I love a story with a happy ending. I liked the part where you yelled at the car guy, too.
Cheers, frank On 13 April, 2014 4:12:38 PM EDT, 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. “Analysis kills spontaneity.” -- Henri-Frederic Amiel -- 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.
