Garmin 2010 Annual Report Download - page 9

A heartfelt thanks
I am sure you must hear feedback on your product
each and every day. But I wanted to share with your
company a story about how our Garmin helped save
my husband’s life. Gary and I drove from Sioux Falls, SD
to Minneapolis, MN for our 23rd wedding anniversary.
Our plans for that Saturday were to have lunch at a
favorite sandwich place outside of Minneapolis, then
to find our way to Stillwater, MN to visit a few wineries.
Sunday we had plans to go to the Minnesota Twins
baseball game. However, things did not go just
as planned. As we hit the metropolitan area and
went to our little sandwich shop, we no more than
ordered our lunch, when Gary, age 48, indicated he
just was not feeling well. We thought about heading
to the hotel to rest, when he handed me the car
keys and said he thought he needed to go to a
hospital. Although I have had limited driving time
in the metro area, I had NO idea where to find
a hospital. I grabbed our Garmin, found the
“hospital” button, and was provided with a list of
hospitals in the metro area. As Gary was suffering
the pains of a heart attack, I maneuvered my way
into Minneapolis to the hospital only by the grace of
God and the instructions from our Garmin. Without
our Garmin and this wonderful feature, I really do
not know what I would have done. To make a long
story short, we hit the metro area shortly before
1:00 and Gary was in surgery shortly after 2:00.
The Garmin provided me the shortest route to the
number one heart hospital in MN. We have many
things to be thankful for, and we wanted to thank
your company for such a wonderful product.
Ann
Going with Garmin
by air, land and sea
The following story came from a certified financial
planner and pilot who wanted to share the many ways
Garmin GPS products have enhanced his mobility.
My first introduction to a Garmin GPS almost didn’t
happen. This was 1999 or early 2000 and one of my
pilot buddies convinced me to attend a pilot training
event. My name was drawn for a Garmin GPSMAP 196
unit. Having never used a GPS for automotive
navigation, I was surprised at how useful it was. In
late 2000, I purchased a 40-foot offshore racing boat.
For any who have been on Lake of the Ozarks,
the word “maze” will be familiar. I purchased a
GPSMAP 176 unit and the map overlay for the
Lake of the Ozarks. What a difference that made!
Now it was time to buy my first airplane. In
mid-2001, I joined four other pilots in purchasing
a 1968 Piper Cherokee 180 and upgrading the
avionics. One insisted we put in a Garmin GNS 430.
He sold aviation insurance and said the people
he insured universally preferred the Garmin unit.
I quickly grew to love and appreciate the intuitive
data entry and the clear map data on the 430. A
few years later, we moved up to a 1967 Piper Aztec
and installed a Garmin GNS 530 and a GTX-327
transponder. The next aircraft purchase was a
1973 Cessna 340 Ram IV with a Garmin 530 and
GTX-330 transponder with traffic information. We
wanted the NEXRAD radar, so it was another trip to
the Garmin store and we purchased a GPSMAP 396
with XM weather and XM satellite radio. My wife,
Lisa, was impressed! How I ever flew IFR (and
considered it safe) before having real-time weather
information in the cockpit, I will never know.
2008 proved to be a major transition in my
professional life. I had been elected to the national
board of directors of the Financial Planning Association
at the end of 2005. In late 2007, I was elected
President-Elect and would serve an additional three-
year term on the executive committee. I knew this
would mean more travel, so I purchased a Garmin
nüvi 760. For the next three years, whenever I was
packing for a business trip, the 760 went into the
backpack.
In April 2010, we sold the Cessna 340 and moved
on to the next stage of my Garmin experience —
leasing a 2009 Cessna Corvalis 350 with the full
Garmin G1000 avionics package and the GFC 700
autopilot. 2010 also saw my GPS ownership envelope
increase in one more area when I purchased the
zmo 665 with NEXRAD weather and XM satellite
radio. Being able to ride down the road with real-time
weather information on the GPS and AC/DC pumping
tunes through the XM radio into your headset is
really living.
Recently, I wrote a check for 1/3 ownership of
a 1966 Beechcraft V35 Bonanza with a Garmin
GNS 530 and GPSMAP 496. So the next stage of
my aircraft ownership experience is about to take
flight. Looking back over the past 10 years, it’s
hard to believe how much GPS technology has
advanced and in how many ways it has intersected
my life. During the past several years, I have been
doing more outdoor running and had heard about
Garmin’s GPS sport watches. I must have done
something right because Santa Claus showed up
with one in my Christmas stocking this year!
Rich S.
Forerunner reveals
runner’s hidden
heart condition
I just wanted to write a short note of thanks to the
people at Garmin. I’ve been an active runner for
many years, but it wasn’t until this past Christmas
that I got a Forerunner 405CX. After running with
the watch for four or five runs, I thought I was
getting bad readings from the heart rate monitor.
There were periodic spikes nearing 260 bpm, which
I thought was impossible. I was about to call support,
but I went out for one more run. As chance would
have it, I stopped running long enough to cross
a busy street and noticed a slight fluttering in my
chest. When I looked at my watch, it showed a
reading of 265 bpm that lasted about 10 seconds.
That night, I took myself to the ER, but they didn’t
find anything wrong. The next week I went to a
cardiologist who had me run with a halter monitor,
which confirmed the readings I got from my
Forerunner. A few tests and an invasive surgery
later, I was confirmed to have something called
Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (WPW). It’s a
rather rare form of supraventricular tachycardia
(SVT) that only shows up under intense exercise.
While the severe beating of the heart caused me
no noticeable ill effects, it put me at very high risk
of stroke or sudden death while running. As of this
writing, I have had an ablation procedure to remove
the two ancillary electrical paths that caused my
arrhythmia. On Tuesday, I passed a cardiac stress test
with flying colors and next week, I expect the doctor
to give his approval for me to continue running again.
Long story short, the Forerunner saved my life.
J.M.
Caught our limit
and set a tournament
record
I am sending you this as a major thank you and
would like you to pass this along to all the wonderful
people who make things like this happen. On
January 15, my partner and I fished the proclaimed
oldest buddy bass tournament series in America
which is called the Winter Bass-O-Thon. It is in its
43rd year and is held on Bull Shoals and Norfork
Lakes in Missouri and Arkansas. It turned out to be
a day we will never forget. We took off at 7:30 am,
and by 9:30 we had caught a record weight of
29.19 lbs in a five-fish limit. This is the largest
five-fish string ever weighed in the tournament
series or any other local tournament series to date on
Norfolk and Bull Shoals that anyone can find record
of. Last year I purchased a Garmin GPSMAP 441s
with sounder. It has been a wonderful asset to my
fishing. The morning of the tournament, I went to
one of my favorite stick bait spots, which is located
on channel swing with brush piles on it. As I was
viewing the details on my sounder display, it clearly
showed a massive bunch of shad on the channel
swing with the other structure with larger fish
streaking through them and feeding. I actually
watched one fish come up from about 20 some
feet and eat my bait. I was able to stay on the
school with amazing ease with these electronics
and the rest was history. I could not be happier with
the Garmin product. Thanks from a super happy
customer and fisherman.
Waco J.
Dogs gain freedom,
owners gain peace
of mind
Just wanted to write to say how pleased we are
with the quality of the Astro collars. We have been
using them for about a year. Our dogs wear them
many hours a day, through fields, woods, brush,
swamps and rivers, and this last week we even
took them to the coast of Maine. Saltwater usually
destroys everything, but the Astro collars seem
completely unscathed. Here is a picture of our two
pups wearing their Astro collars standing on the
shore, on the seaweedy rocks, having been in and
out of the water many times in the last few days!
We just leave the tracker collars on them all day. The
batteries easily last that long and we charge them
at night. The dogs mostly hang out very close to us,
but being hunting dogs, they also like to chase after
the occasional bird or squirrel. It’s a great peace of
mind for us to be able to see them on the handset,
and know where they are, so we don’t feel the need
to call them back every time they are out of sight in
the woods for a few minutes. They enjoy the extra
freedom! Thanks for a very well-built product.
Sue and Doug, caretakers
of Jose and Tessa
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