Brilliant story and a great outcome. Chris On 13 April 2014 21:12, Bob W-PDML <p...@web-options.com> wrote: > In three weeks I'm cycling the Sarsen Trail > <http://www.wiltshirewildlife.org/sarsen-trail/bike_it> with a friend. I > don't normally cycle off-road, and my bike is a lightweight tourer, so I > thought I'd better try it out and perhaps borrow an off-road one if I didn't > think my audax would stand up to it. > > So today I took off the mudguards and rack, fitted some cyclocross knobbly > tyres and headed up to Oxleas Wood, some ancient woodland about 5 miles from > where I live. > > I put my wallet, iPhone, camera, glasses, bike lock and a book in a nylon > stuffsac, which I then put into a seat bag. My plan had been to reward myself > afterwards with a nice cup of tea and a good read in the wonderfully > badly-kept-secret cafe they have up there, with magnificent views east - I > believe it's the highest point in London. > > It was a dark and stormy night. The woods were dark and deep. No. It was a > beautiful spring day. My bike looked really cool, the woods were lush and > green. The forest floor was a cliche of bluebells, so I kept stopping to take > pictures. It was a bit of a drag fishing the camera out of the seatbag each > time, so I decided to strap it, in its CCS case, to my belt, and went off > charging around again. > > Half an hour later, I realise I didn't close the seat bag. My favourite > wallet, my credit cards, driving licence, Oyster card, £75- cash, iPhone, > glasses, bike lock (£100!) and Marivaux are gone. > > Dilemma. Rush home and cancel everything, or try to find it. I spent 3 > fruitless hours randomly searching the Ice Age undergrowth, like some sort of > Hansel & Gretel, lost in there. Trees and leaves and sodding bluebells all > look the same after a while but you soon get to know all the empty beer cans, > bits of bog roll and pre-loved condoms in the whole fucking forest when > you're stressed out of your mind. > > So I gave up and came home. On the way of course some fuckwit in a car > decided he was the only fuckwit who should be allowed on the road and we > ended up in a shouting match which finished in comedy when he said "you > wouldn't say that if I wasn't in this car", to which I wittily reparteed "get > out of the fucking car then", and he drove off. Marivaux could have learned > some things from me. > > I cancelled my cards, and was looking on the iPad for a way to disable the > iPhone when I found this Apple thing called, er, Find my iPhone. Hmm. Wonder > what that does. So I tried it and it showed that it was still in the woods, > and let me set it to lost, so hopefully it wouldn't let anyone else play with > it and find all my dark secret things. I was resigned to losing the cash. > > Now, I hope someone from Apple gets to read this, because it's a great app, > but it would be even greater if it told you the coordinates of the centre of > the circle where your iPhone is, and the radius of the circle. > > So, I opened my GPS programme, which is called ExpertGPS and is pretty good > <http://www.expertgps.com>, and by squinting a bit and finding a couple of > reference points on the maps, made a stab at a waypoint for the lost phone, > as well a waypoint for a reference point on the ground which marked out a > line to follow. I then loaded the waypoints onto my GPS, and cycled back to > the woods. > > It took another hour of searching, but this time methodically, and I found it. > > It felt like a miracle. I made a waypoint on the GPS where I found the stuff, > and when I got home again compared the actual position with the one I'd > crudely made based on the Find my iPhone result. They were only 17 metres > apart, which I think is not bad under the circumstances. > > So at the moment I love Apple. > > I hate Dell though, because the screen on my laptop seems to have failed. > Guess I'll have to replace it with a Mac. > > Oh, and the bike performed superbly. > > B > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions.
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