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leaving work earlier this afternoon and manage to bungle wrapping the bungee cords of my tail bag under the seat and onto my frame. four miles later, realize tail bag is no longer on my tail. realize that my glasses are in my bag. along with my iphone and iPad. scream loudly into helmet. turn around at next light and head back towards work, scanning opposite lane of travel for my bag. no luck. do this again before heading back to work location to check with security to see if anyone has turned the bag in, praying i dropped it as i left the lot. no such luck. run into wife at work (work together), sheepishly explain mistake and the need to borrow her iphone in order to track the GPS on mine. wonderful woman, she gives up her phone with a mere rolling of the eyes (i'm sure to hear more of it when she gets home this evening). the Find My iPhone app locks onto my missing iphone. further away from my route of travel when i realized i dropped the bag. fear gripping as i realize the money spent on those devices and the information on them. i'm able to remotely lock the iphone, but not the pad. i head to the reported location. by the time i get there, the location has moved, back towards the center of town. assuming the worse, i fear someone is playing with me. i'm able to send a message to the screen of my phone, requesting whomever is holding it to return the bag to my place of work, and then i take off back towards town. stopping periodically to check the phone's location, i track it heading back towards town as well. eureka! it worked! however my next location check shows it in or near what i know to be a local gravel quarry. more screaming into helmet and i continue towards town thinking about how to handle a confrontation with someone over my bag. next location check, and my phone is heading back out of town, but is near by. hot pursuit! i follow the tracking all the way back to the first location the app had given me, giving me a sinking thought that the accuracy of this app is questionable. this is nearly 60 minutes of chasing now. i pull into a lot, check the location and it's at an intersection a mere 200 feet from me. the only activity is a construction crew working the intersection and a few houses. i wander down the street in front of the houses and check the location, fearing that i was going to have to start knocking on doors. the tracking app shows my phone on the opposite side of the intersection now. not knowing how it could work out this way, i approach the flagman on the crew and ask them if they'd found a bag earlier in the afternoon. he gives me a toothless grin, and yells, "yeah, it's in the truck!" i climb the sidestep of the dump truck to find the driver and my bag. he had come upon it behind me, did not drive over top of it, picked it up and intended to return it to my work after his shift. i must have been following him on his run to lunch/the quarry which had me back and forth nearly 3 times.
lessons learned:
1 - if you use an iphone or iPad, set the security code to unlock it.
2 - the Find My iPhone app is a free download to your device or desktop. set it up and make sure it works. trust its accuracy.
3 - be extra nice to the construction crews when you cruise through work zones
4 - F the tail bag, wear a backpack