what would YOU do for a klondike bar?

He's visited 7,064 North American Starbucks stores and 451 international ones. His goal is to visit them all worldwide. He's created a movie based on this unique journey titled "Starbucking," sells promotional t-shirts, and takes photos of himself at every Starbucks location. And thanks to twitter, one can literally track down where he is and what he's doing on any given day.

Oh, yeah, and his name is Winter. Just Winter.

I don't know how old he is, so don't ask. I'm thinking anywhere from late twenties to early thirties based on his mug and the fact that he started this adventure back in '97. Before you go thinking he's just some coffee-obsessed fanatic with no ambition in life (although how one could reach that conclusion is beyond me, considering the drive he clearly has to pull off such an exhaustive goal), i assure you there is more depth to this man than caffiene-powered road trips and odd photographs. Actually, i can't assure that, but i am trusting that the blurb he wrote about himself on his website is the God-honest truth. In that case, some of his other dominating interests are Scrabble, philosophy, literature, and pancakes. (Okay, so i might have embellished on the pancakes idea - i saw them referenced in one of his blogs and thought he'd be more interesting as a pancake-lover - but nevertheless, he sounds pretty cool to me.)

Bottom line: As i did not see Plymouth, MA on his list of U.S. stores not yet covered, i e-mailed this Winter fellow and told him to come visit us sometime. I'm thinking this is probably not one of the best ideas i've ever had, but i do believe i've forewarned the world enough that i do tend to often do stupid things for the sake of adventure. Besides, it's not my fault that Winter's goal is to visit every Starbucks in existence and i, coincidentally a Starbucks partner, have a goal to meet and befriend every interesting character that i possibly can. So i'm helping him reach his goal and he's helping me reach mine. It's a business deal, really.

I'll update this blog as soon as i hear back from him.

-- UPDATE --
Friday, September 7, 2007 12:47 PM

Here is the message i received from Winter this morning:

Audrey,

Thanks for the e-mail. I'm pretty sure I called that store last weekend but did not get an answer. But I've now moved it to open stores list and will update my web site when I can. As for getting to the store, it will be a while. I'm working in PA, and I do not expect to get up to Mass until early November, if I decide to play a Scrabble tournament in Cape Cod. I might decide to play closer to home, though.

E-mail me around the 3rd week of October if you want--I should know by then.

Winter

I wrote back again, of course, to find out how old he is. 35 - i was close.