It happened on a mild, windy day in mid-March 1998. Melting snow that had re-frozen the night before made the stairs to the platform at New Brunswick rather slick. My train, Number 181, was due at 6:44AM. It was on time. I took seat 16D in Amcoach 26505. I had a brown canvas Adidas bag with polished dark brown leather trim and handles.

The train arrived New Carrollton at 9:19AM. I must've been preoccupied with the velocity experiments I was involved with at NASA at the time, for I forgot to get my Adidas bag from the overhead rack.

Inside the bag was my wallet. It contained my drivers license and $512.00 in cash, plus a Gold Mastercard, a Gold Visa card, a Gold American Express Card, a Chevron Preferred Pumper card, and a CVS Pharmacy frequent buyer super bonus discount card. Because I tend to confuse passwords, I'd the written the PINs with a Sharpie marker on the reverse side of each card. This should make identifying them easier.

There also was a checkbook and a rubber ink stamper with my signature.

My Rolex Submariner also was in the bag, along with my IBM notebook computer and a portable hard disk drive, plus a Leica digital camera.

There also were two open tickets on Concorde from Washington-Dulles to London-Heathrow. I'd earned them with frequent flyer miles. I'd forgotten to write my name on them so they were completely blank. You couldn't miss them. They were in a special British Airways jacket made of heavy stock navy blue paper with the Crown Seal and raised gold lettering.

The keys to my friend's green Jaguar also were in the bag. He's from England, but lives and works here a good part of the time. The keys were in a plain white envelope with the parking stub from the garage at Heathrow. Boy, was he rattled when I told him I'd mislaid those keys!

There also was a signed Honus Wagner baseball card from his rookie year. It was in an old, creased envelope that had a funny misprinted postage stamp. It showed an old biplane, and somehow the biplane got printed upside down. That old stamp was so funny. Too bad it was in the bag too.

The actual ruby shoes worn by Dorothy during the filming of The Wizard of Oz were in the bag, plus some weird spy movie videotapes I found in a garage at The Watergate Hotel back in '70s. I also had Elvis's secret name and address in Papua scrawled on the back page of my address book which sadly enough was in the bag too. Elvis didn't want that info getting out. He's been laying low with the love of his life all these years, you know, that girl who played the youngest daughter in The Partridge Family.

This loss was really devastating. I was really mad when I remembered all my toiletries were in the bag too, including a 3-pack of brand new Good News razors.

Then there was that picture of me and Mariah Carey in the Grande Suite at The Maui Hyatt. It's the only proof I have of our little holiday tryst. In the picture Mariah is lying on that gigantic suite's huge bed on pink satin sheets, and she's wearing nothing but a garterbelt and stockings. She's mugging cutely for the camera while holding a tall glass of chilled coconut juice that room service had just brought us. It's a nice photo. Kind of jumps right out at you in a way, especially if you're a guy. Or a gal who likes gals, maybe.

If anyone found this bag or knows where it might be, please advise.

Dave

Dave