The Empire Goes Kaput

In his book, Who's Your Caddy? Rick Reilly chronicles his adventures caddying for various characters both famous and nefarious, including a stint with Donald Trump. He joins The Donald on a Tuesday golf outing at Trump's New Jersey country club where Trump notes that he doesn't like taking off during the week to play golf or generally goof around.

Why? Because if he takes Tuesdays off to play golf, he might enjoy it. In turn, this might become a regular outing that erupts into more weekdays off, more leisure and his entire empire going kaput.

And kaput is something undesireable for The Donald and His Empire.

I've spent the last three days enjoying a brief weekday vacation with Lindsay and Matt on a segment of their East Coast Coffee Crawl, a two to three week odyssey that will take them across the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and a quick jaunt to Chicago. It's been a fun and intoxicating (definitely non-alcoholic intoxication) adventure with The Intrepid Two from Canada. Happily, it hasn't been only about the coffee.

Monday started out with an evening at Murky Coffee in Arlington, Virginia with The Cho, Coffee Wonderkind Peter Giuliano, El Salvadorean coffee producer Aida Batlle, a bunch of coffee fanatics, The Intrepid Two, sizzling platters of beef, a Korean style restaurant reconstruction project, as well as visits to Abe's Place, Korea, Vietnam, The Hill, Exorcist Stairs, Cho's Rice Rocket and being surveilled by Uniformed Secret Service and White House snipers.

Tuesday brought fatty beef brisket, mystery coffee, cupping notes, runny water, the Star Spangled Banner, Eat Bertha's Mussels, totalitarianism, snowboarding down Federal Hill, $2600 love seats, Irish Pubs in Greektown, duckpin bowling and big, fat crab cakes at G&M with Beto and Anna.

Wednesday morning found headaches, triple-toasted jalapeno bagels with fried eggs, sausage and cheese, Mazzer Major Mods, latte art demonstrations, Sidamo tastings from David George, returning old lingerie to Old Flames, Twix, the Bad Ass interior design of Chesnut Hill Coffee, finding great makeout spots behind dodgy warehouses, waking a bewildered John Hornall from his slumber, Independence Hall, The Liberty Bell, Virgo-isms, truly innovative inner-city parking methods, "It's just Philly," 57% like sex, Tacos in Little Italy, 8/9-Ball Tournament, and the Jim's-Geno's-Pat's Cheesesteak (Whiz with) Trifecta.

It's now another Thursday afternoon at Spro Coffee, the Intrepid Two are probably gorging themselves on Hershey bars while I'm conniving and bullying my staff into working next week so I can take another weekday vacation for their New York City segment where there's been promises of Les Halles, Carnegie Deli, Ninth Street Espresso, twin Clovers, hanging with the Murky Crew, Chinese food, podcasting from MTV, and who knows - there might even be tour extensions to Miami, Atlantic City, South of the Border, Disney World, Terry Davis' couch and an opening of the new Key West Espresso Bar.

Looks like my empire might be going kaput.