Have you seen this person?

I got out of Vermont for a weekend to visit Keith, one of my favorite friends from college, in Washington,D.C. He’s tapering for his first marathon, National Marathon on March 20, and a big focus of the weekend was talking about running, running, and recovering from running.

On Saturday, we took different routes for our long runs: Keith did 12 miles, including a long hilly stretch of the race he’s running; I had a 10-mile route that was an excellent tour of the city:

Starting in Adams Morgan, I would head through Georgetown, across the Key Bridge into Virginia, along the Potomac River, and then back into DC across the bridge that ends majestically at the Lincoln Memorial. From there, I would run all the way down the mall past the Washington MonumentWashington Monument, up past the White House, Dupont Circle and back to Adams Morgan. to the Capitol building, one lap around the reflecting pool, back to the

You’ll note the tense I’m writing in: I would have.

Before we headed out, Keith and I discussed our approaches to carrying ID on a long run. I’m not consistent about it at home, but in the big scary city I opted to carry my driver’s license, ATM card and $20 cash. Keith, drawing on the advice of world travelers everywhere, said it might be better to carry a photocopy of an ID. This is the kind of idle, pre-run chatter I might have paid closer attention to. As in, “This is an omen! Rethink your plan!”

Starting out, I was sore from strength training and speed work earlier in the week, but the dazzlingly warm, sunny weather and the stimulation of buildings, traffic and pedestrians made that easy to overcome. I was running well and enjoying it. Brick sidewalks in Georgetown, a sleepy canal towpath, bridges with expansive views of the river and the city, the reflecting pool on the mall (that is clearly a victim of maintenance budget cuts), sandy gravel walkways among the monuments – it was a really nice run.

After 5 miles I was in the shadow of the Washington Monument and looking for a bathroom. I stood at a crosswalk with my hand on my hip, and realized with admirable calm that my driver’s license was no longer snug in the pocket of my tights. It was... no where at all, actually. Aye. As quickly and modestly as I could, I searched myself for the possibility that the card had merely shifted out of the pocket. The ATM card and the cash weren’t where I put them, but they were accounted for. But no driver’s license. Aye.

I suppose of the three things I was carrying in that pocket, I would have chosen first to lose the $20 (no offense, Andrew Jackson), second the driver’s license, third the ATM card. So it could have been worse. But still, it wasn’t great.

Instead of finishing the planned route to the Capitol and the White House, I decided to complete the run by retracing the first 5 miles. As I dodged in and out of tourists, I sized up their potential as friends or fiends: ‘If you found my license, would you turn it in? You with the fanny pack and the kids, you look helpful. You, with the death metal t-shirt and the stink of disaffected youth? Probably not.’

For two miles or so, I had hope. I poked around when I saw trash that looked suspicious. I detoured into grassy areas where the winds might have taken my license. I talked to a nice lady at the visitors’ kiosk who took my information and told me to report it to the Park Service. (The Park Service dude, on the other hand, gave me a look like, ‘Good luck, fool.’)

I should probably be more concerned about identity theft, but I think it’s more likely my ID blew away in the breeze, or was picked up by a lucky underage girl with bar-hopping dreams. I was mostly interested in how I would get on the plane back to Vermont the next day.

Here’s some advice for wayward travelers: you don’t actually need to have a government-issued ID to get through TSA. You just need to look like a sad-sack and put a pile of references in the hands of the security guard in charge. Here are some of the things I had with me:

• Runner’s World magazine, name and address on the subscription label
• a written warning for speeding in Winooski (did you know that whole city is 25 mph?)
• credit cards, a partially used Dunkin Donuts gift card, a health insurance card

The security manager gave me an amused look as I proffered detritus from my purse as evidence of who I am. Cough drops, business card of the guy who taped my drywall, Chapstick, my phone... hey, I’ll prove my identity by updating my facebook status from my phone! 'Patti is currently being detained by TSA at Washington National Airport. Anyone want to meet up?'

But all my sad minutia didn't phase the security guard. He’d clearly been in this situation before. All he wanted to know was, do I have a Costco membership? A Costco membership! The grainy photo on the back of my (expired) Costco card is black and white, approximately ¼ inch square and I’m wearing a baseball cap and glasses. It's no regulation passport photo, but it was enough. I was in.

I had plenty of time to kill in the departure area, having arrived early to fight the good fight with security. I spent a good deal of that time admiring the runner's ID bracelets advertised in the magazine that almost got me home.

UPDATE! I might have sounded like a doe-eyed Vermonter when I said, "maybe someone will find it and mail it back to me....." But lo! In the mail today was my driver's license with a note, 'You must have dropped it running :-) ' Indeed. I'm mailing him maple syrup tomorrow.