I am half way through my day ride today. Im 32 miles out. About 3-4 miles back I realized when I got my charger out of my pack about 25 miles before I forgot to zip up the pack. Yep, stuff fell out. Luckily my wallet and keys were still there.

Now I am resting up a bit in the middle of no where and I go to cook lunch and realize I left my pot set on the kitchen counter. Great.

Im going to take a nap in my hammock and figure out if I want cold soup or try to warm it over the stove in the can...

oh man i feel for you,my self i usually check everything twice before i set off .
here in ireland we are never to far away from houses farms towns villages.your part of the planet is way different BIG sorry for ya man best advice head back get your gear sorted if you want to finish your trip get a lift back to where you are now start a fresh from there.
does that make any sense.
anto.

The ride wasnt all that bad. Beautiful day. I ended with 62 miles on the odo. I ended up making a small fire and heated up the soup in the can on its side on a forked tree limb. Worked ok. I took the same trail I went out on to get home so I watched for what i lost but either i missed it or someone picked it up. Im betting the latter. They went home with a nice birthday present. Once i get my racks and pannier set Ill be in a lot better shape.

So what kinds of mishaps have some of you done/had happen on your trips? Im sure there are some more good ones you can share.

My wife and I were into the second day of our ride across the U.S. when we stopped in a town for a break. I was looking at my bike and realized that I forgot my frame pump. It wasn't near as bad as the OP's predicament, because we had stopped in front of a bike shop

On a tour last summer I lost my wedding ring. My ring was always a little loose, but losing 5 more pounds on the tour made the ring loose enough to come off when I removed my gloves. I did not realize that it was missing until we stopped for the day. We think I lost it at the small rest area about 30 hilly miles back where we ate lunch.

On a tour a few years ago my wife and I were about 3 miles out of the town we had stopped at for lunch when she realized she had left her bar bag containing all her valuables (wallet,camera, passport, etc) sitting on a utility box, where we had parked our bikes. It was downhill back into town; and I turned and raced back, even passing a car on the way. As I approached the outskirts of town, I saw three cyclist we had met earlier at lunch heading toward me at a really fast pace for uphill riding. When we drew abreast they yelled and we all stopped. One of the fellows triumphantly held up my wife's yellow bar bag. Thankfully, I turned around and headed up the hill for the second time.

A few years back I rode a 2 week section of the Great Divide Trail from Lincoln MT to Teton NP. It was my first trip using a BOB trailer and I had my tent attached outside the trailer bag with bungie cords. At the end of a gorgeous day that began at the town of Lima I stopped and dicovered that the tent had bounced off from under the bungies somewhere back after a day of fast riding on bumpy dirt roads.

It was late afternoon and I was approaching my destination of Lakeview at Red Rocks Wildlife Refuge at least 40 miles from the start. I started re-tracing back over the bounciest section. Stopped at an intersection where I found a newspaper that had been under the same bungie but did not find the tent after a long search. I ended up riding all the way back to Lima with stops here and there looking for the tent so I logged over 80 miles of dirt that day. Lacking a tent I stayed at the motel in Lima. Yep, one of those days!

I repeated the ride to Lakeview the next day. I finished the trip a few days later in Bozeman where I was meeting the ACA to staff a Cycle MT supported tour. Bought a new tent when I got there.

A few weeks ago I went to pick up a one way rental to drive to the start of a 3-day tour down the Delaware River. I was really looking forward to it for a third year in a row. The guy at the counter of the rental agency checks me in and gives me the keys. As I am about to drive the car off the lot, the security guard at the gate notices that my license had expired a month previously. So much for that idea. Fortunately, I was able to take an out and back trip over the long Easter weekend..

Once got off a ferry in WA and left my Camelback hanging on a fence post. Fortunately, I rode only 3 flat miles before I noticed it was missing.

Near disaster in Andalucia. I was in the middle of hilly nowhere when I stopped to reload the camera. The extra roll of film was in a fanny pack that I kept in a pannier. That pack also contained my wallet with all my cards and passport. After taking a few shots I started a bumpy descent. Not long into it, I thought I heard a car and looked back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the fanny pack sitting precariously on the top of my left rear pannier. It would have certainly fallen off. To this day I am paranoid about forgetting to put back my wallet after I have taken it out.

Once I get my panniers and racks going the handle bar bag is where all my valuables/dont-want-to-loose-this items are going. Ironically, this was the first trip I put my wallet in something other than the zipper pocket in my pants on a ride... At least it, and my keys, decided they wanted to hold on for the ride!

I had a zipper problem in the AMS airport , pickpockets .. Guilders and travelers checks & passport needed to board was taken ,,

got to know the Shiphol night crew for a couple days while the US embassy sorted it out .




Next trip all that was in a money belt under my clothing.. a tunnel pocket across the back of a custom altered T shirt made that comfortable, cycling .

Back in 1988, did a bicycle tour from Boston to Rochester, MN. Near London Ontario, we had lunch at a McDonalds and my cycling partner accidentally threw her wallet away in the trash. We didn't realize it until 10 miles further when we stopped to fix a flat. Cycled back to that McDonalds and looked everywhere but couldn't find the wallet. We decided to make a police report so as to have some paper record that we reported the missing wallet.

Returning to US at Port Huron, they let her back in US despite not having any ID (this was before passports were required; and so drivers license was her only ID), also looking at the police report. We also had some difficulty since we would run short on cash in a while. We had some $100 travelers checks with us - mostly in her name, but unfortunately there had just been a TV program/news about a flurry of false travelers checks being passed in Michigan, so we also had difficulty finding people willing to take travelers checks. She no longer had her bank card. I had mine, though it was part of the plus network. At that time, you could dial a 1-800 number and see if there were any banks that took plus cards in that phone exchange. Most everywhere we tried, there didn't seem to be nearby plus ATM machines. Finally I called my back back home and learned there would be (only) four plus teller ATMs in entire state of Wisconsin. So we had her parents wire some money to Western Union in Green Bay.

It all sorted itself out. Now a bunch of this would be easier with interlocked ATM networks and also having internet - but this was before that was readily available.