At 10 years old, the most important thing in my life was my bicycle. From when I first started riding a bike until I was 11 years old, I rode "hand me downs". The bicycles that I rode were cast-off bikes that were either completely worn out or too small for the current owner. These bikes never lasted very long and quite frequently they fell apart while in motion.

The Schwinn Stingray was the bike to have. Anyone who was anyone had a Stingray. The coolest kids had the Stingray with the 5 speed stick shift and the small front wheel. At 10 years old, I really, really wanted a Stingray bike. So, on my 11th birthday, my parents bought me a Sears Screamer, which was a cheap knock-off of the Schwinn Stingray.

No, it wasn't a Stingray, but it was a shiny, new, bike of my own. I couldn't have been more excited. I rode that bike every day. I sat tall in the banana seat, proud with my hands upon the butterfly handlebars and when I parked it I always engaged the parking brake.

Owning that bike, I learned valuable lessons about pride and avarice, the other kids would hate me if I gloated too much. I learned about mechanical maintenance, it needed to be adjusted, tightened, oiled and cleaned daily. But most importantly I learned about bad design. This bike was terribly designed. It was intended to look cool, but all the weight was in the back of the bike. If you were struggling to ride the bike, (which was almost always the case), you tended to stand and lean over the butterfly handlebars. This shifted your body mass over the 16 inch front wheel, which had a bad habit of getting stuck in pot holes, ruts, small cracks in the asphalt and launching you airborne over the butterfly handlebars.

Back then, kids did not wear bike helmets and a concussion was something that people would tell you to shake off. Apart from a visibly broken bone or a gaping wound that needed stitches, there was no need to visit a doctor. I continued to ride my bike for many years, with the threat that if I crashed it and ruined it, I would not be getting a new one. So, I decided to make some adjustments. After the concussion fog cleared a bit, I thought about what caused the crashes and how I could prevent it. I could remove the small front wheel and put a sensible wheel there, but that would essentially be a Cool-ectomy. I wanted to keep the cool, but reduce the brain damage, so I tilted the handlebars back and adjusted the seat to force my weight back on the bike. This seemed to help and I crashed substantially less as the years went by. (I think I crashed less... my memory is a bit spotty from that time).

But the lesson learned is that all things can be adjusted. Fifteen years ago, when B2BGateway was started, the EDI process that the world was using, was kind of cool, but it was a very poor design. Most organizations paid about $150,000 to purchase special computers/modems and mapping software. Then they had to hire a consultant to develop maps and they hoped things never changed.

I suppose it goes back to that Sears Screamer, but B2BGateway was founded on the premise that there is always a better way. We saw that companies were "Getting thrown over the handlebars" trying to put an EDI system in place. So, we designed a better and more cost effective way of doing EDI. At B2BGateway, we connect to the client and we connect to the trading partner, then we perform all the data mapping on our servers.

I never did own a Schwinn Stingray, but I learned a valuable lesson about design and quality improvement. (I think, my memory is a bit hazy).