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Give A, Give A, Give A Garmin!
by Dave
Monday, December 03, 2007
 Most times, the simplest things are best. At other times, there's no substitute for good old-fashioned technology. So it is with the Garmin nuvi 200 Portable Automotive GPS System with United States Maps, an indispensable part of your tournament fastpitch softball kit!
If you are new to travel softball or struggled through the past year or two shuffling directions at 6:00 AM while trying to get to the fields on time; if you have found yourself with two hours to kill after one game before warm-ups for the next and can only locate a WaWa or 7-11 at which to satisfy your hunger; if you have found yourself cursing while trying to locate the medical center so you can have your daughter's eye looked at after she took a line drive to the face, it's time to consider buying yourself a navigation device!
Technology can be intimidating. When cassette tapes came out, I was a little upset because most of my music was on 8-track. I went so far as to purchase a used car once because it had an internal 8-track player. Then most of my tapes ripped inside the reader when the heads got dirty and I had no idea how to clean them. My next car had a cassette player and I never looked back ... until CDs came out.
I remember how I held out and refused to purchase a VCR for years until I finally felt I "needed" one. I bought one for double what they would sell for in just a couple years but was satisfied with the knowledge that now I could rent and watch all those movies I missed while I worked my way through college with minimal free time. I purchased my first movie, "Apocalypse Now," because I was convinced I would always treasure it, for the tidy sum of $80. Now that movie can be rented for two bucks and I haven't watched it in probably two decades. I still have the tape though we haven't owned anything that plays tapes in quite some time.
I've been burned by technology buys before. I recall the very beginnings of the PC craze during which I read how ordinary people would have no use for the things other than to store recipes or figure the family finances. I was wary of buying a computer but, again, decided I simply must have one of those gadgets regardless of any uses (or lack thereof) I might be able to think up for it. I received something in the mail from American Express and proceeded to buy the latest technology for just $20 a month until I repaid the $1,000 revolving credit line plus interest. I was so proud of my new Tandy machine although I had no clue how to use it. I scrunged (erased by magnet) my first program disks which was problematic because the thing had no internal software since it actually had no hard drive. Everything ran on the kind of floppy disks which actually flopped - the big kind before the small kind before CDs before DVDs. So there I was with a $1,000 machine which was incapable of doing anything because I had erased its software. I was really frustrated and thereafter suspicious of technology purchases even after I got things straightened out and began merrily programming in basic on removable floppy disks.
Thankfully, my wife has no such "fear of technology" or technology purchases. She is more bold than I when it comes to buying HD TVs, DVD players, wireless internet access, etc. She encourages me to buy all sorts of things. Still, I am loathe to attempt to use the things. Instead, I let her futz with new purchases and then give me lessons on how to use them. I can't even operate the TV remote control without some sort of in-person lesson.
So, with this in mind, I accepted my fate when she insisted on giving me a Garmin nuvi navigation system. I figured she could use it and then, if there was ever a reason for me to try it, I would rely on her expertise. Unfortunately, the opportunity never presented because I was always driving when she was operating the thing. Then one day I dared to turn it on without her around. I think I was sitting at a practice with nothing else to do and looking for anything to distract me. I was amazed at how easy it was to use the nuvi. Everything is more or less logical and the graphics are excellent so there's no squinting because you left your reading glasses home. One hour, less for most people, of fooling around with it and you are as expert as you'll ever need to be.
The nuvi has infinite uses for the tournament parent or coach. You can easily find those difficult to locate fields or new indoor workout fascilities. You can actually find your way home after you made all those convoluted turns to get to the destination. You can mark locations you've already been to and throw out all those mapquest directions you once kept in a folder in your glove compartment. By the way, when is the last time anyone stored their driving gloves in the glove compartment? Does anyone actually own driving gloves? Did anyone? Why doesn't some bright automobile manufacturer change the confuguration of the blasted thing to fit something else like papers?
One of the nicest features of the nuvi is its "voice." I don;t have much experience using other navigation devices but what I most love about the thing is I don't have to constantly read like I do when I use mapquest directions. The nuvi tells me to turn right in .4 miles. Then, while I'm sitting at a light, it reminds me turn right onto Despondent Street. If I want to look ahead before proceeding or get a sense of where I'm headed, I can look at the directions by touching a post on the device.
There are two things I feel I should warn you about when using the nuvi. First of all, the thing is not artificial intelligence. It, like all navigation devices, cannot really help you when there is a construction newly started that causes you to take an alternate route. I have found myself a little confused at times when a bridge or highway construction resulted in a street being closed. But, once you miss your turn and take the following one, the nuvi is pretty good at getting you back on course most of the time. The way in which it accomplishes that is the other thing I want to warn you about.
When you don't absolutely obey its directions, sometimes the nuvi seems to cop an attitude. I'm not delusional here. Several people have agreed with me when I suggested that the nuvi gets a little short with me when I miss turns. It has a snotty way of acknowledging that the error you just made has required it to "recalculate" how to get where you told it you were going. You can change the voice to several different options so if one voice is excessively short with you, you just change it. I tried the British woman's voice after both the American man and woman annoyed me. But that was almost as nasty so I switched to an Australian woman named Karen. She seems to be a little more forgiving.
The nuvi can not only help you find your way to the fields or back home, but also has a reasonably up-to-date listing of all the local establishments. I don't know what your experience has been but we play tournaments at several locations which seem to be out in the "boonies" with no business establishments nearby. You drive in off the highway, pass some county recycling center, go past a series of junkyards, farms, exclusive gated neighborhoods or some such and never see any place which might sell a decent sandwich or slice of pizza, let alone cup of coffee. You play the 8:00 AM game and notice that your next one is set for 1:00. Your darling daughter lets you know that even though she insisted on skipping breakfast because she wasn't hungry, she'll being needing sustenance any time "NOW." Ordinarily, you might wander the fields asking anyone who looks like a local if they know of anyplace nearby. You might find someone who got lost on the way in and noticed there was a WaWa 10 miles in that direction but she's not really sure how to tell you how to get there. Instead you pop open your nuvi and look for convenience stores, restaurants or whatever. You learn that not only is there a 7-11 within three miles in the direction you haven't yet been but there's another one 5 miles away as well, not to mention 3 of them 6 miles away, 4 more 5 miles beyond that. etc., etc.
Maybe you don't care for 7-11 coffee and prefer to keep going as long as it takes to locate a Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks. You can search the nuvi for specific establishments. Sometimes spelling can be a bit of a trick, particularly when you're not sure whether or not to use numbers or other non-alpha characters like when you're looking for a 7-11 or don't remember if Dunkin Donuts is hyphenated or not. But a little experience with the thing will clear that up pretty quickly.
The Garmin nuvi isn't just useful for getting someplace, finding your way home or locating food places once there. It can help you find doctors offices in the area or just see a map of where you are. It can help you locate gas stations / automobile repair shops to have somebody figure out why your car is making that noise or just to fill up before hitting the highway. Heck, it can provide you with coordinates if you need to call in an air strike and have the location you played your games wiped off the map so you don't ever have to think about how your team did at this tournament again.
There are so many uses for the nuvi that I don't know where to begin or end. So I guess I'll just end by saying, if you are a softball parent and just don't know what you or your spouse could possibly need for Christmas, after the Rocketech, Jennie Finch batting gloves, radar gun, pitching machine for the basement, cooler or cooking device which plugs into the car's power jack, portable recliner, etc., what you really need to round out your repertoire is a Garmin nuvi Labels: parenting
 
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