Something remarkable happened today. While scouting Raccoon Creek state park for locations on where to place checkpoints for the Raccoongaine 2013 event, noticed on the ground what seemed like a flier or paper trash. Got closer, and then recognized it as a control card issued for the Raccoongaine that happened last march. Five squares are punched: 3, 4, 31, 32, 40. Team Minoxidil.
A few years ago, I thought I lost an SI-6 at a rogaine. Then I found it a week later in the middle of the parking lot at work (a few hundred miles away). It had been there all week, and been run over a few times, but it still works!
Setting up NAOC 2006 I took my brand new
Thumb compass out of its packaging and started to sort out the maps in the parking lot prior to vetting some ribbons. Got horribly lost while vetting because I didn't have my new compass. Huh? Where did i put it? Couldn't find it anywhere all week either. Found it a week later crushed into 100 pieces in the NAOC 2006 parking lot. Never used.
Linda lost her compass at one of the 1000 Days events until a year later when Mikell Platt found it and thought he had another compass...then he found that Linda scratches her name in the baseplate.
One of our orienteers found an SI-6 card in leaf litter in a remote bush area where it had been lost 12 months earlier by a visiting British orienteer. We knew it was a Brit because of the Union Jack print on it. We couldn't retrospectively give him credit for the recorded controls, but I returned his card.
If I switch to map view on that, the screen is completely blank. But I zoomed in on satellite view and I think I spotted the compass.
(There was a related thread on the hang gliding equivalent of Attackpoint where a guy lost either his variometer or his GPS on an outlanding (might have even dropped it before he landed, I don't remember). Somebody actually went out and looked for it, but didn't find it.)
I dropped my cell phone in the parking field at a Ratlum Mountain O meet a year or two ago, and somebody (Janet?) found it either six months or a year later. Charlie said he had mowed the field a couple of times in the meantime. I tried a fresh battery in it, and it mostly still worked.
if anyone's out looking, there's a (new) yellow SI stick here. and the retaining ring from a Moscow compass here, and another retaining ring here. It's been a rough season. Word to the wise, don't drop a yellow stick during fall in New England.