I Did It!!

I can't believe I did it! This isn't like me! This blog may never be the same. Heck, life as I know it may never be the same!

I bought a toy! I bought a Garmin GPS 550. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I may have to change my mind on how much technology sucks! This little gadget has already changed my life. Gone are the crying jags because I took a wrong turn and suddenly don't know where I am. Gone are the days of calling Ron in Ohio when I'm in Chicago to help me find my hotel again. Gone are probably a lot of blog entries complaining on how lost I have been.

My job entails travel. The joke around my office when I have to travel is not IF I'll get lost, but how many times and how many phone calls it will take to get me back on the right track.

Not any more. I now have Jack, the voice of my Garmin!!

The link above is the exact one I bought. Mine was a little cheaper, but not much.

Ron and I had gone into Best Buy the other night to price the GPS units. That's all I wanted to do. As we were looking at the display, an older gentleman walks up to us to tell us that he had a Garmin 550 himself and he loves it! This gentleman was just another shopper at the store, he was not a Best Buy employee. That fact was very important to me, as I wouldn't have put nearly as much weight in what he had to say if I knew he was a salesman for the store. He was just a regular joe that obviously loved his purchase and he wanted to let me know that.

We talked for quite awhile. Like me, his job takes him on the road a lot. He also used to be lost often! We even traded getting lost stories. He just couldn't say enough about the unit, and how easy it was to use, how useful it was and how happy he was with his purchase. The dang guy deserves a commission because he talked me right into it.

All during our conversation, we did have two Best Buy employees standing behind us, but they couldn't get a word in edgewise. When the decision was made, I turned and asked one of the guys to open the locked cabinet and hand me my GPS. I thanked my new friend, and Ron and I headed to the cashier.

Once outside, the Garmin was really easy to use. We let it guide us home and it was amazing! Turn by turn directions, and if by chance I take a wrong turn (yes, it's already happened!) the unit doesn't yell at me and call me a dumbass, it tells me it's "recalculating". In seconds, I have a new route to drive since I didn't follow the original route offered to me. So, maybe in GPS-ese, dumbass=recalculating. But, in Jack's voice, it sounds much nicer.

The coolest feature on this gadget is not the turn by turn instructions. It's the little extras in the device. For instance, one of the problems when traveling is finding good restaurants. No more. At the push of a button, I can pull up restaurants. From there I have a choice to search by ethnicity or an exact name. Say for example if I want a Mexican restaurant, it will pull up all Mexican restaurants in town and tell me how far they are from me. From there, I just click on one and it will calculate my directions to that establishment. Or, if perhaps I only want Chipotle's, I can type in their name and the GPS will tell me where all of Chipotle's are, and I can chose the one I want to head to. It's freakin' amazing! I can find post offices, government buildings, shopping centers, local attractions and hospitals, just to name a few.

As far as I can tell, it's also as idiot proof as it can be. Like yesterday for example. I had set a course to go home. In the middle of the trip, brother Michael called. I wanted to show him my new toy, and told him I'd meet him at his work. I have enough trouble finding his shop when I'm coming from home! Now I'm coming from a whole new direction! It was nothing to change destinations on my GPS, but the one requirement was that I had to pull over to do it. You can only push so many buttons while you're driving. In order to change something like that, you actually have to stop. Great safety feature.

Cool gadget. Cool toy. Best money I've spent in a long time. This thing is so cool, Ron had to go out and get one too! So, thank you to our new shopping friend at Best Buy. I can now see why he was so excited about it. This really is going to change a part of my life. For the better!