I have lost one of my Apple AirPods

Everyone warned me about this even before I bought them. Today is the day when it finally happened.
I have bought AirPods on January 6 2017 and have used them everyday since. I have used them to listen music and answer phone calls while commuting to work by bus or by bicycle. I have used them regularly in gym and while running and cycling outdoors. I have really enjoyed cable-free experience and tiny form-factor so far. They usually stay in my ears so tightly that I can take off or put a T-shirt over my head without fear that they will fall out. The sound quality fully matches with wired EarPods while two built-in microphones in AirPods provide better phone conversation experience.
Today, I was training on a bicycle in the middle of nowhere outside of the city. When suddenly the helmet strap somehow awry hooked the right earpiece from what it fell out. The speed at that time was about 32km/h, and I don’t know what distance I managed to pass from the moment of realization that music plays only in the left ear and until the moment of complete stop.

I turned around and returned about 100 meters. I took the iPhone out of the pocket, paused my workout in Endomondo and launched Find My iPhone to track down lost earpiece. I have tapped on AirPods icon on map and selected action Play Sound. I got warning that I need to make sure that no earpieces are left in the ear, because loud noise may damage hearing. I removed the remaining earpiece and heard the impressively loud beeping from the earpiece in my hand. Honestly, I was impressed that so tiny piece of plastic can generate so loud beeping like regular full sized alarm clock or a bomb in Counter-Strike. But I was able to hear only the earpiece in my hand which prevented me from hearing the second earpiece that was as I thought somewhere nearby. I didn’t take charging case for AirPods with me, so I was unable to turn off the left earpiece and focus on searching for the right earpiece. Find My iPhone doesn’t allow to use Play Sound action separately for each earpiece. I’ve tried to locate lost earpiece visually, but it wasn’t visible anywhere on the tarmac, which meant that it flew away to the grass. Looking for a tiny earpiece in high grass is literally the same as “find a needle in a haystack”. 5 minutes of searching didn’t produce any result, so I rode back home. But before leaving the place I remembered one of the few landmarks it was a small sign indicating that the gas pipe lies underground here.

At home I grabbed the charging case and car keys and drove back by car. I was pretty confident that I’ll find it this time, and that no one could find it before me and it won’t be crashed by a car because it lays somewhere off the road. The left earpiece was installed in its rightful place in the case and lit was closed, so it didn’t play the alarm noise when I tapped on Play Sound again. But the application gave me a message that I will be notified when I reach the pairing radius with the earpiece and then it will beep. So I walked along roadside like a treasure hunter with metal detector. At some point of time my phone vibrated, but it was just a push notification for new received emails. I continued to walk along until I heard the familiar beeping somewhere in grass. Further it was a matter of a couple of seconds to find a ringing earpiece. It works, it is undamaged. It was found about 300 meters away from the gas pipe sign where I looked initially.

I’ll be more careful now for sure. I’m quite happy that Find My iPhone application works as advertised and I managed to avoid spending money on new headphones this time.