I am a little bit of a collector. That is a lie. I love collecting things. For example, I have a collection of Starbucks mugs (two actually) from each of the cities I’ve been to. I guess it’s a problem. Unfortunately, people have a habit of suggesting, deliberately or not, new things that I could collect. My latest bug: magnets. To be precise: US state magnets.
A friend bought me some magnets for the states I have visited from a company imaginatively called Classic State Magnets. I have one of those weird ambitions where I would like to visit all fifty US states, so having a magnet-based record seemed like a good idea. Needless to say, it very quickly became more than just a bunch of magnets growing on the fridge door (not least because I discovered my fridge door isn’t magnetic). I discovered that the company actually sells a magnetic map of the USA which you can display your magnets on. The exact map which I now have hanging on my wall.
When I arrived in the US, I only had three states in the bag: New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. So I haven’t done too badly to add seven in five months. Two were quite easy: short trips over the District of Columbia border allowed me to tick off Maryland and Virginia. A short holiday to New Orleans gave me Louisiana. A day trip to Harper’s Ferry got me the West Virginia magnet. A detour from New York had New Jersey covered. Then a long Christmas trip to San Francisco and Las Vegas saw me reach ten with the addition of magnets for California and Nevada.
Like any responsible collector, I have had to establish clear rules of engagement. For example, I have to physically set foot in the state and cannot be passing through. So if I’m travelling by car, bus or train it wouldn’t be okay if I just stepped off the vehicle momentarily. Nor would it be okay to fly over the state. Moreover flight connections don’t count. I had a lovely hour or so in Detroit airport (no, really I did) but having not left the airport I don’t think it’s fair to include Michigan in my collection yet.
I am very conscious that my state-sploring cannot be magnet-driven. It would be a shame if my sole motivation for visiting Montana was reduced to adding a magnet to my map (although they do look so good). I’m also conscious that when I’ve added a magnet to my collection, it is often from a single trip, normally to just one place within the state. In many states’ cases that is rather like visiting Florence and saying you’ve ticked off Italy.
Return visits to see more, or just to experience the same again, have that crucial issue of taking up time when you could be visiting somewhere new. That is as true for the USA as for anywhere. It is one of the problems with finding an affinity with a place you visit: going back comes with an opportunity cost. On a positive aside though, a return visit to a state may not give me another magnet but at least there might be another Starbucks mug involved!
My current plans is to build the war chest for a bit of a trip at Easter, sorry, spring break, when I can hopefully see a few more states. I’m thinking something around the Carolinas, Georgia, etc. Just think of the new magnets…
Commonplace 