Bruce a cycle-touring friend who is currently doing an epic ride (Canberra Australia to Singapore) recently had a very real world experience without the cloud back-up.  In his mid 60s, he’s purchased his first smartphone and is doing his first online tour journal.

A few weeks ago, he lost his phone while riding somewhere in East Timor. Locals helped him replace his phone from a local retailer, but he’d lost his original account & number with the phone. No iCloud back-up. This proved to be a problem when time came to extend his visa. A process which nowadays is mostly an online process.

The verification code from for his visa extension was sent to his missing phone which is somewhere in East Timor. He’d already progressed as far as Bali.

With help from home, he was eventually able to resume the visa application by other means, but as soon as he plugged in payment details, his bank account/card  was hacked. Probably via his original, lost phone.

If he’d had linked mobile devices, he’d have been able to either find his phone, or disable it / lock it remotely. And he’d have had continuity on processes such as visa applications.

Fortunately his tour photos had already been uploaded to his journal here on CB. So they weren’t lost.

Yeah, these are the kind of hassles I want to avoid while traveling.  Who wants the stress when in paradise!  

Another safety feature that iPhones have is something called "Find My."  Andrea also has an iPhone and we can have our phones linked by way of "Find My" which means that I can always see where her phone is which usually means that I can see where she is since she is nearly always with her phone. It's useful if we ever get separated.   If one of us ever loses our phone we can see where it is on the map on the other phone.  The locating is to within about fifty feet.  We never get separated but one time when I was home I misplaced my phone and it was driving me nuts because I couldn't find it and I was feeling very very old.  The "Find My" was very useful then.  Same with our computers we bring along.  Everything is linked.

interesting options, though the only one that would fit on my bike is the bottle-cage one (not a lot of room when your bike is tiny). Given the cost of shipping to Canada and supplying my own AirTag, I’m very happy with my Scout (given its additional features and small additional cost). 

I’ve made the purchase (several air tags for various bits of essential travel gear including my bikes) and have opted for a low tech / low cost home-made attachment for the bike’s AirTags.

The attachment comprises a cable tie (passes through the key ring accessory purchased (at extra cost) with the air tag);  dots of industrial strength Velcro; a wrapping of gorilla tap and light piece of Velcro strap. 

The tiny bundle fits neatly, and fairly inconspicuously, under the head-stem adjacent to the bell, and behind the small handlebar bag. 

It could also easily fit under the front point of the saddle, but it’d be more exposed to  moisture and grime there.

The disadvantage of this ad hoc attachment will be dismantling it annually to change the battery.

Pls don’t share this photo with bike thieves in my area. :)

My mini obsession with air tags has progressed, and I now have them installed on my several bikes in various ways. 

The simplest and most concealed hide is a Lezyne plastic bottle cage specifically designed to house an AirTag in a moulded, capped integrated hollow at the back of the cage. Lezyne Matrix Air Cage.

They even supply special security bolts which are like normal bottle cage bolts but with an odd  head which needs its own little tool which they also supply. It didn’t use those special bolts because it’s highly likely I’d lose or forget the special tool just when I needed to remove the cage sometime in the distant future.

I looked at the Scout. Our local bike shops have them. Very neat and the alarm would be good, but I’ll stay with the AirTags for the time being. Hoping of course I never need to make use of them.

https://ride.lezyne.com/products/matrix-air-cage?

Cool!  I hadn't heard of those and I don't think they are available in Canada yet.  But I won't be rushing out to buy one because (1) I already have a Scout and a couple of nice stainless steel King bottle cages and (2) by the time I got one and the Air Tag to put in it, it would cost me significantly more than the Scout did!

Another story. The airline lost his bike. He tracked it across the Atlantic. Airlines suck, it really shouldn't be this hard to get them to send you the property they lost.

Another Airline Lost Bike Story

George lost luggage, including bikes, seems to be fairly common nowadays.

Last week I attended a film night hosted by a young local expeditioner backpacker cyclist, Jack Keogh, who completed The Great Divide Bike Race. Amazing ride. Insanely difficult.

Jack almost didn’t start the race because the airline which he used from Australia to Banff Canada misplaced his bike. No AirTag involved and the bike did eventually turn up.

This is the almost hour long film he showed. The lost bike story is at the beginning.

https://youtu.be/fsGXuPNS46k?si=xt5WMBgUhxv3fW8k

We have android phones also and I bought a tile for Scott’s phone.  It definitely has its issues but I don’t want to get an iPhone.  Darn!

This is a very interesting thread. As a former apple user, I'd point out that Android offers the same type of integration between devices as Apple, with Chromebook and even PC. I have Find My device available on all.of.my devices, and can set my PC chrome browser to mirror my Google phone.  Hopefully apple will soon adopt or allow the universal RCS texting platform, so photos and videos can be shared across platforms without the annoying compression and "green bubble".