Follow the blue path.
Those were the directions from triathlon organizers to competitor Leigh Fazzina as she ended the swim portion of the race in Farmington, Connecticut, and set out on the eight-mile bike ride last summer. Fazzina tried to follow the bumpy dirt path in the middle of the dense woods, looking up for the blue arrows, looking down to make sure she didn’t hit any large roots or rocks.
But after about 15 minutes, Fazzina didn’t see any blue arrows, and she didn’t see any other bikers, either. As the sun began to set, she pedaled faster and faster, trying to find a way out of the woods.
That’s when her bike hit a huge tree root, and Fazzina somersaulted high over her handles, crashed onto her left shoulder and rolled down a hill, her bike hitting her on its way down. Bruised and banged up, she yelled out for help, but no one responded. She hobbled over to her bike and grabbed her BlackBerry out of the pouch under her seat.
“I called my cousin and it kept saying ‘connecting, connecting, but it wouldn’t connect,'” she says. She tried to call again. “Then I looked at the signal and noticed I only had one bar.”
Fazzina, 36, then remembered Twitter. She used it often in her work in her health care communications firm. She knew it might work even though a call wouldn’t.
At around 7 p.m. that day in July, she tweeted, “I’ve had a serious injury and NEED Help! Can someone please call Winding Trails in Farmington, CT tell them I’m stuck bike crashed in woods.”
Full Story: Five ways your cell phone can save you – CNN