It Starts in the Desert

Last week was my last as an Ambassador for Glenfiddich. It was a job that took me to seven countries, thirty states and one very special farm in Ohio. Colleagues from all over the country and the world became friends. I was able to take an innate curiosity and love for communicating and turn it into a career. I shared my love for whisky and hospitality close to home and as far away as Sydney. Some nights, I had front row access to the most incredible bars and restaurants in the world and, often, got to peak behind the curtain.

My last day was Friday, April 14th. The week that led up to that couldn’t have been a better ending. I had dinner with our Malt Master, a man of incredible talent and modesty, and got to present with him for the first time. I was also able to bring in the bar team from Angel’s Share, a bar that was foundational in the cocktail revival in New York and that was at the center of some of my earliest and most important experiences of what cocktails could be.

The last day ended and I met up with a friend in Newark to see Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street band absolutely blow the roof off of the Prudential Center. I had never been further away at a Springsteen concert and he and the band had never been older, and still, I got absolutely lost in the music.

The next morning, I packed up my hiking gear and boarded a plane to San Diego where Jess and Matt, friends from Boston, have been hosting me and have showed me parts of the city I didn’t get to know during my time on the West Coast. There was a long walk on a beach and I cannot recommend the tacos at Taco Machin highly enough. We also grabbed dinner at Callie, which my friend Ann opened and runs. Like I said when they first opened, “run, don’t walk.”

In a couple of hours Jess and Matt are going to drive me to Campo, California where I’m going to tap the Southern Terminus of the PCT and start walking north to Canada. Somehow, I only started to feel the immensity of this project in the last week. It’s accidental, but completely appropriate, that this endeavor in endurance is beginning on the same day as the Boston Marathon. I also take it as auspicious that this beginning is being facilitated by friends made over the last seven years and who are continuing to follow their passion for hospitality, which is what all of my love of food and whisky and cocktails is really about anyway.

I hope I meet the challenges of this journey in stride and accept the good parts along with grace. I hope you enjoy following along.