Monday Mug Shot

Seattle, Washington

I guess the first thing I must confess is this mug was bought at the airport souvenir shop. I was in Seattle for about an hour, maybe two. It was long enough to grab dinner and get on the next flight. So this is a twofold mug shot. One is the let’s talk about planes part and the other is about that coffee Seattle is famous for.

When we went to Montana in October 2007, we flew in and out of Spokane. Spokane was my personal nemesis, much like Bugs Bunny’s Albuquerque, my luggage was always going to Spokane when I wasn’t. The first time I ever flew was in 1979. It was a family trip back to the Fatherland, San Marino. After a month in Italy, one of the suitcases didn’t make it back! It happened to be the one with the carefully wrapped hand blown crystal horses that Dave and I were given by the glass blower we watched in Venice. One of the horses came back from its side trip to Kansas City and Chicago missing a leg! After getting a piece of luggage lost on my first trip in a plane, I had a somewhat cynical view of airline luggage routing and always expected my luggage to go to Spokane. It’s also why my makeup and a clean pair of underwear always traveled in my carry-on when I flew!

Coming home on that Montana trip, we flew a prop from Spokane to Seattle. That was my first prop! It was SO COOL! The Alaska Air attendants were awesome and the plane was truly one of the most comfortable I’ve ever been in flying coach! Free beer too!

It wasn’t so great the rest of the way back to Detroit though! We were crammed into a Northworst 757 with a shoehorn. I was tempted to give the person in front of me a shoulder rub since once he reclined the seat back he was laying in my lap anyway. Im quite sure if one of those planes goes down, lives will be lost simply because people won’t be able to move to escape.

I wish we could have flown all the way to Detroit in the prop!

The other story is one of irony.

When we walked past the Starbucks in the airport, I made a comment that after dinner, I wanted to get a coffee to take on the plane. Even if I wasn’t actually going to see any of Seattle, I still wanted to have a Starbucks coffee in Seattle! This was after all, the same trip where I had potatoes in Idaho and huckleberries in Montana.

Now I’d wrestled with Starbucks before on the availability of the logo but not the coffee at their establishments. Once when the Airport Starbucks in Detroit wasn’t open at 5 AM for morning coffee and once when in all of Las Vegas I’d only ever seen one place that was closed, that was Starbucks...at TEN O’CLOCK! In VEGAS!

So now, I was in the city where it all started. The coffee Mecca of America. We finished dinner and I was ready for my Seattle-made latte! We walked back to the Starbucks on the way to our gate. The lights were dim and the chain curtain covered the opening of the store. IN SEATTLE! Starbucks was closed and my flight hadn’t left yet! What were they thinking?? Starbucks closed in Seattle? At the airport, where you’d expect the hometown famous coffee giant to be welcoming out-of-towners, they were open before dinner to call out to me and closed after dinner, giving me a big raspberry...and it was NOT raspberry mocha!

So now, I have to go back to Seattle. Maybe I’ll see a Mariners game, but for sure, I’ll get my latte! Starbucks owes me at least that!