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                           Daily notes for 2023-07-17

   Jul 17, 2023 · 1447 words · 7 minute read

   Table of Contents

     * [5]Notes on conflict
     * [6]The INT650

Notes on conflict [7]🔗

     When my master and I were walking in the rain, he would say, “Do not
     walk so fast, the rain is everywhere.”
     —Shunryu Suzuki

   For a very long time — too much of my life — I thought conflict was a
   sign that there was a problem. I didn’t like disagreeing with people
   about much of anything. I’m using “conflict” in a broad sense: Over
   resources, points of view, vision, beliefs, tastes.

   Over time I shifted on the matter a little, but when I look back on it
   I realize I wasn’t really evolving my attitude toward conflict, I was
   just evolving my response to its existence, while still believing that
   being in a state of conflict is a problem. I just got better at keeping
   my blood pressure low and gritting through it. I think I was looking at
   conflict as a thing that you have to acknowledge exists, but that you
   need to get through as quickly as possible, because it’s a bad place to
   be.

   That attitude created some problems:
     * When you’re bad at being in conflict, you’re at a disadvantage with
       people who are good at it and mean you harm; and you’re annoying
       people who are good at it and mean you no harm.
     * When you look at conflict as a thing to grit through and end
       quickly it’s hard to maintain your integrity. (See above: The
       people who don’t want what’s best for you (or the business, or the
       world, or etc.) understand this, and the ones who are really good
       at it and a little indifferent toward what’s best for you are
       counting on you to do all the work to get out of conflict.)
     * When you’d rather do anything than admit that you’re in a state of
       conflict, you will eventually do something about your problem that
       is less skillful for having waited than if you’d admitted it to
       yourself (and whoever you’re in conflict with) sooner. Or, as one
       of my past managers put it to me, “don’t be that guy who
       hockey-sticks.” (I nodded then kind of hockey-sticked.)
     * When you’re bad at being in conflict, and you’re willing to be set
       aside your integrity or do other things to get out of it quickly,
       you’ll eventually get tired of “losing” and figure out ways to
       “win” that cause others to see you as, at best, baffling and
       frustrating, and at worst Machiavellian and treacherous.

   That, anyhow, is a rough categorization of my many hundreds of
   mishandlings of conflict. Maybe the most interesting thing to me about
   all those mishandlings is that over time I managed to convince myself
   that failing to be in conflict well was a sign of virtue. Moral
   sophistication. “Taking the high road.” “Not worth the stress.”
   “Learning how to play the game.” “Protecting the team.”

   Over the past few years, I’ve changed on the matter: On balance, I
   definitely don’t think its existence is a sign there’s a problem. It’s
   just a sign that there’s a conflict.

   I still feel a little cautious about conflict when I don’t know the
   person I’m in conflict with very well. Caution is useful, because
   people who are bad at being in conflict but mean well — people who are
   “good eggs” — can still sort of mess things up, because if I have to
   bet on whether someone hates “losing” or just grinning and bearing it
   more, my money is on them hating losing more. When things get to a
   place where it feels existential to them, even good eggs can act sort
   of rotten. So you have to take time and attend to the interaction so
   they can be in conflict and feel safe about it.

   I still think I have a responsibility to introduce the existence of
   conflict with kindness, or receive the news that I’ve entered into a
   state of conflict in a manner that invites a full airing. “Relaxed and
   possibly delighted curiosity,” I suppose I’d call it, rather than a
   furrowing of the brow and assurances that I want to restore harmony at
   once. Because I don’t want to restore harmony at once. I want to
   understand why we want different things, then figure out how we can
   both behave with integrity while we sort that out.

The INT650 [8]🔗

   I finally quit waffling on what to do with the Royal Enfield Himalayan.
   I took it up to [9]Sabatino Moto in St. Johns and traded it in for
   another Royal Enfield: An INT650 (“Interceptor” everywhere else in the
   world, but not in North America where Honda owns the rights to the
   name.)

   It’s a pretty night and day difference. The Himalayan is a mountain
   goat, and the INT650 is … something a little prettier and a little less
   rough. I was never going to ride the Himalayan the way it was meant to
   be ridden — fire roads, gravel, dirt — and I didn’t have the patience
   for the very “work in progress” attitude Royal Enfield took toward it.
   One thing you learn from all the Himalayan videos on YouTube is that
   the people who love them best don’t mind fiddling, tweaking, and
   wrenching. After reading hundreds of owners talk about their
   experiences, I have come to realize I lost the factory QA lottery on
   mine, and that engendered a lack of confidence in it that I never
   recovered from.

   Also turns out, I think, that I had a bad dealer:

   The first RE dealer in the Portland area doesn’t really want to sell
   them, and it really does not want to do anything other than the most
   basic service. I think I’ve documented that elsewhere, so I won’t go
   into it more here, but I’ll just offer the observation that RE’s
   strategy of linking up with Harley dealers to build out its US
   distribution network did its customers no favors.

   The folks at Sabatino, on the other hand, seem to have a genuine
   appreciation for the bikes, that extends all the way to acknowledging
   that RE has some QA challenges. Sabatino addresses that by doing their
   own QA when they uncrate a new bike. And they’re willing to talk about
   the ups and downs of each model. My head was briefly turned by another
   model, and I got a reasoned, balanced, discussion of why maybe that one
   wouldn’t work for me.

   They also offer test rides. I can name one dealership that grudgingly
   made me sign a waiver and write a check for the full amount to test
   ride a Grom for five laps around their parking lot, and they only did
   that because it was a two-year-old model and they’d sold the newer one
   they promised me out from under me. Sabatino made me do the waiver,
   share my insurance information, and hand over my license, but then they
   tossed me the keys and told me they’d see me when they saw me.

   Anyhow, the test ride sold me. I’ve been through several configurations
   of motorcycle and scooter since getting my motorcycle endorsement —
   maxiscoots, normal scoots, mini-moto, cruiser, trail bike, dual-sport —
   and none of them have been the thing I first imagined myself riding
   when I finally decided to learn how to ride. Well, learn how to ride as
   an adult, anyhow. The twin 650 runs and sounds nice, the bike handles
   more comfortably than the Himalayan despite there being 40 pounds more
   of it, and the super-simple analog speedo and tach are just sort of
   pleasant. I ran it around St. Johns for a while, was struck by how
   immediately comfortable it was (and how confident I felt on it), and
   that was that.

   Yesterday I took it on a ride out Foster Road toward Damascus. There’s
   a side road I head out onto that eventually rejoins on the other side
   of Damascus, close to a back road that joins the highway down to
   Estacada. So I headed out past Estacada, to see how it did on a small
   back highway. There was a little bit of buffeting — no fairings — but
   it ran and handled well. I felt more confident on the little back roads
   coming back than I did heading out as I got to know the bike better. I
   did decide to detract from its vintage purity a little by ordering a
   Dart flyscreen when I got back: People say it helps clean up the
   turbulence at highway speeds, and keeps the bugs off the pretty silver
   cans.

   Anyhow, glad I’ve got it in the driveway with so much of the riding
   season left, and I can wholeheartedly recommend Sabatino Moto if you’re
   looking to buy one for yourself.

   [10]journal [11]conflict

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