Apr21

finding myself.

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missing_person

one saturday night in 2012, a search party was organized in iceland to hunt for a woman who had apparently failed to return to her tour bus. but the twist? she had. she became part of the search party looking for her, unaware that she was the subject of everyone’s concern.

iceland_waterfall

the tour bus in question had stopped near iceland’s eldgja canyon and the woman in question took the opportunity to go freshen up and change clothes.

when she reboarded the bus, the rest of the passengers didn’t realize it was her. instead, they became alarmed that she’d gone missing. the driver waited for an hour before the police were called.
things escalated. a search of the area took place, joined by around 50 people, some in vehicles, many on foot. the coast guard was alerted, and the search went on for several hours.
it wasn’t until three in the morning that the truth became apparent: that the woman everyone thought was missing was actually helping them in the search. once she realized she was the missing tourist, she informed the police. the search was called off.
moral of the story? it’s always worth properly counting the number of people on a tour bus. no matter what they happen to be wearing.

—
“not only do I not know what’s going on,

i wouldn’t know what to do about it if i did”

 – george carlin 

—

credits: mentalfloss.uk

59 responses »

  2. oh, lordy..I harbor a similar tale of chaperoning 8th graders and losing one in Chicago at the close of a school year…except she was not lost in the bowels of the natural history museum…she had found some sailors? so we waited and waited!

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  7. “I Love to Count!” Bwahaha! Very important point made by your story Beth. A great story to inform your kinders – always count and be counted. It is a good thing to do even when you are not sure what to do. I can remember my first job in sanitation at a bakery when I was 13. I worked weekends and so did the General Manager – Graham (that’s astounding that name is on my mind even after 45 years), My Dad worked there as a manager and he and Graham socialized. One Sunday he called me to his office and explained that a transport was arriving with a full load of the metal trays we used to haul bread throughout our system. He very specifically told me to be sure to count them as I would be receiving the load. Now these nested when empty into 35 per stack and a transport would hold about 100 stacks – so I was expecting 3,500 bread trays. When the load arrived the driver was in a rush and convinced me to receive the load without counting it (the number of stacks yes but the number of trays per stack,no). when we were done and he left, I took the invoice to the GM’s office. His first question was:” Did you count it?” I was honest and told him no. He asked why not and I told him the driver was in a rush and there were so many trays that i figured my time was worth more than a tray or two. He asked if I knew what the trays cost and I replied : $35 each. he asked what he paid me and I admitted $12 per hour. So he could pay me for about 6 hours pay just to catch a shortage of two trays.

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  18. Ha ha, oh dear! Having not been here for a while I was idly leafing through the reader to get my blogging mojo back and I came across this. It’s the kind of story that you just couldn’t make up! Thanks, Beth. 🙂

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  19. Great story! My travel companion had slipped back on our tour bus while the tour guide’s back was turned. After a good amount of time had passed, the guide double-checked his list and my friend’s name didn’t have a check mark beside it. He waited a little longer, then finally got in the bus, grabbed the speaker and asked the group if the missing name was on the bus (which, of course, she was). Seems he knew what was going on.

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