Today (If I’m being real, this was a week ago) was a culmination of a multi-week search for the the ultimate sleeping platform. Everyone knows that you should spend good money on shoes and mattresses. You spend 8-10 hours a day in your shoes and (hopefully) 8 hours a day in a bed. Don’t cheap out, you’ll regret it.
Today’s yelderly (Yelling Elderly Person) rant brought to you by another yet another miraculous mattress purchasing experience. After five weeks on the road sleeping on hotel mattresses, thin sleeping pads, and even the ground itself. I was ready for a nice mattress again (and so was my yelderly back), unfortunately the only thing available to me when I arrived was a self-deflating (read: leakly). After a week or two of that I decided that it was time to go out and find a new mattress for myself. Where might you look for such a thing you ask? At the first place I visited (Mattress Discounter?) I managed to pick out literally (yes I’m using literally appropriately) the most expensive mattress in the building. Typical Mike. At the next place (Mattress Depot?) I had an older gentleman explain to me why my wife (…news to me…) would need a softer bed. Apparently women need to sleep on their sides because they need the soft bed to support their pregnant bellies, because apparently all women are pregnant; all the time. Charming fellow! The next mattress shop I visited was a fine location in the hipsteriest/yuppiest/hippie-dippiest neighborhood of all of Seattle. The majority of their products are organic, have ridiculous warranties, and are harvested from special latex trees in South East Asia. The cheapest tolerable mattress in the joint was just over TWO thousand dollars. Not that I’m a cheapskate…, but perhaps a little rich for my blood. I enjoyed having the salesman give me the full head-to-toe razzle-dazzle routine about how their mattresses were superior to the rest of the world. If I’m completely honest, none of their mattresses were all that comfortable. Oh well…
At this point I decided to revert to my tried and true method of mattress shopping. My recipe for success? Fire up Craigslist.org. Find the top five sketchiest looking ads for cheap mattresses. Email or text them all. I got several responses, but the one that tickled my fancy the most was the ad that texted me back that I’d have to “set up an appointment” to come to their warehouse. The plot thickens…We set up a time for me to come down the following day. This reminds me of the last time I bought a mattress where I ended up in the middle of the Pennsylvanian forest at a strange man’s house in the woods well outside cell phone coverage…Rolling down to the warehouse I sent a message to a friend letting them know where I was going and for how long I was going to be there for. The connotation being that if they didn’t hear from me in an hour or two, they should send the police after me and question the mattress salesman with the bloody hands first. The address led me to a run down 90’s vintage office/warehouse park. Upon arriving and walking through a door unmarked other than an address number; I wandered through an abandoned office and into a warehouse stacked floor to ceiling with mattresses. Hark! Moment later I was greeted by a swarthy looking gentleman wearing a purple tracksuit. After a few minutes of back and forth, digging through piles of mattresses, lying on mattresses out in the middle of the street behind the warehouse; I selected a model that seemed to be cushy enough for my delicate sensitivities. The man in the tracksuit said he could have it delivered in an hour. (Instead of days or weeks from one of the storefront places). We shook on it, and I emerged from the warehouse unscathed. Absent from this transaction was the anxious feeling I was left with after the Pennsylvanian forest nightmare mattresses deal. That (dealer?) salesman required cash up front before they would deliver the mattress which was another saga in itself. The purple track suited man in the bowels of Seattle assured me that I could give my money to the delivery man upon successful delivery of the mattress….I was written a receipt in chicken-scratch language on a slip of paper and sent on my way. The very-same mattress was delivered as promised a couple hours later. Another notch in the book for Craigslist…I do wonder though…Just how high did the mattresses bounce when they “fell” off the back of the truck…
Till Next Time…