Duncan Ville

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Another downside of our silence about money is that we become even more likely to make financial decisions based on emotion rather than on logic or research. In Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes (Simon & Schuster, 1999), a terrific book that I recommend to all my friends and clients, journalist Gary Belsky and psychologist Thomas Gilovich summarize a new branch of economic research, called behavioral economics, that examines many of the most common traps that lead us to make poor money decisions.
Let me give you just a few examples. If you tend to treat your hard-earned income differently from the way you treat other money—say a tax refund or a lottery winning—you’re guilty of what behavioral economists call mental accounting. This concept, developed by Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, describes our tendency to categorize and value our money according to its source or how we spend it. Mental accounting can be dangerous, because in reality one dollar is worth just as much as the next. One hundred dollars that you get from a windfall will buy you just as much as one hundred dollars you’ve saved. Likewise, if you feel much freer spending money when you use a credit card than when you pay in hard cash, you are likely practicing a form of mental accounting.
There’s also what the behaviorists call the “sunk-cost fallacy.” If you’re the type who continues to pour money into an old rattletrap, you should train and discipline yourself to think hard before you throw any more good money after bad. If you wouldn’t want to buy the car today, knowing that it needs repairs, why would you want to waste money fixing it up just because you already own it?

What does money represent to you and your loved ones? For some of you it means success. For others it may signify independence, freedom, security, or something else entirely. To find out Dr. James Cottfurch, principal of Psychology of Money Consultants, a Los Angeles—based company, suggests in his workshops that you try and think of a single symbol that encapsulates how you feel about money. It could be anything from a soft, warm, furry bunny to a runaway train. One of my friends sees money as the sun, because of its ability to make
things grow. Actually, the sun s not a bad metaphor, as it can also burn you if not treated with a certain amount of respect and restraint.) This friend even surrounds herself with sun images, from a decorative tile in her kitchen to a copper and brass sculpture on her desk, to remind her of the positive role that money plays in her life. It’s her way of staying focused on what she’s trying to achieve and of keeping some of her more negative and self-defeating money attitudes at bay.
What you adopt as your money symbol may surprise you and may reveal attitudes about money that you didn’t even know you had. Or not. Either way, comparing notes with those close to you, or even brainstorming about financial symbols together, might prove to be very insightful.

It is not only dogs and dolphins who have shown their reverence and devotion to human life by going to enormous lengths to save it. The animal kingdom, it turns out, is fill of remarkable samaritans.
In 1975, a desperate shipwreck victim off the coast of Manila was stupefied to see a giant sea turtle swimming towards her, seemingly offering its aid. The floundering woman climbed aboard the turtle, which then did something turtles supposedly “never do.” Sea turtles spend most of their time underwater, but this one must have somehow known the poor woman needed constant support to survive, and must also have wanted very much to take care of her. It proceeded to stay at the surface for two full days, going without food itself, so it could continue to carry her and keep her alive. When human rescuers finally appeared: “Eyewitnesses thought the woman was floating on an oil drum until she was safely on board—whereupon the ‘oil drum’ circled the area twice and disappeared.”
To be taken for an oil drum might not have surprised the turtle all that much. You see, for many years, turtles were not legally recognized as animals in the U.S. One of the earliest crusaders for animal protection, Henry Bergh, found this out when he tried to stop the torments visited upon green turtles. These great animals, which have been known to live for hundreds of years, and grow to 600 pounds or more, are sought after as a status source of soup and steak for the wealthy, with the children being eaten when they weigh only about 50 pounds. Bergh found that the turtles were transported by ships from the tropics to the Fulton Fish Market in New York. En route, the turtles did not exactly travel first class. They lay on their backs for several weeks, out of the water, with nothing to eat or drink, like so much upside-down luggage. They were held in place by ropes strung through holes punched in their flippers.’6
Bergh did everything he could to halt this activity, but when he brought the perpetrators to court, the judge acquitted them on the grounds that a turtle was “not an animal within the meaning of the law.”” Accordingly, ruled the judge, even the barest minimum of protection against cruelty that was afforded animals by the law at that time could not be applied to turtles.”
Most of us, like that judge, are conditioned by a culture that thinks of animals as mere machinery, and could never imagine that a sea turtle would be capable of saving a human life. Nor would that same type of thinking allow us to believe that a canary, however sweet its song and pretty its feathers, could be much more than a decorative and bright adornment to a house. But the residents of Hermitage, Tennessee, know better.
In 1950, an elderly woman lived in Hermitage, who was known to everyone around simply as Aunt Tess. The old lady lived alone with only her cat and a canary named Bibs. Aunt Tess’s niece and her husband lived a few hundred yards away from her house, and they were concerned lest something happen to the aging woman without anyone knowing.
One night they were awakened by what seemed like a tapping on the window. It wasn’t loud, and they tried to ignore it, but the tapping continued.
Finally, the niece got out of bed and went to the window to investigate. She drew back the curtains, and there, to her amazement, beating frantically against the window pane, was Aunt Tess’s canary, Bibs. The little bird had never before been outside the aunt’s house, but she had somehow managed not oniy to get out, but then to find her way several hundred yards to the niece’s window. The task took all the little bird had, however. Before the niece’s eyes, Bibs literally dropped dead from exhaustion on the windowsill. The niece and her husband immediately rushed over to Aunt Tess’s house and there found the old lady lying unconscious and bleeding on the floor. She had.sufl’ered a bad fall, and may well have died had not help arrived when it did. The canary had given its own life to save that of Aunt Tess.’9
The more I have learned about animals, the more I have realized how conditioned I have been in my attitudes towards them. I never would have imagined a bird capable of this kind .of thing. Nor would I have thought a pig likely to be a lifesaver. But I would have been wrong.
A couple of years ago United Press International carried a photograph and story that was picked up and printed in many of the country’s major newspapers. The photo was of Carol Burk, her 11-year-old son Anthony Melton, and a pig. What made the story newsworthy was that mother and son had gone swimming in a Houston lake. The boy inadvertently strayed too far from shore, panicked, and began to sink. The boy’s pet pig, Priscilla, evidently felt his distress because she rushed into the water and began to swim towards him. While Anthony’s anguished mother watched helplessly, the boy managed to stay afloat until the pig reached him. Then he caught hold of her leash. Anthony’s mother watched awe-struck as Priscilla the pig proceeded to tow her son safely to shore.

Human contact with dolphins is limited. In recent years, the animal with whom most of us have had the greatest contact is the dog. One doesn’t have to be a “dog-lover” to recognize that these beings have provided enormous amounts of companionship, devotion and loyalty to people over the years.
Television shows like “Lassie” and “Rin Tin Tin” were not wholly contrived fantasies. They were dramatic representations of the loyalty, devotion, and intelligence of dogs. There are actually thousands of filly-documented and independently verified incidents that make the adventures of Lassie and Rin Tin Tin pale by comparison.
One day in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 1955, a man named Ken Wilson was trying to teach a horse to accept a saddle in his corral. Ken wasn’t at all concerned about his three-year-old son, Stevie, who he thought was playing at a neighbor’s. But what he didn’t know was that little Stevie had wandered off alone, fallen into a pond, and sunk to the bottom. The boy’s dog, Tafl’, however, saw the disaster and immediately raced to the corral, barking uproariously, and demanding Mr. Wilson’s attention. When the man ignored him, TailS’ made a big show of charging into the pond, all the while continuing to bark at the top of his lungs. Then he raced back and nipped at the horse’s legs. Finally Mr. Wilson realized the dog was trying to tell him something, and dismounted. Immediately, Taffy bolted to the pond, barking for the bewildered man to follow him. When Wilson got to the pond, he saw his little son’s red jacket floating on the surface of the water. Finally realizing what had happened, he instantly dove headlong into the four- foot-deep water, found his unconscious son, and lifted him from the bottom. It was six hours before Stevie regained consciousness. But when he did, the first thing he saw was his little dog Taffy, sitting prayerfully beside his bed.’3
Tafl’ is not the only dog that has saved the lives of children. There are thousands of such cases, filly documented and verified.
One such child was two-year-old Randy Saleh, of Euless, Texas. Little Randy wandered away from home one day. When his parents noticed his absence and couldn’t find him anywhere, they called the police. But even a two-hour police search did not locate young Randy. The parents were becoming extremely alarmed, and when they noticed that the boy’s dog, a St. Bernard named Bingo, was also missing, they found themselves praying that the big dog was with their little son, and was somehow protecting him.
Meanwhile, a man named Harley Jones had to stop his car for a traffic jam on a highway about three quarters of a mile from Randy’s home. Getting out of his car, he asked other stopped motorists if they knew what was the problem. They told him the trouble was “caused by a mad dog in the road ahead.” Curious, Jones walked toward the head of the line of stopped cars to see for himself what was going on. What he saw was a St. Bernard, stationed resolutely in the center of the highway, barking wildly, and letting no car move by in either direction. Jones saw the dog was protecting a little boy who was merrily playing in the center of the heavily-traveled thoroughfare. The dog would stop any car that dared attempt to drive through the area, and then would immediately rush back to the little boy, and nudge him toward the side of the road. But the little fellow, thinking the whole thing was just a game, would return to the center of the highway.
Jones spoke soothingly to the St. Bernard, and managed to calm him down. But the dog would not let a single car move by until little Randy was safely off the road. I think you’d have a hard time convincing little Randy’s parents that animals are lust mechanical contraptions.
Now, if you are like me, you may get a little choked up when you learn of these incidents. These are not just cases of dogs waking up their masters because they are panicking in the midst of a fire, and then later getting credit. These are not the work of machines without feeling, driven only by instincts and reflexes. They are demonstrations of courage and devotion and selfless love. They are intelligent and brave responses to emergencies.

The official position of the Catholic Church has long been that animals don’t have souls. During a Church council in the Middle Ages a vote was taken on whether women and animals have souls. Women squeaked by. Animals lost.
One thing is sure. Yvonne Vladislavich would give you quite an argument if you tried to tell her animals don’t have souls. In June, 1971, Yvonne was aboard a yacht that exploded and sank in the Indian Ocean. Utterly terrified, she was thrown into shark-infested waters. Then she saw three dolphins approach her. One of them proceeded to buoy her up, while the other two swam in circles around her and guarded her from the sharks. The dolphins continued to take care of Yvonne, and protect her, until she finally drifted to a marker in the sea and climbed up onto it. When she was rescued from this marker, it was determined that the dolphins had stayed with her, kept her afloat, and protected her across more than 200 miles of open sea. And there’s more. On May 28, 1978, four fishermen became lost in a fog off the coast of Dassen Island, South Africa. They knew there were dangerous rocks in the vicinity, and they feared running into them because the fog had become so thick they couldn’t see where they were going. Then they became aware of a group of dolphins nudging and pushing the boat, and forcing them to change course. Suddenly, through the fog, they saw sharp rocks protruding through the water. The rocks only became visible as they floated by them, and the fishermen realized at once that the dolphins had saved their lives. Meanwhile, the dolphins continued to push the boat along a course known only to them, until it reached calm waters. Then they swam away, evidently feeling their job was done. When the fog lifted, the men were flabbergasted to find themselves in the very bay from which they had originally set out early that morning.

Many readers of this site will want not only to read what others have published don the Web, but also to do some Web publishing themselves.
The tool that you use to create hypertext documents for the World Wide Web is called HyperText Markup Language (HTML). If you want to create your own homepage, or render a document in a form readable on the Web, you need to get a good HTML editor and learn how to use it. This involves assigning document tags and working with basic text structures. You may also want to learn how to incorporate images into your HTML documents.
You’ll be glad to hear that HTML is not all that hard to master. One
of the best introductions to HTML is freely available on the Web itself:
Introduction to HTML
http://www.cwru.edu/help/introHTML/toc.html
Another very good alternative is:
HTMLelementary
http://labrocca.com/htmlementaiyl
Before you can learn to use an HTML editor, however, you have to have one available on your platform. Many excellent HTML editors are available on the Web for Macintosh, Windows and UNIX machines. Here are some addresses where you’ll find them available
for download:
ANT HTML (PC Windows a Macintosh versions)
http://telacommunications.com/ant/ Download a demo version of this great macro for effortlessly con-
veiling Microsoft Word documents into HTIvIL.
COFFEECUP HTML EDITOR ++ (PC Windows)
http://www.coffeecup.com/
Download Coffeecup HTML Editor ++ for a 30-day free trial. Cof-
feeCup HTML Editor++ is a full-featured HTML editor that includes
Expresso FTP for uploading and downloading; an image gallery with
quick-linking images; highlighted tags; style sheet help; automatic
image sizing; a line reader; and tips. It comes with 30 background
images, more than 175 animated OlE s, upwards of 140 Web icon
graphics, 60 JavaScript scripts, a frame designer, and an HTML strip-
per. You can work on and test multiple pages at once. Other features
include an internal browser for testing and surfing, an image-pre-
viewing utility, a sound gallery, on-line help, and a step-by-step Web
design guide and references for the latest HTML 4.0 tags.
HOT DOG WEB EDITOR (PC Windows)
http://www.sausage.com/
Download a free 30-day trial version of any one of several fast,
flexible, and friendly versions of the Hot Dog Web Editor for Windows.
HTML GRINDER (Macintosh)
http://www.matterform.com/grinder/
Download a free, fully functional demo copy of HTML Grinder, a
robust HTIVIL editor for the Mac. Decide you don’t like it? Then just let
the software expire and keep its highly useful “Find and Replace Tool”
as a gift from the good folks at MatterForm Media. Note: Macintosh
SEJ3O or better, System 7, 8MB RAIvI (16MB RAM recommended).
Compatible with MacOS 8.
INTERNET LIST KEEPER (PC Windows)
http://www.drweb.com/
Go to “Dr. Web’s” home page to download a free coy of Internet
List Keeper, a very simple, template-based HTML tool for creating
Web pages.
Simple HTML Editor (S H E) version 2.9 (Macintosh)
http://wivw.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morganfsimple.htmi
Simple HTML Editor (S H E) is just that, a simple editor for creat-
ing hypertext markup language (HTML) documents. It is in the form of a HyperCard stack, and therefore, it requires Hypercard or HyperCard Player, as well as a Macintosh. Take a free download of the software and try it on for size.
SITEAID HTML EDITOR (PC Windows)
http://www.siteaid.com
More than just your average HTML editor, SiteAid is a tool for
managing your entire site. From creating HTML, Javascripts and Style
Sheets, to uploading them to your Internet server, SiteAid has you
covered. You are invited to download and test drive this shareware
free of charge.
ULTRAEDIT HTML EDITOR (PC Windows)
http://www.ultraedit.com/
Download the full version of this great shareware HTML editor for
Windows.
UNIX HTML EDITORS
http ://www.xcelco.on.cafr.johnston/htmls.html
Here is a wonderful megalist of dozens of powerful Unix-oriented HTML editors available for downloading through quick-click hyperlinks.

Times was when only a privileged few could get on the Internet superhighway and drive. That’s not so anymore. These days, there are more and more “on-ramps” for the highway, and tolls on the road are decreasing every day. Today you can speed around the Net and the Web or little more than the price of a subscription to the fruit-of-the-
month club. Your connection options include permanent direct connections, dial-up connections to local hosts, and connection to the Web via a commercial on-line service. * Permanent Direct Connections: Web Nirvana Those of us affiliated with universities, research labs, and corporations—as well as those of us with direct connections often by our cable television suppliers—are usually able to connect to the Internet via the fastest route possible: a TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) network. Whether you are at your home cable modem, a corporate office, a university, or a public library, you are likely to have access to a PC hooked to such a network connection.
Permanent direct connections are clearly the vest and quickest way to travel to and across the Internet, as they allow fast data
throughput capable of dealing swiftly with memory-fat Web graphics. Such high-speed access is vital for many applications related to scienyou tific research and communications (such as video conferencing), which require extremely fast transmissions of large amounts of data.
* Local Host Dial-Up Connections: The Next Best Thing The next most attractive alternative is to use your computer’s modem to dial-up to the network of an Internet service provider. These service providers are usually called local hosts. A local host computer runs with applications software that uses the TCP/IP protocols to com‘the municate with other Internet. (Note that for web surfing a minimum modem speed of 28.8 bps [bits per secondJ is highly recommended.)
To communicate with the Web via your local host, you must use software that enables your computer to use the TCP/IP language to communicate over local telephone lines. Here you have two choices. The first is SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) and the second and newer option is PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol). These low-cost alternatives provide hill peer access to the Internet. The difference between the two is fundamental. SLIP does not provide error correction or data compression, but it still works well for home and small-business applications. PPP was specifically developed to recti’ SLIP’s error correcting weakness. PPP checks incoming data and asks the sending computer to retransmit when it detects an error in an IP packet. Thus, of the two protocols, I recommend PPP. It’ll save you time and hassles. There are hundreds of dial-up Internet providers across the counny, many of them regional, and a number of them national.

Today there are literally millions of documents on the Web Every subject known to humankind can be found here. But finding what you want amid this mountain of data can be more than time-consuming.
Even if you use one of the popular search-engines on the Web to isolate all Web sites containing information on a given topic such as comets (or thermodynamics, or lipids, or polychlorinated biphenyl’s, etc.), you will still have to spend a fair amount of time browsing through the many documents called up by your search in order to see
which ones provide the richest information base.
One comet page, for example, may contain nothing more than a collection of 200-year-old observations of Comet Halley with no accompanying links, while another page will provide a cornucopia of information and resources on all aspects of the study of comets from ancient times right up to the present day, with a long list of related links, including an appropriate description of (and a link to) the limited Comet Halley page for those who want it. Which of these two documents is more useful? Which would you prefer to spent time on? The latter document is the one you will find discussed in this book. In writing this book I have endeavored to provide a guide to the most useful and informationally rich resources for scientists on the Web. I have scoured the various Web information options in a range of scientific disciplines and cut out the shallow and trivial in favor of
the deep and meaningful. Thus, this book comprises a directory to the most ambitious science pages on the web, not only rich in links that leverage to the utmost the possibilities of hypertext but also rich in layers of vital, current data as represented in text, graphics, and audio.

The new economy is creating a tyranny of conflicting drivers causing every company to rethink its mission. Virtual aliens and a hundred other factors are pressuring the cost structure of large companies. Time to reach market is critical when products have a competitive life span of one year, one month, one week, or one afternoon, as in the case of some products in financial services. Innovation, rather than access to resources, plant, and capital, is what counts most. (Remember when eyeglasses took two weeks?) Customers have changed, expecting that companies must provide best quality, green products, fast, at lowest price, with best service, and ensuring social responsibility—to name a few.
Five years ago, competitors to Xerox were Kodak, Canon, and Ricoh. Today, the rivals are Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and IBM. Five years from now, it may be Sega-Genesis, Andersen Consulting, AT&T, and the banks. The most famous last words that could possibly be uttered inside any firm these days are: “We don’t have any real competition.” No one is secure, not even the Fortune 500 companies. Of the companies on that prestigious list in 1955, 70% are now out of business. Of the companies on the 1979 list, fully 40% no longer exist as corporate entities. By 1993, the combined market value of Intel and Microsoft was larger than that of IBM; the suppliers had become more valuable than the customer.4
The Queen of England’s bank—Barings–—was put under by a 28-year- old employee. American banks have faced different pressures. Fifteen years ago all the top money-center banks were based in the United States. Now, none are. In fact, of the world’s twenty-five biggest banks, measured by assets, fifteen are Japanese—and now many of them are in trouble.
In the digital economy, competition doesn’t come from competitors only—it comes from everywhere. When information becomes digital and networked, walls fall and no business is safe. There is nowhere to hide. Take the case of Microsoft’s ill-fated attempt to acquire the personal financial software company Intuit. The proposed deal was dropped by Microsoft in light of potential Justice Department opposition, which was in turn stimulated by the banks. The financial industry was worried that Microsoft would become a bank! Consumers would pay bills electronically using Microsoft software, generating almost instant annual revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars. Microsoft could then demand a share of the clearinghouse revenue of the banks. Overtime, brand identities of the banks would fade as consumers would appear to use Microsoft products for banking. Microsoft could also enable investors to surf the stock market and- execute trades themselves, “disintermediating” the investment banks. As Fortune’s Terence P. Pare put it: “Microsoft would become, in effect, a nationwide consumer bank,”5 Banks would become commodity suppliers competing only on price. And although Microsoft backed off from the Intuit deal, it is clearly not backing off from being a player in the world of electronic banking. -
In the l98Os, American business believed the answers would come from MBA graduates. Management also grabbed any passing guru with a catchy phrase covering customer satisfaction, high-octane productivity, and competitive culture. “Adopting ‘new’ ideas became a way for companies to signal to the world that they were progressive, that they had come to grips with their misguided pasts, and that they were committed to change. After all, the worst thing one could do was stick with the status quo,” say Nitin Nohria and James D. Berkeley of Harvard Business School. In the l990s, there is no status quo. The velocity of change in information technology has seen to that, Products are becoming digital. Markets are becoming electronic. Industries are in upheaval. Organizations are having to go far beyond reengineering to fundamentally rethink everything about themselves and their future. As Tony Comper, president of the Bank of Montreal, says: “It’s kind of like the early days of the universe after the Big Bang, when gases are congealing and galaxies are forming. No one is really sure how it will all sort out and it’s not yet clear where Earth is.”
Even the tried-ancj-twe familiar clichés of business are no longer accurate. Take the old adage that executives used in the past to halt fresh thinking, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” At Philadelphia-based Bell Atlantic, they’ve not only updated that phrase, they’ve stood it on its head, saying:
“If it ain’t broke, keep looking.” Home Depot, with more than 300 stores the largest home-improvement center in the United States, puts the same case differently: “Unless you keep fixing it, someday it will be broke.” For many companies with products having short life cycles, the message should In), “If it ain’t broke, break it before your competitors do.” What that lileans for the future of business is this: Only those organizations that understand the pace of change and can develop successful strategies and tie wiliing to ride that wild surf can succeed. As Bette Davis said in All About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” What a business person to do’? For starters, create a company. Many of the brightest and most energetic people of the new economy would rather create a new small business than change an old big one. “Big” was what made companies successful in the old economy. Today, being big is often a liability, whereas innovation, agility, and organizational learning are the key variables for snccess. Besides, by growing your own, you get to share in the value you create.
Or maybe you’ve chosen to “reinvent” your current company. Just about everyone agrees that a shift from the traditional bureaucratic hierarchy is needed. The new organization has many names. Peter Drucker calls it the “networked organization.”7 Peter Senge has coined the “learning organization.”8 Davidow and Malone call it the “virtual corporation. “ For Peter Keen, it’s the “relational For Tom Peters, it’s the “crazy organization.” For D. Quinn Mills, it’s the “cluster organization.”’2 Charles Savage calls it “human networking.”3 Russell Ackoff describes the “democratic corporation.”4 For James Brian Quinn, it’s the “intelligent enterprise.” For Michael Hammer and James Champy, it is the “reengineered corporation.”6 For Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, the challenge is not just a new organizational paradigm but a new strategy paradigm.’ 7Call it what you like, fundamental change is necessary.
The new enterprise is a network of distributed teams that act as clients and servers for each other. Teams received a big push back in the 1980s when John Welch, GE’s CEO, launched the workout program, which was centered on the creation of cross-functional teams. Now teams reach out to customers, suppliers, and others, thereby changing the relationships between organizations.
Easy? No, but it surely can’t be as hard as Charles Dc Gaulle found running France to he. “How can you govern a country,” the soldier-statesman once lamented, “with 246 varieties of cheese?”
Moreover, the answer lies not in new organizational structures. As Petronius Arbiter, an officer in the Roman Imperial Army, said in 60 AL “I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by r organizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.”
Companies need fundamentally new strategies for the new economy. Networking is enabling new structures and new strategies. But even
it is enabling strong personal trusting relationships among people—r tionships that are very different from those of the old hierarchy. Ha trouble building a learning organization? Individual learning req intelligence and consciousness. Such learning has been going on for milennia. But both can now be networked to create conscious organizations. Organizational consciousness is a prerequisite for organizational learning. The new networks are opening the bandwidth of human communication. But how?

Joe and I had parked the 4×4 at a small pullout next to the public access area and were uncasing our shotguns. The road in was ravaged; it was full of nasty ruts and gravel mounds, and the last 100 yards were especially treacherous because it dropped so steeply. As I slipped on my game vest, I heard the sound of another engine, and when I looked up I could see the driver was having trouble coming down the trail.
“Joe,” I yelled. “Get out of the way!”
Joe leaped behind our truck as the vehicle careened by and bounced off a huge tree. Fortunately, the driver wasn’t hurt, but his new truck had a nasty dent in the front quarter panel. He climbed out and said,”Sorry boys. Didn’t mean to make you jump like that. I don’t understand it. I just put new offroad tires on this thing.”
New tires or not, if you don’t pay attention to the trail, trouble will always find you. Later, when I stopped by to talk with Steve White, light-truck tire marketing manager at Uniroyal, and tell him the story, he said, “That guy made a classic mistake. He relied on technology rather than common sense to get him out of trouble “Yeah,”I said,”I see that a lot.”
“What people forget,” White said, “is that good tires are only part of the package.You also need to hone your offroad driving skills. And you begin with equipment every driver already hast “And that would be?” “Your eyes. You need to know what to do with your eyes. Too many people simply stare straight ahead, focusing only on what is immediately in front of the vehicle. Wrong! You should be using your eyes to gather much more information. For instance, what’s on each side of the truck? Are there sharp rocks or overhanging tree limbs? What about cactus? You need to know this. Take a look down the trail. What’s coming up? Deep ruts, a blind turn? Do you have an obstacle that you need to steer around? Or can you drive over it? You need to know this too, so trail challenges don’t come as a surprise.
“Always try to keep in mind what I call ‘the picture; which I define as where I want the truck to go, not where it currently is. That’s a big difference, but if you can do it, you’ll avoid a lot of trouble.
“In order to see ‘the picture,’ you need to be seated comfortably in the vehicle. You shouldn’t have to strain to reach the pedals or steering wheel, and you should be able to clearly see the gauges as well as the mirrors. Drivers who aren’t comfortable will get atigued, and this affects your ability to control the vehicle.”
The next step, according to White, is to drive the vehicle with the correct speed and rhythm. When you get it right, you should be able to hold a full cup of water without spilling it as you drive.
“You need to learn how to accelerate properly,” he continued. “Too many offroaders employ a herky-jerky on- and off-throttle type of driving.This only upsets the balance of the vehicle. Instead, gently accelerate to a level where you can keep relatively steady pressure on the accelerator. Make only subtle adjustments to slow down or speed
“Do all of your braking before you get to a turn, hole, or whatever it is that is forcing you to slow the vehicle. Remember, your brakes are going to be a lot more sensitive to locking up in dirt or sand because the tires have less traction. Make the braking action as subtle and as smooth as possible. if you do encounter a crisis, brake hard— just to the point of lockup. At that point, gently ease off the brakes in small increments to allow the tires to maintain traction, but keep enough pressure on the pedal to continue to slow down the vehicle. Once the vehicle starts to skid, you may have a tough time trying to recover because offroad situations can have minimal traction to begin with.
“Obviously the slower you’re going when you get in a panic situation, the easier it will be to deal with. In bct, one of the major difficulties in trying to execute turns in offroad situations is excess speed. In many cases, the driver is not aware of vehicle speed—and most diivers are going much faster than they think.When that happens, you’ll find that the truck wants to keep going straight ahead rather than turn in the direction you are steering.
“That’s what I call a skid,” I said. “Right. And it’s trouble, so slow down.”