SIMPLICITY

I'm guilty. Guilty as sin.

After many years in which I've considered myself a torch bearer for simplicity, I have fallen into the black hole of complex solutions for simple problems.

NASA, if you're reading this, I'm ready for my new career.

To rewind, I've always believed in elegant simplicity when solving problems. Indeed, when I worked in a professional capacity, my superiors and co-workers would often criticize my solutions to problems as being "too simplistic". And they were correct.

I have always believed in "the 90% solution" - that which solves 90% of the problem. Trying to solve 100% of a problem, in itself, becomes problematic because there are always inherent "problems" with the various components of a complex 100% solution, thus reducing their effectiveness to less than 100%. Furthermore getting to 100% tends to be costly. (And I'm one of the world's great cheapskates.)

As previously stated, I have swayed from my life long credo of simplicity.

It all started out so innocently. I was looking for a solution to a problem that faces many bicycling enthusiasts. That is, when you have your bike on the roof rack of your car, what is an effective way of reminding yourself that it's on the roof before driving into the garage and causing massive damage? (SEE PICTURE BELOW)

In my search for a solution to this problem, I perused the Internet, Googling furiously over the past few days. I found some wonderful ideas, two of which were very exciting. One, a Smartphone app which keeps track of your location via GPS and warns you when you are approaching the location of your garage. The next was a transmitter which is attached to your bike which interacts with a receiver in your garage. Upon approaching the garage, whistles, bells and sirens alert the driver to stop. Another solution involved blinking LED lights on the dashboard device.

In short, there was no end to the many gizmos and gadgets that have been invented to save the lives of our precious bikes. I was poised and ready to spend whatever amount of money that was needed to take advantage of this new and exciting technology.

My juices were flowing.

That was until I read a posting from a fellow bicyclist who had also given this considerable thought. After pondering the various options available, he concluded that an effective way to prevent a disastrous encounter between bikes and a garage was to move a large trash can to the middle of the garage. Lets face it, when you open your garage door and see a trash can in the middle, you will have to stop the car short of the garage and move the large obstruction to keep from running it over.

This idea is certainly not as exciting as the high-tech solutions...

...but nonetheless brilliant.


Readers, enjoy your day.