They say you learn from life lessons. One of the biggest, if not biggest life lessons my wife and I ever had was running (and failing at) our own business. We owned a few stores in Seattle that sold informational videos, audios and books. It was in the late ‘80s, and the store was called “The How To Do Anything Store” (later changed to Info to Go).

We sure as heck went in with good intentions, but what we knew about running a retail operation was not enough to be a success.  It was a good idea that was poorly executed and was ahead of its time. We moved on.

Here’s a look at the site of our former venture.

Finally, I was headed home. To my surprise, I discovered that the Seattle-Tacoma Airport (Sea-Tac) has a great food court in the Alaska Airlines terminal. At lunchtime, it was packed and folks hovered over tables waiting for those seated to finish. I like the people who brought their own food and camped out at a table for an hour, frustrating the paying customers.

The second to the last stop of the tour took me to the Seattle area. I lived in Seattle from 1980-1989, and got sick of the weather (among other things). Some 26 years after first moving to the Northwest, I am stuck by two things--the traffic and the strip mallification of  The East Side (aka Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, etc..). People think LA is bad, but you cannot go two blocks in the East Side without seeing some cluster of shops. Needless to say, it does not add to the area’s natural beauty. And, as we see here driving over the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (aka 520), from Bellevue to Seattle, traffic is heavy at 11 am in the drizzle/mist/light rain.