Lost Luggage - Tell the truth

[DestinationUnknown]

Gatorade bottle has been my only loss thus far.

[go4mini]

Totaled my '94 RSL, and fractured my hip. So I'm on crutches,and I locate a sweet '07 GS in Wisconsin. Make the deal, and me and a buddy are going to drive out in the pickup to get the bike. I had been throwing the crutches in the back of the pickup. We stop at a rest stop on the Ohio turnpike, and I go to get my crutches out, and they are gone! I didn't leave them anywhere, they were just gone. Try to find a set of crutches anywhere. We tried truck stops, malls, etc. We got to Wisconsin, and the guy's wife had a set that I offered to buy. She gave them to me, no charge.

[uh72pilot]

Originally Posted by duck

It's little long but this is from a 2004 ride report:

After riding along the Bay of Fundy on the highway towards Nova Scotia, I stopped at about six to change into my warmer jacket as I was getting a bit chilly. Unbeknownst to me at the time, when changing jackets, I had placed my wallet on the back of my bike and left it there. As I rode off down the highway, it flew off of my bike and it contents were strewn all over the highway.

Ignorant of the fact that I'd just thrown away my wallet, I took a nice little remote detour down to the Bay of Fundy through Dipper Harbour (Canadian spelling) and Chance Harbour. It was getting late and time to find a campground but I had no Canadian cash so I decided to head into St. John to find an ATM. As I pulled up to the ATM and reached for my now missing wallet, it dawned on me just what I had done. Since I knew exactly where I'd changed jackets, I made a somewhat panicked ride back down the highway and spent the next hour or so combing the sides of the highway for any signs of my wallet. When darkness hit, I was forced to abandon my search. I went to the nearby campground at New River where the two gentlemen there empathized with my story and let me set up camp there despite my lack of funds.

When I'd left Palm Springs, my father had asked me to put a card in my wallet with his number in case of emergency so my first phone call was to him on the remote chance that someone had actually found my wallet. He wasn't home so I then called my brother to explain my nasty little dilemma. Amazingly, by the time I reached my brother, someone had already found the contents of my wallet and called the number on the card my dad had given me.

It turns out that a short while after my wallet had been strewn over the highway, a local truck driver had seen some 20's flying around on the highway and stopped. Since my wallet is just a card holder with a magnetic money clip, everything was strewn about. The truck driver scoured the area around where he'd seen the money and was able to recover everything from my wallet, including all of my money. The only exception is that he was not able to find my drivers license. Not only did he find virtually everything in my wallet but when he got home, his wife had had the incredible foresight to call my credit card companies to let them know that my wallet had been found so that I wouldn't inadvertently cancel my credit cards and leave myself with non-working credit cards. Meanwhile, the nice guys at the guard shack had offered me a sandwich and some cookies

When I called them at around 10:30 local time, the people who'd found my wallet were kind enough to offer to make the 25 minute drive to actually deliver my wallet to me at the campground - which they promptly did. Of course, they refused to accept any reward from me and were actually worried that they might not have found all of my money. I thanked them profusely before returning to my campsite from the campground office. The most ironic part of it all is their last name: NICE. Yes, I'm serious, that was really their last name: Chris & Carol Nice.

So freakin' awesome! I wish there were more stories like this... unfortunately the usual outcome is quite a bit different. Every once in awhile something cool happens and can restore a tiny bit of hope to the human race. Those people are out there... just not all that easy to come by.

[ZaethDekar]

I've lost my ID 3 times, a credit card, and a house key for a house I was watching. Luckily I had just made a spare key and so I could still get in. Downside is I had to make a second spare as they wanted an extra one to give me.

I have left stuff at home before heading out for a long day of riding (~12 hours), but usually its a snack or drink that I forgot to pack so not a big deal breaker.

[siyeh]

Lost a Widder heated vest off my passenger seat whilst inside a gas station eating a green hot dog in East Troy, Wisconsin.

the thief left the bungy cord tho

arggggggg

[MitchG]

Took my mirrors off on the side of the road to put on Hippo-hands. If you find some Beemer mirrors on the Alcan, they're mine.

[TheOtherBart]

For a couple of years in college my Suzuki GS550 was my only transportation. At one point I bought one of those plastic catch tanks to change my oil. Did the change, put all the plugs in, strapped the catch tank onto my luggage rack and headed to AutoZone to dump the used oil. Got there and hopped off to find that the catch tank cap had vibrated off at some point and all of my used oil had dribbled out on the road along the way. From that point on I did my oil changes in the AutoZone parking lot.

[Tor]

Lost my left bag off the ST1300 on 101 a little south of Digby, NS in 2009. Wife behind me on her ST13, and all of a sudden I hear on the Autocom: "The BAAAAGGGGGGG!!!!". I looked in the left mirror, and the bag was still turning around and around on the lid side. It finally stopped, we made a u-turn ( no traffic at all), parked on the side and picked it up. Had done some troubleshooting on the Autocom under the seat while in Digby. I rode off with the latch still up.

[wr37]

I have scattered lots of stuff around the country side riding bikes, but the best story is from snowmobiling. I was on my way home one night when I came across a dude messing with his track. Come to find out he had a duffel bag full of beer that got sacked up in the track and locked it solid. It took us 45 minutes to get things freed up. I don't drink when I sled, but I sure smelled like it when I got home. No good deed goes unpunished.

[farmerstu]

in 1975 i was working at a sugar beet plant in southern mn. it was located out in the country by itself. i was riding a honda 750 in a amen hardtail frame. i would hit the double set of railroad tracks before the plant entrance fast enough to jump them by a couple inches . thus avoiding the back breaking hit of driving over the tracks. one day i went over the tracks. came down as per normal and saw my lunch bucket go cartwheeling into the ditch. i almost left it but stopped and picked it up. glass thermos inside was intact! week later i was driving my ford bronco to work. lunch bucket fell off the trans hump to the floor. thermos shattered into a million pieces.

[ValpoFz]

I lost be left side Jesse bag once at 60mph. I felt something odd looked n my mirror just in time to see it go spinning down the road doing lazy circles.

I had a set of Oakley blow out of my tank bag on the NJ turn pike, I forgot to zip it closed.

[SkiFastBadly]

I have twice saddled up and ridden away forgetting that my sunglasses were on the back of the seat...temporarily.

[Ronin ADV]

I lost some feathers from a new down bag out in the sticks of southern Utah when my duffle bag slipped down over the exhaust pipe on my WR and did this:



The smell from my burning gear finally clued me in.

[MTKNZ]

Originally Posted by Ronin ADV

The smell from my burning gear finally clued me in.

Yeah, that's never good....
I remember a friend of mine riding along blissfully unaware until someone came up next to him waving and pointing at the back of his bike. Turned out his bag was burning on the pipe, smoking away.... not a care in the world.

[rapidoxidationman]

Was riding in western NC for my niece's wedding. Heading back to an ADVfriend's house in Raleigh on her bike and was about 15 miles out from the starting line when I noticed one of the hard cases had fallen open (answering the question of wtf that guy was pointing at me for as I was riding down the road). Turned around and backtracked, and actually found the important stuff (Deal's Gap stickers) but somebody had already picked up my Marmot rain jacket and my 'Stich heated vest.

Oops.