Texan takes 5 year coffee break

Smith, an out-of-work software engineer from Houston, has a fascination with Starbucks. He is the self-appointed nomad of specialty coffee, wandering across the country in a quest to visit every company-run Starbucks store on the planet.

The fact that Starbucks is opening an average of three outlets a day from Puyallup to the Philippines doesn't seem to faze Smith. He has racked up more than 271,000 miles on his 1997 Acura Integra since starting his on-again, off-again journey five years ago. So far, he says he's visited more than 3,200 stores in North America and 38 in the United Kingdom.

"It's about doing something that nobody else has done," he said last week during a swing through Seattle, where he hit a dozen new Puget Sound-area stores between stops in Vancouver, B.C., and Eastern Washington.

Smith, 30, said he was at a Starbucks in Plano, Texas, in 1997 when he heard baristas talking about the company's one-time mantra to have 2,000 stores by the year 2000. The idea struck him: Why not visit them all?

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