the oldest Starbucks in North America that I have
not yet been to it's been around for three years since 2016 and I drove 20
hours to get here good exercise the star bucking fitness plan for you I try to
travel kind of light that's one of the things about camping out in the car you
don't want to have a lot of things that you have to move around in the middle
of the night pretty much travel with all the clothes most of the clothes that I
have the rest are in bags lots of blankets thermal underwear of course one
essential item is this box of memorabilia that I've gathered all my life for
the last 40 years I have all the birthday cards and letters that people have
sent me I used to keep all this at my parents house
but they had to move out so now it comes with me
I've been driving since Rochester New York all the way to Canada with the goal
of finally seeing at the Starbucks in Sydney Nova Scotia I have been star
bucking for over 22 years now I came up with the idea in the summer of 1997 when
I was 25 and I'm 47 now I have managed to visit 55 different countries for star
bucking I just hit the 15,000 number I'm looking forward to that 20,000 number
though it could easily take five years to get there star bucking is most
definitely not about the coffee and it's not even specifically about Starbucks
but I do have a keen interest in Starbucks store design a couple of years into
my project I ordered my first digital camera put a website up and the website
just sort of sat there for a couple of years until one of my friends from the
local Starbucks pitched my story to a friend of his who worked in local news
that led to Dallas Magazine which led to another media piece that went viral
and then all of a sudden star booking was on the map
gassing up the car for me can be a challenge I
can only put an amount of gas into my tank equivalent to the number of the gas
pump so if it's pump number 10 I can put in $10 ah this is one of those
disappointing gas stations that only has six pumps and so I'm going to take the
highest number one number six I had a dream which an old man told me that if I
did this I'd be reinforcing the walls of our reality to keep them from
imploding and so the universe gets to live for one more day when I moved to Dallas
to take my first jobs in 1995 there was a Barnes & Noble there with a cafe
and it was turned into a Starbucks I used to hang out there and little by
little I started to meet people who were also hanging out there and we
developed this circle of friends that grew to half a dozen to a dozen in number
we would go to movies together we want to see the Phantom Menace in 1999 and I
got a seats for a group of 19 of us at the local cinema after I graduated
college I probably never would have had any type of circle of friends or
community like that had it not been for Starbucks [Music] have you seen any
moose no I'd like I desperately want to see a moose and just have not did they
have unusual food offerings in the pastry case I like things that think the one
is Shanghai is supposed to be a lot like I think Tokyo and Shanghai are on my
list hopefully next year there's a pretty good independent coffee scene do you
do are you into coffee have you been to quills yes Thunder goes I like low acid
coffee if liebe deutschland yeah reopening they're still opening new ones yeah
but it takes me to some interesting places that I would ordinarily have not
gone the only reason that I'm here and on the cabot trail was because there's a
Starbucks in Sydney one two and three looks like we are about 15 or so
kilometers from Sydney a little bit further to the Starbucks so we are almost
there it has been a long haul but I would say that the payoff not just the
Starbucks but taking a little detour up to the Cabot Trail has been worth it
because the views were absolutely magnificent if I had an infinite amount of
time I could just hang out here forever my mother has dementia it probably
developed an elastic so five years when she was into her early 70s sadly because
of her dementia but positively I I'm spending more time with her every three to
four months than I used to so I'm not doing as much star bucking as I would
like to one of the things that motivates me to take as many pictures as
possible write as many blog entries as possible and just keep everything
organized so that if my memory starts to go I'll have the records of all my
adventures too to hold on to as I get older one of the most heartening things
that I've learned is how kind people can be two perfect strangers around the
world like the barista in Framingham Massachusetts who could see how bloodshot
red my eyes were because I was so tired and just offered me a couch to sleep on
so yeah I mean I've learned that that people are the same people are different
and people can be amazingly kind but I would say more than anything I've
learned about myself and what I'm capable of in pursuit of a goal I will be
visiting my 10,000 Starbucks
another strip mall store of thousands in Southern
California Northern California 15 years 11,000 stores here we go we are 1.6
kilometers what do I want what the chaos that embroiled our world to end but I
feel completely powerless to do anything about it so I guess star bucking is
something that more or less I can control there we go there is the Starbucks
yes it is true a lot of people do believe that real life is having a job
getting married buying a house having kids I see that as fairly arbitrary
there's nothing intrinsic even in humanity that says that that is what real
life has to be for you and if people take anything away from star bucking I
would say that when somebody says star bucking is pointless I turn around and
say point to something anything that other people are doing that is not
pointless honestly I do not see an end to my star bucking project as long as
I'm alive I I can't imagine the end I can't imagine what the last was it would
be or this is a lifetime project for me I expect to be doing it into my 60s 70s
maybe even 80s and 90s if I'm still lucid and able to travel I'm glad that I
did as much living as I did while I was young
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق