The post office in Reston, Va., is located at 11110 Sunset Hills Rd. I wish I knew that an hour ago.

I went for a run this morning, planning to head down the W&OD Trail but ended up making a last-second change. I wanted to do a loop with a few more hills that I haven’t done in a while. That’s what brought me to Sunset Hills Rd.

As I was going down one of the hills, I saw a girl on a bike riding up the street. She was working the pedals hard as she tried to make it uphill while wearing flip-flops. We met about halfway up the hill as I went to just say hello and she stopped me to ask directions.

“Excuse me, do you know where the Reston post office is?”

I thought for a second. I’ve lived in Reston since April, and in this area for most of my life. Yet I hadn’t the foggiest clue where to find the Reston post office.

“I know where the Herndon one is, but not Reston. Sorry.”

I felt extra bad when I thought about the fact that we stopped in the middle of the hill–meaning she had to work that much harder to get going again. Plus the fact that I have meant to look up the post office about 18 times since I’ve lived here, and never did.

Hopefully she kept going straight and found it about a half-mile from where we were.

The whole scene reminded me of my first semester at grad school. In the Maryland journalism program you can finish in a year if you start in the summer session. That’s also when the university hosts tons of summer camps and special classes. Not a good mix.

I lived just off campus, which meant I had a pretty pleasant walk to the two buildings that housed my classes. The walk took me across the massive parking lot area, which only served to put me in more contact with lost people.

The problem was, I was a grad student who had attended the school for roughly 8 minutes. My only classes were in two buildings–two of the first ones I came to when I got to campus. So when people asked me where to find the physics buildings, one of the libraries or even if they could park there as a visitor, I had no clue.

The truly sad part is that halfway through my time there–when I did actually know where a lot of the major things were located–people stopped asking.

Maybe I should start carrying around a map of everything.