Mailbox? Mailbox?

My mailman will not retrieve outgoing mail from my mailbox. He just won't. And my mail won't send itself, so I have to help my letters into the postal flow in other ways.

I've made mental notes to myself about where there are mailboxes close to home. There's one at the QFC parking lot, one on that hill near Colman Park...the one at the 23rd & Union post office (not close to home, but there's a drive-thru box you can send stuff late). But I wasn't near any of those, and I had a Netflick to return, and I really, really want the Netflix people to send me the new season of The Wire right away, so I was motivated to find a mailbox.

Not too motivated, I guess, or I'd have gone to a known location. But I had a lot of bike riding to do today, and was sure I'd see one. No doubt about it.

This morning I rode from home to Westlake, then back by a different route. Granted, I wasn't being too diligent, and I may have ridden past several. The ones I knew about are where they're supposed to be, and there's one down at the southern tip of the Triangle. But that's it.

This afternoon, while riding to Capitol Hill to pick up my daughters from daycare, I was on a mission. Home, through Judkins, up 19th and down into Capitol Hill....nothing. I was looking, too. I walked several blocks of 12th, Netflick in hand, and found nothing. Again, nothing on the way home (the sixty pounds of cargo in the trailer kept me from riding around in search of a blue box).

Mission: failed.

So I did a little research and thought I'd share. In the image are all the mailboxes in the 98144 ZIP code. As presented by the USPS in a semi-authorized mashup with Google maps.

Triangle dwellers, you probably already know how to get your mail out, or maybe you've figured out the secret code to get the mailman to pick up your letters. If not, then I hope you'll find the map useful.