Dear Garmin Forerunner 405,
I loved you once. Past tense. When Husband purchased you as my BQ present I was skeptical – my simple but trusty Timex watch and paceband led me to a success and why mess with success? A month into the relationship and I was smitten. Enamoured. Obsessed. I named you Miles. I couldn’t run without you. Then down came the rain and you nearly electrocuted me. I watched the pools of water swish around your allegedly water-resistant clock face and knew you would never be the same. You went down in a blaze of glory.
I laid you to rest and welcomed Miles the Second. You denied my affections from day one. With an average time to satellite lock around 17 minutes and a completely unresponsive bezel it was a shaky start to the defective relationship. When you refused to read my heart rate the camel’s back broke and I put you back in the box to send you packing. Love can be cruel.
Hello Miles the Third. I thought I had found The One. The Prince among the frogs. You dutifully recorded my runs, set my pace, and kept my heart rate in check. Then one day you had enough and gave up mid run. No amount of button pushing, coaxing, pleading, begging, or threatening could get you to do anything but stare at me with your mocking blank face. Your 98% charged self refused to even give me the time of day, literally. After charging your battery would say 0%, yet you still functioned, but at 60% power you won’t stay on for more than a few taunting seconds. I do not understand your mysterious math. A Master Reset briefly awoke you from your coma for one last hurrah before you slipped back into unconsciousness. I grow weary when you blackout during my 800s on the track or leave me an unknown number of kilometres from home on my long runs. I can no longer count on you when I need you most. And make no mistake, I NEED you. I surprise myself by how anxious I feel when you choose not to function. You have stolen my Zen.
And Garmin, it’s you, not me. My electronics last so long I’m an out-dated technodinosaur, reluctant to replace my equipment before death beyond repair. As my gadgets tend to live forever I own little produced before the new millennium. I really can party like it’s 1999. My laptop weighs 140 pounds and is ten years old, but I’m typing to you from its antique keys. My desktop is the much older sibling to my laptop. My PDA is a Sony Clie circa 2000. It isn’t even in colour. I’m like those people in the late 1970s watching technicolour shows on a black & white rabbit-eared TV. I still use a first generation iPod Mini and those things have been extinct since 2004. And I only own the mini because Husband thought my 1999 DiscMan too cumbersome for running (or too embarrassing to be seen with, one or the other), which he also gave me upon deciding that my WalkMan was ready to retire. Both, by the way, still work. “My” (read: Husband’s ancient hand me down) cell phone rivals that of Zach Morris. Okay, it’s not that bad. Brandon Walsh. Garmin, you are the first of my gadgets to have failed me so miserably. It’s such a cliche, loving the one who won’t love you back.
So what is a heartbroken and not-at-all Zen girl to do? This is hard to say, but I think I need to upgrade you to a less glitchy Miles. But who can I rely on in the long run, a Miles 405CX or 310XT? [That was not a rhetorical question]. This upgrade plan, of course, is contingent upon the agreeableness of the store of purchase, because I’m certainly not dropping another giant wad of cash on my new Miles.
Signed,
Looking for a new love
Title Reference: The Buggles – Video Killed the Radio Star. From the Album The Age of Plastic. 1979.
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