Test driving a bed

Our mattress is 15 years old. I figure that's over 40,000 hours of use. (I'll allow the reader to break out the various uses.) So my wife and I went to Mattress World. It's on Woodward Avenue in Royal Oak, next to another mattress store and across the street from Art Van the self-proclaimed largest mattress retailer in North America. Sort of an auto mall for mattresses.

So we shopped the showroom by looking at bed after bed after bed. From my days watching the Serta team at Doner I know they're amazingly all "S" brands. Following Serta is Simmons, Sealy, and even Sterns and Foster. But my wife and I gravitated to the "T" brand, Tempur-Pedic. I had a great experience with that bed at a recent Courtyard by Marriott stay. Then I read online that Tempur-Pedic, while Swedish engineering, was developed by NASA scientists. Can't argue with that combination. After playing Goldilocks and trying out every model, one felt "just right." The retailer offered financing, free delivery and free pillows (the floor mats of mattress sales I guess). Ultimately, given the magnitude of the purchase we decided to "sleep on it" for a few days. Now if the government will just classify our high mileage bed as a "clunker" ...