It was Friday around 4am at Burning Man, I'd been out to the billion bunny march the day before still wearing a full fur bunny outfit and some 12 hours later I'd just finished off the last of my water after dancing my butt off at Sonic Sound Tribe. I was walking past the crowd and into the sea of bikes and realized that I'd forgotten the visual markers of where I had left my bike. Where's my Bike?
I knew I had it lit up with red LEDs, it should be easy to find, but wasn't. It was a solid hour of work to hunt it down, someone had knocked it over, it was under another bike and the battery pack had been disconnected when it fell over.
As I began the trek to get water the sun was peeking over the horizon, the wind had picked up and a white out had begin. I resigned to calling it a night, cursing I hadn't found my bike sooner.
Fast forward to today, I've decided that I don't want this to happen to you, because I know it will! So, in dust, there is a now a new feature to help you find your bike, camp, the cool art piece you want to show your friend, or any other thing you want to drop a pin on the map to find.
On the home page, there is a new section "Find My". You can press one of the items to show it on the map, or if you haven't set its location it will get a GPS location and save it for you.
The map will show where you are, which way you are facing, and will tell you how far away you need to walk and whether your bike/pin is to your left, right, ahead of you or behind you.
Once you've found your bike don't forget to clear the location (click Clear or Delete in the top right corner).
The GPS on your phone will usually be accurate to 10-20ft which should be enough to help narrow down your search area.
The real trick is to remember to place the pin where you left your bike is in the first place. Hopefully, if you're reading this you'll remember my story when you decide to park your bike outside the big sound camps.