Know anyone like this?
Actually, I have known a few land surveyors like that.
One day we're about a mile from the truck up on some mountain and we're about to head in for the day. Instead of retracing our steps I suggest a shortcut straight down the mountain, right through the woods. We were staking out center-line for a road and being the I-man I had a pretty good picture in my head where we had been. At that point none of us were super familiar with that place. They thought I was taking a chance of getting lost. We were somewhere about 50+xx and the truck was about 1+xx away. We all had radios so I didn't figure it would be a big deal if one of us did get lost.
After some discussion, we decide to split up. I tell them with my shortcut, about 300 yards of downhill trekking, we'll come out back on the road around 11+xx and be waiting for the other 2. Sure enough there we were waiting on them just like I predicted. My "shortcuts" never got questioned again.
Then there was that time when 3 of us did get lost going back to the office after getting rained out. I was a serious newbie/greenhorn with maybe a week experience. I had no clue where we were and apparently the other 2 didn't either. I ask for a [road] map and compass. We had neither! REALLY?! 3 surveyors lost on the road with no map OR compass?! REALLY?! I never let them live that one down. I gave them hell about that. I'm in the back with 2 very experienced surveyors up front so I never thought to pay attention to where we were going or where we had been. And, damn if they didn't get us super lost! They decide to stop and ask for some directions at some little country store deep in the western NC mountains and I remember thinking how embarrassing for a survey crew is it to have to ask for directions. Unfortunately, my skill at dead reckoning through the woods without map or compass doesn't translate to the paved roads. Then again in the winding mountain roads a compass wouldn't help much anyhow.
Well, he wasn't a surveyor. He was a neighbor. Him and I were coon hunting buddies, just because he had all the dogs. We left out about 10PM one evening just to let a few pups run and see what they could do. We took one good hunter to keep the pups in line.
Our favorite woods was a creek that ran almost due north and south right through the middle of two sections. The east west road on the north was the ONLY road around. Sometime around 2AM we decided to head back to the truck. I turned around and started walking north. My neighbor got agitated and told me I was going the wrong direction (I knew I wasn't). I pointed out the Big Dipper and gave him a brief run down on the position of a star named Polaris. He wasn't going to have any of it. Called me all sorts of names and questioned my sanity. I was not going to walk south into an area that I knew had no roads and was woolier that any woods around. He shared my sentiment, but was convinced that south was the way to go. We hesitantly decided to part ways.
In less than an hour I was out of the woods to the truck parked on the section line. It was his truck and it was locked. I fell asleep on the hood, with my back on the windshield...with a wiper blade in my kidney.
Sometime around 6AM the sun was a faint glow in the east. I was awakened by the sound of a vehicle coming down the road. It was a Lincoln County Deputy Sheriff...with my neighbor in the passenger seat and four smelly coon dogs in the back seat.
Seems he had made it 2 1/2 miles south before his dogs raised a ruckess with a ranch hand's dogs at a trailer tucked up in the woods. He damn near got shot. The deputy was called and he got a free ride (8 miles by road) back to his truck. He and the dogs all looked like hell. (Getting in a fist fight with saw-briars is best done in daylight.)
I don't think I ever went coon hunting at night with him anymore. We never really talked much about that night except he wanted me to show him that star again. :snarky:
I like that story Sir Paden.
Used to do quite a bit of coon hunting back in the day before I moved down here for a corporate job. Quite a bit of trapping as well. I don't even fish anymore.
When I went coon hunting with my bro-in-law, we only had 1 dog named Buddy. About 100 pounds of love and joy of a big ole red bone hound... until it came to coon huntin. We'd just turn him loose and he'd be gone in a heart beat like a greyhound at the track. The country we hunted we his grandpa's and he and I knew most every bit of so we never got lost. I carried the game bag and Richard had the rifle. About 0200 hours (like you) we stop for a beer break and chat (would I marry his sister and stuff - which I did). I mention that we haven't heard from Buddy. Richard says I can get him to talk to us and he hollers "TALK TO ME BUDDY! TALK TO ME." Sure enough he hollers back and had 4 treed and it was all he could do to try to climb that tree. Richard shot them all and me carrying the game bag had to tote them back - adult beverages included.
I have a pretty good sense of direction in the woods which can be critical when on a ridge, don't want to go down the wrong way.
I got lost in a hotel corridor.
They checked me into a bad room. I got a different room across the corridor and down a bit. Dang that turned me around, weird feeling, thought I was going senile. It was all I could do to get myself to go the right way out.
I got turned around in the airplane one time. I had climbed on top of some clouds (bad idea but I was young). After circling up I couldn't figure out why the compass was 40 degrees off then the radio spoke to me, "Cessna 1234X, Sacramento, are you still going to Fresno?" I turned to the heading and after 5 minutes it cleared up.
back in time , I had a pretty little 12' skiff that was made by a boat builder. It had a little put-put motor.
I was taking it out occasionally and exploring the Honey Island swamp. I would put in on the Middle Pearl River on Hwy 90 bridge. You have the east Peal, Middle Pearls and West pearl crossing the HWY. Alter a few trips, I got cocky and started to explore more cuts and passes in the swamp. This was before cell phones, GPS etc. I realized that if the put-put motor developed a problem, I was basically screwed. As a precaution, I did carry a set of oars.
One evening heading back to the launch, I cam to realize that I may have taken a wrong pass somewhere. I knew that If I Headed south, I would reach U.S. 90 somewhere.
I kept putting along assured that I would come out at another place and deal with that situation.. I would have to hike the Hwy back to the Toyota/trailer and that was no big deal. I finally saw the Hwy bridge as it was getting dark. To my surprise, I was at the launch and my truck and trailer was waiting parked.
So I thought that I was really lost but in the end I wasn't. I guess that means I was lost.
Dad had a local fella (his father was a friend of dad's) that worked with him occasionally when I was away at college. When I was here, he was the 3rd man sometimes. He was an "engineer" or "engineering tech" of some sort and had been in bad car wreck some time in the 80's and he was just a bit "off". Short tempered, stubborn, etc.... Well, we were surveying a ridge line on a 100 Acres+ and he had to leave about 2pm to meet someone or take a call at his house about 3pm. That was fine, we moved slow and Dad wasn't a real time keeper. Anyway, we had parked his little truck in the easiest place to get out of there because of his meeting, but then we had all gotten into Dad's Trooper to go around to another place to access the ridge.
We worked for several hours and when it was time to go he asked how to get to his truck. I explained that he should follow our traverse line back out to where we started the day and to continue walking straight out the ridge for another 800' to 1000' and then to turn RIGHT (90°±) and walk down the slope in the easiest way that he found (We hadn't actually been in that area to survey, so I didn't want to send him down a ravine or some rocky area, so I gave him some leeway and said as much). Well, something about me being younger than him and me giving him any directions just burned him up for some reason (He told me later that he thought I was lying to him to make him late) and he got so flared up walking out that he forgot what I had said. So he walked out about 400' past the end of the traverse and turned LEFT and on the way down to the road he got caught in all sorts of vines and briars and steep rocky slopes and it took him forever to get out of there. Once he got to the road he started walking the wrong way. Luckily, he happened to see Dad's Trooper at at where we were parked and decided to turn around. He had to walk back about 3/4 mile down the state road to his truck, but he finally got there and ended up being about an hour late for his appointment, which he somehow blamed me for also.
I learned that some people just won't accept directions when they come from certain people, and that some people just don't pay attention. It was always a bit of an "adventure" working with him because you never knew what would set him off.
> Well, he wasn't a surveyor. He was a neighbor.
Was his name Jake?....:snarky:
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Back many years ago, I had that basic same problem with people older than me. Try being a 21 Y.O. P.C. some time.
Now I have it with people 30+ years younger than me. It seems a significant percentage of them are too stupid to realize that I have had a lot more years of learning than they have and am most definitely NOT senile.
It is always something, isn't it?
B-)
