hockey is four skaters per team instead of the normal five. This makes for a more wide open game and I am guessing decreases the mean time between goals. That is probably correct since the Canadians scored and won the Gold Medal.

I was very interested in watching the game. Yet, I was more interested in watching a good hockey game then to root, cheer, live, and die for the good old USA. I used to be like that back when the players were amateurs, basically unknowns. Now, most of the teams are made up of professionals and mainly NHL players especially for the US and Canadian teams.

Of course, I am stuck in 1980 when the amateurs of the US stunned the professionals of the then USSR in what we in the US have called the Miracle on Ice. I was only twenty seven years old then. It was a bleak time just like these days. The scrappy US team of upstarts captured the hearts and souls of this country back then. Their exploits raised the spirit of this nation and captivated the majority of the nation, who were not remotely hockey fans, to watch the big semi-final games against the Soviets.

The US Goalie, Ryan Miller, in a post game interview basically summed it up by saying it was a great game but they came up one shot short. When pressed further by the interviewer to say something profound about the game, Miller with no emotion said "it was just another hockey game." That may well be the difference between a team of pros playing in the Olympics in the midst of their very long season and a team of college players playing in the biggest game of their lives.

Angela Davis

This is a bloggy bit about perspective and not so much about Angela Davis.

I began teaching at the College of Lake County, a community college in Northeast, IL, in January 2010. I teach two sections of a Statistics course. It has been too long since I have taught and too long since I have been on a college campus. I miss being around campuses where there a wonderful and plentiful opportunities to attend lectures on this or films on that. There are art shows, musical performances, and theater. It is not like I ever attended very much but I miss the knowing about them as well as the guilt and angst that accompanies knowing and not being able to attend.

When I last taught, it was all what I have been calling chalk and talk. There was a text book from which I assigned problems. I presented the material on a blackboard and demonstrated how to do problems similar to those I assigned. Now, I use whiteboards and dry erase markers, Powerpoint presentations, and TI-85 calculators that even have projection capabilities in the classroom. There is, of course, e-mail to stay in touch with students all the time. There is also something called course management software and websites. CLC uses BlackBoard which is a website to post course announcements, facilitate on-line assignments, discussions, and to post any variety of documents and references you could think of to enhance the course. All this has makes for a much richer experience for the students and, at least the first time teaching a course, more to do for the instructor. It is all very cool. Things have changed on campuses.

I was walking through the corridors of the main campus in Grayslake, IL and noticed a poster advertising that Angela Davis would be speaking. I did not really read the poster in great detail. I was in a hurry but thought “wow, that might be interesting to attend.” I was wondering then what Angela Davis was doing these days and how here philosophy and politics has changed, if at all, since the turbulent times when her name was in the news? Angela Davis… a blast from the past. Maybe things have not changed so much on campuses.

A few days later on February 1st, I got an e-mail announcing the same event. I read this in slightly more detail. Angela Davis would be speaking at noon on Friday, February 5th. That was not the most convenient time, but what the heck this was Angela Davis and I was curious to see how she has evolved from back in the day. I think I would try to make it. There was a biography attached. I didn’t have time to read it, but made a mental note (a most unreliable method) to read it later.

On the 4th of February, one day before the lecture, another e-mail was sent to reminding everyone that Angela Husky-Davis would be speaking the next day. Angela Husky-Davis? I then read the e-mail more carefully. “Angela Huskey-Davis was recently the Regional Vice-President of Wachovia Bank and decided to start her own company.” Angela Davis? Vice-President at a bank? That did not make sense. I found it hard to believe that Angela Davis would have changed so much that she would have gotten a job in a bank. I cannot imagine any bank hiring the Angela Davis that I remember.

I was right.

I remembered my mental note to read the attached biography from the previous e-mail. I retrieved the e-mail and read the attachment. Oh my… this was a different Angela Davis indeed. Angela Husky-Davis was just born around the time, August 1970, which the activist Angela Davis was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Superior Court Judge Harold Haley of which she was found innocent in 1972.

Angela Husky-Davis participated in beauty pageants while a student at Norfolk State University in the early 1990s. Angela Davis was candidate for Vice-President on the Communist Party ticket in 1980 and 1984. Angela Husky-Davis is married to a Pastor, Andre Davis Jr. Angela Davis declared herself a lesbian in 1997. These Angelas could not be any more different. Angela Husky-Davis just started a diversity consulting company, Full Circle Consulting, LLC. Angela Davis is professor emeritus (retired professor for those of you not teaching part-time at a community college) of History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

I figured I was not alone in my interpretation. February is Black History Month. You tell someone my age that Angela Davis is speaking and we assume it is Angela Davis the activist. I even wonder if any of the teen and twenty year old students know who Angela Davis the activist is. Her fifteen minutes of fame was thirty to forty years ago. I am guessing enough people assumed it was Angela Davis the activist that the next e-mail used the hyphenated Husky-Davis surname to clear things up or at least make people question who it was they thought would be speaking. In my case, it certainly worked.

Needless to say… I did not go to the lecture. I am sure Angela Husky-Davis is an expert in Diversity and I have no doubts that she delivered a stirring, motivating, and meaningful presentation to all in attendance. The simple fact is I have taken diversity training three times. I think, or am deluded to believe, I get it. Plus, I think I would have gotten more diversity training from the emeritus professorial communist activist lesbian Angela Davis. I would have like to have heard what she has to say today. Are her views the same? How have they changed? In which direction? Why?

I will be more careful about reading announcements. It is after all 2010 and not 1973. So, if there is an announcement that Peter Townsend is speaking, I will make sure that is, Peter Townsend, the lead guitar player of the rock group The Who and not Peter Townsend, VP of Corporate Communication, at the Affable Annuity Insurance Conglomerate.

I do hope that they do bring Angela Davis, the elder, sometime. I would still go and hear her.

February 2010: Sixth Anniversary Letter

February 1, 2010

I begin my seventh year of writing this letter. As I have written in almost every previous anniversary letters, the project has been one of the best things I have ever done and I plan to continue it for as long as I possibly can.

I have always wanted to be a writer. I have always been one in my mind’s eye. But, like many people, what is often in our mind’s eye is not what we are and not as others see us. I write as a hobby and it has been enjoyable. I write every day.

From Paper to PC: In 2004, when I began this letter project, I hand wrote every letter. I write 500+ words per day. I would select a theme and write several days about it. Then toward the end of the month, often on the very last day of the month, I would type the letter in this two column format, edit it, and then e-mail it everyone.

Sometime in 2007, I began to type some of the entries directly into my laptop. Even then the majority of the first drafts were handwritten and maybe only a few hundred words were typed. Yet, a trend had started. By 2009, all of the letters in the sixth volume were done entirely on my computer.

The same is true for our company blog. I strive to contribute one 500 word piece a week to this blog, is also typed directly. So, in recent months, I have typed directly about ten days a month and handwrote the remainder of the month. I still enjoy handwriting but when I have a topic well in mind, I prefer to type the first draft. I suppose this evolution was inevitable.

Last year I wrote about creating a blog for these letters. I launched http://thissideoffifty.blogspot.com. Every letter is now there. In two recent months, I actually posted other articles on the blog. There are three in September 2009 and one in January 2010.

From the beginning of keeping a journal which began on June 25, 2002, when I wrote for a purpose and with a set topic, the writing was crisper and actually could have been a typed stream of consciousness. When there is no specific theme, my daily writing tends to be more “dear diary” kinds of rambling drivel.

This month, I will endeavor to write every day directly into my laptop. I will not handwrite a single page. Each day will be dedicated to either this letter, my personal blog where these letters are posted, or for our company blog.

Usually in this anniversary letter, I write about the kind of pen I am favoring. Given my stated desire, at least short term, to type instead of handwrite, it seems pointless, pardon the pun, to expound on this pen or that. My laptop? I bought a Toshiba Satellite in June of 2009 upon embarking on our business. Most writing is done on this compact beauty using MS Word 2007.

February 5, 2010

It is late Friday night. It was a grayish damp day in Chicago. It was a bit too warm for winter and definitely too cold for spring. It sleeted most of the day. It accumulated just a bit faster than the snow melted leaving the snow equivalent of a two day beard growth on the sidewalks. I guess I could have called it a dusting.

I intended to write a work blog piece today. I had just posted a piece on Statistical Thinking http://blog.demandcaster.com/2010/02/04/thinking-part-1-statistical-thinking/. I wanted to write Part 2 and introduce a concept I have developed called Optimal Thinking. Well, it is more a concept that is still germinating in my head. So, I was not able to finish that blog piece today. Instead, I meandered over to this letter to muse a bit.

I had attended a seminar a few weeks ago on writing and publishing your own book. It is something that I want to do personally and for business. It was sponsored by the National Speakers Association – Illinois Chapter. It was held at Maggiano’s in Oak Brook.

I did not know what to expect. It ended up being both very informative and very inspirational. They had flown in two guest speaker both of whom had written and published their own books.

Debra Fine was the first speaker http://www.debrafine.com. She created a speaking and training business around the concept of The Fine Art of Small Talk, which is also the title of her book. She helps people be able to start, sustain, and maintain general conversations in business and business-social settings. Her premise is that people need to nurture and re-enforce relationships to get ahead and to sell themselves and their business offerings. Debra focuses her message on the shyer among us and refers to herself as an “enginerd” before re-inventing herself as an author and motivational speaker.

The second speaker was Elaine Dumler. She is also a motivational speaker and trainer helping people with networking and communication skills. Her book actually added a new dimension to her business. She collected stories and tips from military families in how they dealt with their soldier being away especially in families with small kids. She came to idea of writing the book by serendipity and then she ran with it and made it happen. She even wrote a sequel.

I am currently reading Debra’s book. It is very good. While, as mentioned, it probably best serves the shy, I am benefiting from the message.

February 6, 2010

Debra Fine and Elaine Dumler are authors and make a good living writing and speaking. They were an inspiration to take my writing to the next level and even showed me what that next level might look like. They are not, however, the kind of excellent writer I have been featuring in my Anniversary letters.

On January 27^th Jerome David Salinger passed away at the age of 91. J. D. Salinger was best known for his novel, Catcher in the Rye. It still is a very popular novel assigned in High School and College English courses. Upon publication in 1951 it was controversial. The novel follows the adolescent narrator and main character, Holden Caulfield, through New York City after getting himself expelled from an elite prep school. The book traversed many of the social norms of the 1950s by its use of profanity, placing the seventeen year Caulfield with a prostitute, and perhaps, as some of the obituaries speculated, sparking the generation gap of the 1960s and 1970s.

On occasion, the book has been banned and censored in the United States and around the world. For this reason it is always in and out of the news. This kind of controversy has probably helped make it a success. Ban or burn a book and watch how many people will read it just to see what the hubbub is all about.

I read one of Salinger’s short stories, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, while in high school. I did not think much of it then. I then read Catcher in the Rye in college because everyone was reading it and I was simply curious to see what all the hubbub was about. Plus, it was the rebellious thing to do to… er… read a book everyone else rebelling was reading. I kind of liked the seamy underbelly aspect of the novel but did not think much more of it. I did not care much for Holden Caulfield.

It must have been in the 1980s, I heard a report on Salinger on NPR’s Morning. It was probably a story about his reclusiveness. It might have even been in 1981, the 30^th Anniversary of the publishing of The Catcher in the Rye. Whatever the NPR report was about, I decided to go back and read Salinger’s short stories again. I liked them. A lot. I thought about reading The Catcher in the Rye again, but decided to read Salinger’s lesser novels instead, Frannie and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beams Carpenter. Both were excellent in my opinion. With Salinger’s passing, I should read the short stories again. I am certain that if I did read Catcher in the Rye now I would probably appreciate the skill of Salinger’s writing.

When I heard that Salinger had passed away, I was a little surprised. I was surprised because I thought, for no real good reason, that he was already dead. Then it did not surprise me. Salinger was one of the great recluses in the world of celebrities. He was in the same league of reclusiveness at Howard Hughes and Greta Garbo. Salinger gave his last interview in 1980. In 1953, he had moved from New York City to Cornish, New Hampshire where he lived until his death.

February 8, 2010

It is funny actually. I made this resolution to type rather than handwrite my daily writing this month. Implicit in this resolution was that when I type, I am writing for a purpose: my monthly letter, our work blog, or an article for the Armenian papers. So, how is it going? Well, I am like three quarters done with my monthly letter and have written three work blog pieces. So, I am well ahead of myself. I usually blog once a week and you all know I usually get this letter out on the last day of the month.

This is good and bad. I am glad to be so productive. I am, however, tapped out. I will either write the longest monthly letter ever or if I get this letter out this week which seems very likely, I will have to figure out other meaningful things to write about. I did not fully realize just how much musing and meandering my daily writing has been comprised of. While I am glad I began the project and it was useful to my growth as a writer, most of it was drivel and not worth sharing with others. I always suspected such, but these past eight days have made it painfully clear.

I am very glad I did this. It really brings me to a crossroads and is forcing me to make my daily writing time, usually a half hour to an hour, more productive and meaningful. I have wanted to do this for years and even dedicated a fair amount of my musing and meandering to this. Yet, I was in a rut and just stayed there. I knew I should be doing more and doing more productive and pointed writing, yet I did not. As my favorite quote, which is quickly becoming my mantra states, “Knowing never equals doing.”

So, the intent is to not to be more prolific but rather to create something worthy of sharing with others on a daily basis. I will continue to write this monthly letter in its current form and formats but I may well post more often on my personal and work blogs. I need to do more academic writing with and for my friend and advisor John Surak. I will definitely need to pen… er type… more articles for the Armenian press.

I pushed myself to start this project. I am now going to push myself to make it better.

February 18, 2010

I handwrote this piece last night. Why did I violate my sincere intention to type every word this month? I had the best of intentions and as they say “stuff” happens.

As you know I teach Elementary Statistics at the College of Lake County, a local community college. Classrooms have become multi-media with computers and projectors. The text book publishers even provide power points to facilitate the teaching process. As a result, I am always using a thumb drive to move files from my laptop to and from the classroom computer.

Well the public computers on campus are, how do I say it, cesspools of viruses. Last night, I put my thumb drive into my laptop to exchange a file. Immediately, sirens went off, lights flashed, my virus protections howled in pain, and my laptop froze. Wow. I re-booted and got errors the said the virus protection “black file was corrupted.” Well, I just shut down my system until I could have someone more knowledgeable look at it today.

As a result, I had to handwrite the draft of what I have just typed. We learn life lessons, even simple ones, sometimes by chance. It is not really about typing my words everyday but writing something everyday worthy of blogging or publishing. It is about content and quality not about method of writing. Sometimes it is the result and the method, sometimes it is simply the result. In this case, I will settle for the result.

By the way, the laptop is OK and fully restored to its former state of wellness. Also, if it matters, and I certainly cannot resist, I handwrote this segment last night with a lovely Waterman Carene ball point pen.

February 19, 2010

I always close this anniversary letter by recalling how and why I came to write this letter. I began the exercise of daily writing with the goal, of maybe, possibly, writing a book chronicling my 50^th year. I even wanted to call it, An Attempted Mid-Life Crisis. I wrote every day. I kept the journal, but it was not book worthy. The daily writing did not hold together as a book. I always attributed that to not having spent time developing a detailed outline and then writing to it. That is what they taught us to do in school and I have dutifully resisted since the teacher first proposed this approach. I rather fancied the Jack Kerouac, lock myself in a hotel room, smoke cigarettes, type on a roll of telex paper, drink coffee, and end up with On the Road at the end of the weekend.

I also like to thank my mentors that helped bring this letter about. There is Marilyn Zavidow who helped with the design of the letter and actually came up with the name This Side of Fifty. Marilyn just celebrated a landmark birthday. Happy Birthday Marilyn!

I want to thank Aram Kevorkian. I read a few copies of his long standing monthly letters shortly after his passing. They were being circulated via e-mail. They were brilliant and engaging. Aram’s letters directly inspired me to write this monthly letter which now begins its seventh year.

Over the years, Tom Vartabedian has been most encouraging. To have a writer of his caliber comment so often and so positively on my work is most encouraging.

Lastly, I would also like to thank my wife Judy for all her support and encouragement in this endeavor.

Thank you, one and all, for your readership and encouraging comments. I truly appreciate and am grateful for it.

January 2010: New Work & Ara2

The Unemployment Story: Last month I wrote about the marriage of my children. I innocuously wrote “I came to realize that in a few years, people will remember that both the Gavoor children married in 2009 and not that it was the year of my unemployment.” This little statement drew a fair amount of attention. People were somehow surprised to hear I was out of work or not working.

So, for the first time in six years I have been writing this letter I am extending one letter into the next. While the December 2009 letter was about both of my children getting married that year. This letter will be dedicated to explaining what happened career-wise and what is happening now. I thought I had written about this or at least alluded to it in a few letters in the past fourteen months. Perhaps I alluded quite well but have simply been deluded in believing everyone reads every letter as soon as it hits their e-mail.

So, what happened? What is happening?

I took an early retirement from Colgate-Palmolive in September, 2006. It was a special Voluntary Early Retirement Program that had the objective of reducing headcount in a win-win kind of way. As is the case in such programs, incentives were provided to lure people like me into volunteering. I volunteered but needed to find another job for two reasons. First, I was simply too young to out and out retire. Secondly, I was financially unable to out and out retire… and maintain the lifestyle to which I thought I was accustomed.

Therefore, I embarked on a job search. It was really the first time I ever had to do that. In retrospect, that is kind of a remarkable statement. I had never had to look for a job. Offers and opportunities always found me. I began to suspect that I did not know how lucky I had been.

The luck continued.

I was amongst the first of the Colgate Voluntary Early Retirement class to find a new job. In August of 2006, a full two months before actually retiring, I accepted a new job with Newell Rubbermaid’s Office Products Group as Vice-President - Supply Chain. Cool. That was easy. It truly was. I was feeling pretty good about myself. While I was certainly skilled, qualified, and ready to take such a position, I also have to acknowledge some basic facts that made it both lucky and easy. The economy was percolating quite well in those days and there were significantly more open positions than people looking. Or at least, that is how it seemed.

Life at Newell was pretty good that first fifteen months. I was able to make some excellent contributions. I inherited an organization with five director/manager open positions. We were able to staff up in three months and assembled a good team. Whereas 2006 was the worst year in terms of inventory management and customer service the company, 2007 was the best year, ever, for customer service and we stabilized inventory. All of this was due to the changes our team made and implemented.

We prepared the organization for an SAP implementation which happened in October 2007. As ERP implementations go, it was relatively painless at go-live. There was pain but that came over the next few months. We had warehouse management issues at one of our warehouses because the RF system that ran the bar code readers worked intermittently. Also, we went live without a report system in place. If you are not familiar with ERP systems, you might wonder if this is a big deal. It is huge. Financial reports were generally available. But the non-financials such as Customer Service and the reports we use for Inventory planning and management, were not available. I recall one of my keys guys saying it was “like bowling during a power outage.” Indeed it was.

Service suffered and inventory levels wallowed. Our customers never went out of stock, thankfully. So, we were getting them their orders but not necessarily on-time and not necessarily in the first shipment. Inventory was definitely too high, but we did not have the visibility in the system to seriously build in the plans to bring it down.

For office supply firms, June is the peak ship month. It is when product is shipped to the stores as they stocked up for their August back to school sales. We were very worried about our ability to provide decent service. But, due to having an excellent team, we pulled through with average service and no lost sales.

We spent the most of 2007 building up reporting. The landscape was rife with all the infighting between functions like the Supply Chain and the IT implementation team. The fighting was over resources. The implementation team was interested in the next business to get the ERP and not so worried about finishing up the pervious implementation. We finally got what we needed and recovered to where we were going into SAP eleven months after implementation.

2007 was further complicated by a move by the corporation in Global Business Units. It fit most of the corporation, except for Office Products. For us, they created four Global Business Units where there should have only been two maybe three. It was misguided and it paralyzed the organization on top of all the SAP issues. It was simply too many moving parts.

To make the story short, our president and HR VP left, some might say forced to leave. Then three more of the team were let go in October 2008 including yours truly. Only our CFO remained and she left at the end of last year. The group executive that orchestrated this mass change wanted his own team in place. He got his wish. But, he was summarily let go in December 2008.

Well, this was the first time I was actually let go. I was pleased with the severance package but rightfully worried about the economic conditions. October 2008, if you recall, was the month in which the US economy melted down. It was the worst time ever in my adult life to be without a job. If they had done this a few months earlier, I might have already had found a job and been dealing with the economic meltdown someplace else.

Up in the Air Sidebar: On January 8, 2010, we went to the movies. We went to see Up in the Air starring George Clooney. Clooney plays an extreme version of a road warrior. His character, Ryan Bingham, is a corporate downsizer which means he goes all over the country firing people so their bosses do not have to deal with it. Having only spent 40 days at “home” which happens be Omaha, Ryan is more comfortable living out of hotels, planes, rental cars, restaurants, and bars then being at home. He has very little contact with his family and lives an unusually insular life with which he has somehow become accustomed.

I found the move both inspiring and depressing. It was depressing because of all the scenes of Ryan firing people. It was painful to watch the varied reactions. The common themes were disbelief, shock to have this happening after X number of years of dedicated service, and wondering what they were going to do next and how they were going to tell their families.

Been there, done that, had it happen to me, and never liked any of it all.

On top of all this, somehow Ryan Bingham, had time to both write a book and manage to create a speaking tour around the theme of his book. The book was about ridding oneself of all the things and people in our life so that we could just live in the world of work, unburden by possessions and emotions. He used a metaphorical question of “What do you carry in your backpack?” to drive these points. The message was stupid and blandly delivered.

Part of his message to those he was firing was that this firing was the beginning of the next phase of their lives. It is true that we become accustomed to our work lives, complacent and used to the surroundings and routine. Ironically, Ryan was telling people what someone should have been telling him. He needed to be fired out his complacent comfortable and most empty existence.

So what inspired me in watching this sad commentary on our times? I did like the fact that Ryan was able to blend his despicable career with becoming an author and professional speaker.

That is in part what I am trying to do with this next phase of my career.

My firing was a good wake up call. I am not sure I have entirely woken up yet. But I am in the process. I got to the work of re-writing my resumé, learning to network, and then actually networking. I was decent at it and was getting better. I got interviews and interest but no offers resulted. It was a time of highs and lows. I felt good when there were things percolating and interviews to be had. I felt real bad when the pipeline suddenly emptied and it was back to square one. That happened at least three times.

Ara Surenian & Cadent Resources Group, LLC: Upon moving to Chicago, my friend Ken Hachikian asked that I meet with another Armenian fellow, Ara Surenian. Before fully having the spirit of networking that I have learned to embrace this past year, I was happy to oblige Ken. I respect his intellect and friendship. Ara came by my office at Newell. We spent an hour or so talking. Ara told me about his consulting business and the software he had developed to help companies, especially smaller companies, better manage their inventories. The name of his company is Cadent Resources and the software tool is DemandCaster.

We hit it off pretty well and became instant friends. With my “transition,” Ara and I began to talk more about collaboration. Being a reader of this letter, Ara suggested that we take his blog to the next level. That was an easy yes. I began authoring and co-authoring blog offerings with Ara for over a year.

Ara gave me a short consulting assignment to whet my appetite. It was a lot of fun. It was much more fun doing something real than looking for a job. In this one week assignment, I also learned a great and fundamental lesson of the solo consultant: There is no one to delegate any of the work too. Seriously and hilariously, my first impulse upon getting the assignment was to reach for my cell phone and to call people who no longer reported to me and dole out the work.

As the job search became more and more dismal and depressing, Ara and I seriously talked about collaborating on the consulting side using the wonderful DemandCaster software Ara developed. I hemmed. I hawed. I was afraid of this or that. I had always worked for a company and being on my own sounded scary. How would I sell? How would I live if I didn’t sell? I felt like I was standing on a cliff overlooking an abyss.

Then in July I took that step. It was not a cliff or an abyss. It was stepping off of a curb… nothing changed. I even used the same networking skills I was using in trying to get a job to generate new business. It is way more fun trying to generate new business than looking for a job. When I was looking for a job, I felt like I was in a batting cage practicing and practicing. When I am selling our services I feel like I am in a real game taking swings at real pitches. Why the difference? I do not know but that is how I feel.

I was lucky to begin right away with a client that I thought would be a good start. This client keeps asking me to do more and extending my engagement. For this I am very thankful.

It has been a lot of fun. I am fond of saying “way more fun than the cash flow justifies.” We have a pretty good mission and positioning of our little company. Ara has spent the past three months upgrading the DemandCaster tool. We are ready to launch it with a series of Webinars to both advertise the company and communicate the enhanced functionality of the tool.

I prepared a three part Webinar series entitled Supply Chain Physics. This series codified and communicated a concept that I have used the past ten year. Basically, I say that the Supply Chain’s role is to move and deliver the right products to the right place in the right quantities. These products move in space and time and are therefore subject to the Supply Chain Laws of Physics. These laws define and govern our Supply Chains just as the laws of Physics, as we studied in High School and College, define and govern the behavior of projectiles and other objects moving through space and time in the “real world.” The webinars have had good attendance and you can watch them on http://www.demandcaster.com/Events/Archived_Presentations_-_Table_of_Contents.aspx

We have also leveraged our love of writing and supply chain to take our company blog to the next level. Our goal is to post weekly. I believe the content of our blog is better than any of our competitors. Check it out: http://blog.demandcaster.com/

Ara Surenian is a great fellow. I could not ask for a better partner or mentor into the world of management consulting. I admire his work ethic, honesty, integrity, and easy going approach.

Teaching: Also, to supplement income, I decided in Q3 2009 to pursue teaching mathematics or supply chain related courses at night. I looked at the College of Lake County, a local community college, the University of Phoenix, and the Keller Graduate School of Business which is part of DeVry University. I am happy to say that beginning this month; I am teaching two sections of Elementary Statistics at the College of Lake County. It is fun and exciting to be back in the classroom after so many years.

Jobs opened up at the College of Lake County mostly due to the economy. Community Colleges are very cost effective options for those looking for a college education. Their enrollment increased to the point where approximately seventy adjunct professors were hired.

When I first taught first as a teaching assistant and then as an adjunct, it was all chalk and talk. Now, the teaching is multi-media using white boards and power points. Problems are solved using Excel on PCs and on TI-85 graphing calculators. It is different, exhilarating, and fun. Teaching four nights a week has taken all the slack out of my schedule. I am almost adjusted to this!

Ara Topouzian: It was early January when I settled on the topic of this letter. I knew that I would be writing a several hundred words on Ara Surenian. I also knew that I would hear from another friend Ara Topouzian. He would complain, “Hey, WTF, you write about another Ara that you have only known for three years??? What about me? You have known me for over thirty five years. Loogit.” We always add the Loogit when we talk to each other in homage to one Ned Apigian. I knew that I would have to write an equal number of words about Ara or never hear the end of it… seriously… NEVER EVER HEAR THE END OF IT.

So, I decided to include a section on Ara Topouzian. Just as I made that decision, it was like Ara sensed it and called me. He called to complain that I had not mentioned him in my December letter. It was about the fifth or sixth time he had complained about this letter where I mentioned Mike Mossoian or that letter where I profiled George Mouradian. It really is one of the many gags we have we have going back and forth over a number of years.

In the case of the December letter, Ara had a little, teensy weensy, point. When we lived in Bloomfield Hills and had our children, we live less than two miles from the Topouzian’s who were close family friends. Those who have young children and try to maintain any kind of active social life know finding and retaining good babysitters is on-going concern. We were fortunate to find Ara and use him on occasion for what seemed like several years.

The reliability and effort Ara brought to babysitting certainly speaks to his upbringing. His parents, Armen and Norma, definitely instilled great values and high principles in Ara. One might also argue that his availability might have been due to his lacking of a social life back then. But, I would categorically deny that on two counts. First, it is flat out not true. Secondly, I would never ever write that as it might offend my good friend. He knows I would never do that.

Ara became a good friend for a couple of reasons. First, he is just a great person with a great comedic view of things. He is even a bigger fan of The Three Stooges than I am. Secondly, he got bit by the music bug: The Armenian music bug. He claims it was because I was always playing the music when I drove him home after babysitting. I am certain that was a catalyst but perhaps not the main motivator.

Ara learned to play the kanun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanun_%28instrument%29 ) and began playing and booking jobs. He took things to a completely different level when he launched American Recording Productions, www.arpmusic.com, in 1991to both produce and sell CDs. Not only would he sell the CDs he produced, but sold the Armenian and Middle Eastern CDs of other artists and labels he admired such as Harold Hagopian’s Traditional Crossroads. www.arpmusic.com

Ara is very entrepreneurial. He is a natural marketer and salesman. He used these skills to build American Recording Productions. He recorded with a wide variety of musicians including two CDs yours truly. To promote his CDs and music, he would play in book and music stores. He even got a grant from the State of Michigan Council of the Arts (presumably back when they actually had a budget) to teach a seminar on Middle Eastern music in the local schools, children’s museums, and other venues.

Ara was so entrepreneurial that I actually dubbed him the Armenian P.T. Barnum. I even sent him a biography of the great Phineas T.

Ara was truly P.T. Barnum when American Recording Productions was his sole personal and business interest. It has waned a bit as he embarked on his career. Ara is currently Economic Development Director at City of Novi, Michigan.

Like Ara Surenian, Ara Topouzian is a great friend and musical colleague. We have great fun whenever we are together. I do hope that I have written enough here to keep him quiet for awhile…

The North Shore Armenian Cycling Club

Most readers of The Armenian Weekly (where this piece was written for) are familiar with the name Ken Hachikian. We know him because of his excellent leadership as Chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). Together with the excellent staff in Washington and the numerous regional and state volunteers, the ANCA has built a most effective grassroots lobbying organization that has really helped get the Armenian-American political agenda much more visibility than ever before. Those that know Ken a bit better also are aware of his business acumen. As a Partner at the Stonegate Group, Ken is an independent investment banking professional and turnaround consultant. In either role, Ken is known for his focus, passion, intensity, insights, and intellect.

What most people do not know is that Ken is founder and president of the North Shore Armenian Cycling Club based in Lake Forest, IL. Club members include Koko Tchamitchian, Christian Tchamitchian, Antreas Mesrobian, Claude Ohanesian, Ara Surenian, and yours truly Mark Gavoor. As a club we ride weekend mornings. Ken is constantly sending out e-mails organizing our weekend rides. I ride with him the most. Koko and Claude often join as well. We ride the Skokie Valley and McCrory Bike paths and have rides of 10 – 35 miles depending on the time available, the weather, and who joins the peleton. Once this year, Ken and I embarked on a fifty mile ride on the Des Plaines River Trail up to Wisconsin and back.

We ride because we love it. We do it for health and fitness. We do it for camaraderie. We do it to discuss economics and politics. We do it to get updated from Ken on issues facing the ANCA. There are rumors we are Ken’s secret advisory board and braintrust. I can most definitively put those rumors to rest by simply stating that Ken is head and shoulders smarter than each of us. It should be noted, however, when we talk Armenian politics, we ride much slower than normal. Yet, somehow the heart rate still reaches aerobic levels… go figure.

As Team Quartermaster, I found a source for Armenian Cycling jerseys from bikethings.com (www.bikingthings.com/arbijearcy.html) in June of 2009. We needed to outfit our club so that when we were clogging the bikepaths discussing Armenian issues, all the other cyclists would know who we are. We discussed this purchase thoroughly at one of our rare dinner meetings. Come on, we are Armenian, so food is always involved and perhaps even more important than the exercise. After a long and lengthy discussion of “I dunno, what do you think?”and “Wow… bike jerseys are really expensive.” The club agreed and we began the process of ordering the jerseys. Indeed it was a process. It took a few months from to get our jerseys. The process was elongated for a few reasons. First, believe it or not, bikethings does not stock Armenian Jerseys. I guess they are not big sellers. Go figure. So, these jerseys are made only when they they have a firm pre-paid order in hand. Secondly, the jerseys are made in Colombia, so even when they are done, it would still be about 10-15 days before we got them. Lastly, finalizing our order was delayed because bike jerseys have a different sizing protocol so it took some time for those of us that wear XXL shirts to come to grips that our bike jerseys would be 4XLs due to the European sizing standard used. As good Armenians, we were none too short on vanity.

Once we got the jerseys in late August, it took more intense planning to find a date when we could all gather for photographs. We decided to gather for photographs on September 20, 2009 though Ara and Claude were in absentia. Our Public Relations Vice-President, Koko, arranged for the renowned sports photographer Suzanne Tchamitchian, coincidently his wife, to take both still and action shots which we are releasing to the public along with this article about our club.

We learned later that we were donning the official Jersey of the National Cycling Federation of Armenia (www.cycling.am). We, due primarily to age, weight, and pace, could never ever be mistaken for Armenian National Team but when we are wearing and cruising along, we feel like we are representing our great nation and people.

So, if you are ever in Chicago and the weather is good enough to bicycle, come and join us. We can set you up with a bicycle. If you want to join our club, we would love to have you. The dues are practically nothing… actually there are no dues. All you ever have to do is show up for rides… if you can or want. We certainly accept social only members. In either case, you will have to get your own Armenian National Team Jersey. And if, by some miracle we are going too fast for you, just ask a question about Armenian politics and we will slow right down.