Matthew Osborne
I recently took a trip to Seattle, marking the farthest from home I have ever traveled. My college roommate Fred, whom I went there to visit, has been to something like 40 countries.
I have been to two, with the Bahamas being the other for my honeymoon.
I think that makes about half the states for me, but I have a lot of work left to collect them all. I am not much of a traveler except between here and Florida.
Where Fred lives in Lake Stevens, Wash., was a lot like North Georgia, honestly. It had beautiful scenery, a nice small-town feel and plenty of fresh air.
The city of Seattle was actually a lot more trafficky than I expected, reminding me of the Atlanta area a lot more than I thought it would.
The weather was beautiful up there that week, and there were a lot of folks in town, particularly from Canada. The amount of Blue Jays fans who came to see the Mariners that weekend was far more than I ever could have expected.
I got to see all the sights of Seattle, although I did not run into Eddie Vedder anywhere. My wife thinks Pearl Jam is terrible, so we just try to agree to disagree on that one. I saw the Space Needle, though the tickets to go up inside were sold out, which took a little of the fun out of it.
I got to see the original Starbucks and take my picture in front of it, but the line was too long to actually get coffee there, so that also was not as fun as it could have been. We found another nearby place to get coffee, though, because Seattle has one every 10 steps.
Come to think of it, I probably could have just taken this trip in a virtual reality green screen and almost come back with the same pictures, but I digress.
I did enjoy the Funko Factory in Everett, Wash., and anyone who knows me well knows that was my Eden. I collect the small toys (they are not dolls, they’re collectible figurines) with a fervor unseen in most sane 45-year-olds. Between my birthday and the visit to Funko HQ, I have five new collectibles on my desk. My wife even bought me a shelf for them, though I have to do a little engineering so that the figures stand up on it.
It could be worse, though. As I was trying to show restraint and only buy 2-3 Funko figures (even though I wanted them all), I saw a mother trailing after two children and carrying a basket full of the figurines, holding at least a dozen.
Her son tried to pile on a few more, and I commented that it was quite the haul he was going for, even though it was probably none of my business.
“Yeah, I told the kids they need to show some restraint, as we always spend too much money here,” Mom said.
Well, more sympathetic I could not be, but “restraint” is like 1-2 each, not 15. Again, probably none of my business, but it was a good check on my own potential to get out of control.
When we left Funko and walked down the block, I noticed there was a comic book store on the corner. What are these people trying to do to me? I kept walking for the sake of my own bank account.
Downtown Seattle was a little different in that, despite what John Travolta said in “Pulp Fiction,” you actually can just roll a marijuana joint and start puffing away. Several folks walking in our proximity through downtown did just that with little or no fear of reprisal. A former colleague of mine recently moved to Washington state and, let’s just say he is enjoying the, ahem, relaxed environment.
After an air traffic nightmare on the way back, I remember why I rarely travel that far. Why leave the beautiful North Georgia mountains for anywhere else?
I don’t remember if it was Alexander Hamilton or former Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins who wisely said, “We all we got, we all we need.”
Matthew Osborne is the editor of The Northeast Georgian. Reach him at 706-778-4215 or editor@TheNortheastGeorgian.com.