We camp on San Juan Island every year. We like to do a dual sport weekend- we load the kayaks on the trucks and drive down to one end of the island, park, put in and paddle back to camp, usually about 15 miles or so. Then all the Bettys make dinner while a few of us Barneys grab our road bikes and ride about 45 minutes back to get the trucks. The next day, we do the same thing but head the other way from camp.
There is an all-island "free pile" near the campground on a little traveled two lane road. Everyone brings soemthing to drop off, and they take soemthing they want. It's been a free pile for over 20 years.
This particular day, we arrived at the cars after the ride and I ended up putting my bike and my buddie's real expensive (over $3500.00) bike on my van because he only had kayak racks on his car, not bike mounts. He went into the marina to use the bathroom and I just headed back to camp in my van. Since he was a few minutes behind me, I quickly stopped and put is shiney bright blue bike in the free pile and hid my van in the woods 100 ft past the pile and then hid near the pile so I could see the look on his face.
It was priceless. He stops in the middle of the road and looks all around for me or my van and doesn't see a thing except his bight blue $3500 bike sitting there in a free pile as if it had a spot light shining on it.
It's been years and he's still mad about it.
("He just left it there! Anybody could have drove up and taken it!")
Where I come from, people were too snooty to take something out of a free pile, it would sit there indefinitely. So then I would put a sign on the item that said $10 and sure enough somebody would "steal" the item.
