Lost... and found!

[+Eclectic Penguin]

I thought I'd share this - I'm sure others can relate.

 

With work being what it is at the moment and with BST only just kicking in, I'm currently only caching on weekends. So, on Sunday March 30th I visited Geoclec Mynydd Pen-bre (GC19C14), the last cache find of the day and although not an FTF, I was rather pleased to be FTF for another local cache by the same owner earlier on in the day.

 

I guess the joy of the FTF got to my head as I headed back home, hung my Geocoat on the hook and that was that for a week. Come Friday evening, when I'm getting ready for some cache action on Saturday, I was rather mystified by the fact that the GPS pocket was empty. Must be in the car - the Citroen Picasso (TB21701) is a peculiar vehicle, known for having loads of little nooks and crannies where things can be stored but also where they can go missing. The GPSr has already fallen into the battery compartment twice and been missing for days before I found it. (like I said - a peculiar car - the battery is under the passenger seat and has a gaping hole just big enough for a mobile phone or GPSr! next to it).

 

Come saturday - no sign of GPSr and having already arranged to meet with a friend (thankfully who also has a GPSr) off we went and found a healthy collection of caches in the South Wales area.

 

Sunday afternoon - took car apart (not literally but enough to establish that the GPSr wasn't there). Impromptu spring clean of house. No sign of GPSr. A growing feeling of dread was the fact the last time I actually remember using my beloved GPSr was at the cache itself and I also distinctly remember pocketing it for the walk home.

 

Now, most people it seems approach from the valley below to this cache and also with good reason - the way from Mountain Road is, although a straight line, pretty muddy and squelchy and also entails walking through a farm yard which boasts a rather loud and yappy little dog that follows you for quite a distance. I approached and came back via the upper route, enduring much squelching of feet and barking of micro dog, not to mention a stile that bears more resemblance to small a see-saw than a way of crossing a divide!

 

With a heavy heart and a "last ditch attempt" attitude, I decided to try to find the GPSr in the last place I could think of looking - the route to the cache as that's the only place I could really think it would be, that 1km long path full of puddles and places that threaten to remove your wellies at a moment's notice. I've been on other "last ditch" searches like this before for keys, wallet etc and never found anything - usually either never seeing the item again or finding it in the most obvious place I could have previously looked in but didn't.

 

So, as I was trudging down the path, looking down and up, occasionally trying to maintain my balance, I suddenly couldn't believe my eyes. There was what to all intents and purposes looked like the top half of the back end of an old Magellan Sportrak COLOR almost completely buried in water and mud!! Yey - I'd found it!

 

I yanked it out of the mud - pressed the power button and on it came! The only thing that it had lost was the charge in the batteries - even the track log showed over 10 hours of slight noise error zigging and zagging around the spot it had been dropped as it faithfully tried to report its position in relatively low signal coverage.

 

Now that's pretty rugged. Snow (2 inches on Sunday morning), ice, rain and heavy wind had plagued the area over the last 6 days and 23 hours since it had been dropped. Not only that - it seems that the only regular users of this path were local cattle of whose cloven hoof marks were many. Based on how deep it was in the mud I suspect it had had at least one close call...

 

Note to self. Change Geocoat pocket for GPSr - not a safe one to leave it in... and based on this, possibly an new outfit is required

 

Has anyone else have a horror story like this with a happy ending?

[+L8HNB]

Not as good as yours EP, but it made us puff a bit and we still laugh about it now!

 

Log from GCWXR7, Picnic:

 

Found @ 11.46. Had anticipated a few steps on this one, we counted 249 up and down each way, not quite so bad as Jersey No1 with 260 odd, but enough!

Lovely walk though, with great views. Cache site really worth the effort.

Easy find, we left a RSPB "Jay" pin badge and took a Guinness pin badge.

Then headed back up and down those steps, got back to the car - wheres the GPSr?

Oh, no its on the post at the cache!

598 steps later we were heading down to the cafe for a cuppa and a breather......

Thanks for a great cache, folks, Linda & Henry, L8HNB.

[+Team Sieni]

Good story. I have one of anti-hat-losing gismos, a length of string with a little crocodile clip on either end. The croc on one end is always attached to the GPSr lanyard and the other to a bit of my clothing. Not lost it yet.

Edited April 8, 2008 by Team Sieni

[+ClareLouise]

Not with my GPSr, but when out caching with my mum on boxing day, I lost my phone (which cost considerably more than my second hand GPSr!)...

 

We were hunting for a series of caches in Northcliffe Woods, Shipley- the first one we found, no problem, and so off we headed for the second site. We spent a good 20 minutes looking, scrabbling around in the bushes and not finding it, at which point I decide to re-read the logs, and look for my phone to log onto the wap site... and I can't find it! I look around, no luck... empty out my caching bag- no sign of it! Oh dear- mum, can you call my phone for me? No, mum left her phone at home.

 

So, my mum walks home (not all that far!) to get her phone, and I walk back to the first cache site, retracing our steps. Mum meets me 15/20 minutes later at the first site, and we start calling my phone... The phone is ringing, it isn't on silent, and no-one has turned it off, which means it probably hasn't been found by someone else. No sound from it at the cache site, so we walk back to the second site, continually re-calling my phone, and but still not being about to find it. We get to the second site, stilling calling away on my mum's phone. We stand really still, listening for any noise from my phone... and there, out of a bush comes my phone's unmistakable ringtone, and I leap into the bush to find it!

 

We then spent another 30 minutes looking for the cache, which we failed to find... and I then walked straight to 2 days later on my way back from picking up another cache with my dad!

[+Delta68]

Since starting caching we've lost a camera and (on a separate occasion) a bumbag containing mobile phone and a couple of geocoins we had picked up

 

A few weeks ago Mrs D left her walking boots on the side of the road after a long walk and we didn't realise until the following day. So, after a not insignificant detour we returned to where we were to find that someone had put the boots on a nearby wall and they were still there!

 

Perhaps the luckiest lost/found tale was when we were trying to do Kelly's Birthday Cache(GCVFNH) on Mr D's birthday.

We had stormed through the first nine stages but then couldn't find the tenth micro. We searched everywhere for ages and then gave up. We carried on back to the car to have our packed lunch and then decided to do a few other caches in the area. We parked closer to where the caches were and found them with no difficulty. One of them was only a few hundred yards or so from where the elusive tenth micro should have been so we decided to go and have another look. Still no sign of the micro but Mr D did find his brand new phone which must have fallen out of his pocket first time round and hadn't even noticed it was missing! If hadn't gone back and found it we'd have been totally baffled as to where it had gone

[+Delta68]

and just a found...

 

When we were out setting a recent series of caches, son found a mobile phone. The battery was flat but we managed to charge it up to get a home phone number from the address book. We returned the phone to its ever-so grateful owner and son received a £20 reward!

[+Eclectic Penguin]

I found a phone near a cache site last year - it had been there for a while and was quite wet, but did start up.

 

I took it to a nearby Tesco as it was on their network - I didn't hear a thing about it since.

[+Eclectic Penguin]

Just re-reading my post just now reminded me of an event that coincidentally happened on the very day I lost the GPSr - also while Geocaching, that's ominously similar to the other "losing" event of the day...

 

I was out with family visiting a cache (GCKM9Y) I've been to on several occasions before because it's been used as a destination for a TB. I was picking it up for the second time round and it also made way for some quality time spent with my nephew, niece, brother in law (also a geocacher) and one of the children's friends.

 

As part of the fun I'd brought along my PMR walkie talkie knowing that the kids had their own so I and the kids were busy chatting to each other and they were chatting amongst themselves using these too. Most of their chatter sounded meaningless to me, but hey, I can now sometimes hear my bones creak when I move and they can't ...

 

Anyway, after leaving the cache we went to investigate what appeared to be some agricultural fly tipping.

 

As we were about to leave this site one youngster suddenly remarked that there was an absence of a walkie... and sure enough, sending out the call sound wasn't heard elsewhere in the car nor in the surrounding area!

 

The last time I actually remember seeing said youngster with a walkie was at the cache site...

 

We drove to the parking spot and tried the call sound on the walkies where by now we had been convinced that was where it had been dropped... nothing.

 

sigh...

 

Then, about 100m along the track towards the wind swept quarry where the cache is hidden, success! The walkie was discovered using repeated presses of the call tone about 10m off the track where one kid had tried to hide from another as we were trekking back down from the cache the first time round!

 

I remember the child being chastised about being docked £20 of pocket money if the radio had actually been lost. At the time I thought that sounded a bit mean but having no children myself, I guess you have to teach them the value of things.

 

... I however nearly lost £350 worth of kit (which is what it cost back then if you include all the accessories) within an hour or so of this taking place and it took me 7 days to find it.

[+drsolly]

I found a set of car keys very near a cache once, looking like it had been dropped recently. I thuught how totally banjaxed I'd be if I lost my car keys while out caching - I'd have to phone ladysolly for a ride home, and I'd get earache for months about it. So I PAFfed until I got the phone numbers of the people who had most recently signed the log, but it wasn't them. Then I posted in the forum, and soon after that I got an email, and was able to post the keys to them.

[+Stokesy]

I got back to the car once and realised 6 geocoins in my pocket were missing, after searching through all my other pockets and my rucksack, I realised they must have dropped out.

 

They were spread out over a half mile PF all the way back to the cache site....I managed to find them all....which saved me contacting all the owners with grovelling apologies!

[binbag]

It's just an idea regarding lost keys, and I don't know if it has been posted before. Have a small geo-coin with a hole drilled through it, attached to you keys, that way hopefully if someone happens to find them and assuming they are not lost forever under a far flung bush, they could be trackable.

[+Delta68]

It's just an idea regarding lost keys, and I don't know if it has been posted before. Have a small geo-coin with a hole drilled through it, attached to you keys, that way hopefully if someone happens to find them and assuming they are not lost forever under a far flung bush, they could be trackable.

 

Some muppet would probably just log a 'discovered'!

[+Alibags]

you could buy your keys back on EBay!

[+milvus-milvus]

I managed to drop my GPS after completing our 499th cache last Sunday. Only discovered it was missing as we started out on the 500th...

 

Fortunately the 2 caches were less than a mile apart - and after a quick dash back, the GPS was found laying beside the path. Very lucky. I must have dropped it while skipping back with my daughter.

 

Did I mention that it was our 500th cache?