Maryland and Lost Cell Phone
August 2, 2009
You know the drill. You wake in the morning and look for your cell phone. Usually, it is plugged into the charger, but this morning it is nowhere to be found. OK, don’t panic; let reason prevail. Where did I last use it? After a while, we remember that Ellen called my phone yesterday afternoon before we went to the pool party. So, my cell phone and my clip-on holster could be somewhere around the pool. We checked with the pool manager and no phones had been found.
OK, OK, still no need to panic. My 5-year-old granddaughter, Kira and I went for a bike ride through the woods on a popular cross-country biking trail the next morning; maybe I lost the phone as we were lifting our bikes over the logs across the trail or as we pushed them through the mud puddles. (That little girl was a real trooper.) The trail snakes through the woods, down along Lake Loch Raven in a large loop back to my daughter Ellen’s home in Towson, MD. So, somewhere on that 3-mile trail my phone might by lying in a pool of water, under a bush or (hopefully) in full view on the dirt trail.
But, not really knowing where to start looking for the phone, we (14 members of my family) decide to postpone the search till we return from a planned trip to Harper’s Ferry. “Maybe some other biker will find the phone on the trail,” we thought. Sometime in the afternoon, Pat decided to check her cell phone for messages. “Someone found your phone!” she announced.
The message on the phone was from a woman who explained that she had found my phone about half-way along the Loch Raven trail and she had placed it on a tree. Well, that was good news indeed. Pat had used the time-tested method for finding cell phones. She called my number to see if we could hear my phone ring – just in case it was in the house someplace. Apparently, the lady heard my phone ring as she was biking along the trail. But, by the time she answered, the call had been transferred. So, she returned the call to Pat’s phone and left a message. However, her description of the phone’s location left much to be desired. “About half-way” on a 3-mile trail was far from an exacting description. And, she did not leave her name or phone number so we could not phone her for more details.
My son-in-law, Tony suggested that we should return from Harper’s Ferry and put on a search for the phone that evening because rain was expected overnight. However, by the time we returned to Towson, darkness had fallen and none of us wished to walk that trail to search for a phone with a flashlight. So, Pat and I decided that at first light in the morning, we would bike the trail and try to find the phone on the tree where the lady had placed it. A light rain fell during the night, but we hoped it was not enough to drown a cell phone. We again biked that slippery, root-covered trail and stopped and searched more carefully at locations where my granddaughter and I had dismounted to walk our bikes over trees, pools, rocks or steep climbs. After completing the loop, the cell phone was still missing!
We decided that a little coffee and breakfast might allow us to recover our energy enough to try again later. In the meantime, our sons, Jimmy and Brian and our daughter, Ellen decided to search for the phone. A short time after they left on their bikes, a very heavy downpour of rain started. Lighting and thunder filled the air. We knew that our kids were being soaked – but probably enjoying riding through the deep trail pools and down the slippery trail anyway.
After a while, they returned soaked to the skin and carrying some extra weight of mud on their legs, etc. “No phone!” they announced. “The trail was a river of water.” As they biked the trail, they asked other bikers if they had seen a cell phone. They had not. But one person announced that they had found a water bottle. It turned out to be Tony’s prized water bottle that had been lost a week or so ago. So, the trip was not a complete loss.
Jimmy and Brian decided that as long as they were already wet, they should go for a run in the rain. So they ran off down the hill and disappeared.
Now I think it is likely that the heavy rain destroyed my phone. However, there is some hope that another biker found my phone after the lady placed it on a tree and are now in the process of trying to find it’s owner. By now, my phone will likely have a dead battery. So, it may be necessary for the biker to recharge it before they can determine ownership. I will also post a sign with our phone number at the trail entrance – just in case.
I am prepared for the eventuality that my phone will never again be seen by me. But sometimes, strange things happen. Right?
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