Since we’re talking about my mistakes, here’s my promised embarrassing story. Warning: Not that interesting.

D.C. this week, if we haven’t relayed, has been a real pain to get around. The Metro is packed (and Metro is so darned roundabout and random in the first place). Cabs—forget it—streets are closed everywhere—especially yesterday. So getting around takes way much longer than it should.

So, anyway, yesterday evening, near frostbitten, I grab a cab to get to a Foggy Bottom thing. Cab driver picks up a man in a cowboy hat around one of the Senate buildings. Nice gent, he makes small talk. Where you from? and all. I, of course, assume dude in cowboy hat is a tourist.

“I’m a United States senator,” he tells me when I, of course, assume he’s a here visiting for the inaugural. Ooops. The Colorado part doesn’t come out right away so I’m still looking under the cowboy hat running off freshmen in my head. (During the only downtime of the day, thank you.) I have to confess to NR, and I get a look, like “oh, other side.” So now I have it narrowed down…not enough. Gets better. He says he is from Colorado and then all I can think is, man, Pete Coors lost that one, man. Can’t remember to who–brain freeze.

So, of course, it turned out to be Ken Salazar. We had a pleasant enough light conversation about being Dem on I-Day and such. Really nothing sexy to report–he was headed to alternative balls, but not the one Eric Pfeiffer covers today.