Garmina the giraffe – a GPS doodle by Stephen Lund – turned one on February 21, 2016. Happy birthday, Garmina!

It was February 21, 2015 – one year ago yesterday – that I set out early on a Saturday morning to begin a GPS doodle that would profoundly change the course of all the days that followed.

A few days later I posted my GPS-doodled giraffe on Reddit.com, and within a few hours she was circling the globe via Facebook and Twitter. Traffic at this blog, which I’d launched just 10 days earlier, jumped from 59 page views one day to nearly 12,000 the next. It was wholly unexpected and utterly exhilarating.

The year between then and now has been a wild ride indeed. Beyond completing 80+ GPS doodles that together tallied more than 5,000 kilometres (3,100+ miles), I was invited to talk at TEDxVictoria, got social media attention from Strava and Garmin, appeared on television locally (CHEK News and CTV News) and internationally (CBS Evening News), did a number of radio interviews (including this one with Robyn Burns live on CBC’s All Points West), got featured and mentioned in oodles of cycling publications and websites (including Bicycling Magazine, Velo News, Canadian Cycling Magazine and Pedal), and garnered an astonishing amount of press on blogs and news channels worldwide (including such biggies as Bored Panda and The Chive).

Phew!

To celebrate her birthday, I’ve created a Garmina the GPS Giraffe art print available for purchase at Society6.com. Please take a peek.

Or visit some of Garmina’s long-necked friends at Society6…