For me it all goes back to The College of New Jersey.

Flashback: September ‘03….

Claire D calls to tell me to meet her new friends Greg, Jay, and The Puer. The Puer? What is a puer I wondered. It wasn’t long before I learned a puer is a Rutgers student who moonlights on my campus. Strange, very strange. After many nights of Donnie Darko and History Channel I became incorporated into the fold. Or rather, Un-Unincorporated.

Later that year I took a trip to South Jersey and was introduced to their extended network of friends which happened to include Jeff and Jack. That was an interesting night as I was witness to an almost perfect duplication of “Speak To Me/Breathe” from Dark Side of The Moon. Most impressive.

Eventually graduation came at which point I wrote in my journal that I would only sporadically see these guys for the next three to four years…but I had a hunch that something big would bring us back together. As my own history has proven, my hunches are rarely wrong.

In closing, it would be misleading to assume that Claire D guided me to the Babeled crew. Rather, there was a force some would say was, and continues to be, stronger than Fate itself. That force was The Starbucks Coffee Corporation.

But that is certainly not a story I can tell…