At 1:07am, Landry received a photo text, showing flag 88, hanging on a pole in Bar Harbor, looking so sad and abandoned by its hapless rider. Oh well.
Then, at 3:01am, another rider came upon the lonely flag and texted the RallyMom, asking should they bring it back. Really?!
When no text response came from a sleeping Landry, and no phone call to verify the basic rules of rallying, at 3:07 the rider announced in another text they would bring it back to Tulsa….NOOOOOOOO…….no coffee was needed for Landry when she read this at almost 5am.
One of the pitfalls of being rally staff is that it’s easy to ASSUME that riders understand basic Rally 101 concepts. Like never touch another rider’s flag. Ever. Ever. Moving a flag is something you just don’t do.
Now, the sad rider can no longer use his flag for the rest of the rally, has wasted hours of time, AND is out 5,000 points. All while said sad rider may have discovered the oversight and could be backtracking to retrieve the lost item, which is no longer where it was left. This is exhausting for rally staff in more ways than one.
The sad rider called the RallyMom at 7:48am to announce the lost flag status. He was on his way back to the bonus location to retrieve the flag and try to salvage his rally. But the flag was not there waiting on their reunion.
8:00am local time update: The riders have managed to connect and they are working on a handoff location to return the wayward rally flag to its owner. Hopefully, this will be resolved without further disruption.