My Great America: An Introduction

Who am I?
My name is Drew.  I was born on Long Island in a small community about fifty miles from New York City, where I lived for a number of years.  I now live in Patchogue, NY - about five miles from the house I grew up in - and work at Cornucopia Natural Foods in Sayville - about two miles from that same house.

When I was a lad, I would ride my bicycle everywhere.  I rode it to school, I rode it to the gym, I rode it to my friends' houses.  As I got older, I became more interested in riding for the sake of exploring new places and began to ride all over Long Island.  Finding new and interesting spots - particularly away from civilization and engulfed in natural beauty - became one of my favorite past times.  I began to ride further and further until I found one of my favorite ways to spend a day was to simply ride out into the unknown until the sun went down.  But wherever I went, I always had one big idea in the back of my mind; biking across the entirety of the United States of America, from coast to coast.

Lots of people think that idea sounds really cool, but there are also a lot of people who ask "why the hell would you want to do that?"  Well, the USA is a really large collection of different states, different people, and different landscapes that are all connected as one country.  And as a socially conscious and politically minded citizen of that country, I feel both connected to every part of it while also painfully clueless about the vast majority of it.  Outside of New York, I only really know what I've seen on TV and in movies.  As a New Yorker, I am legally obliged to feel like I know everything about everything, but in truth, I know that I really don't know America very well, at all.  So what better way to get to know this country than to travel in such an intimately connected fashion?

Not to mention I'd be doing one of my favorite activities, every day.  For many hours a day.  In fact, this would be another one of my favorite activities; challenging myself both physically and mentally.  Biking across the country would not be an easy task.  Aside from the toll on my body - and mind you, I'm not some physical superman - travelling across the country alone, on a bicycle, would require a great deal of planning, on-the-spot problem solving, and psychological fortitude.  Accomplishing such a task would test me in a drastic way and allow me to prove something to myself about my survival skills as a human being on a multitude of levels.

So what does INFRA have to do with this?
The store that I manage, Cornucopia Natural Foods, is a proud member of the Independent Natural Food Retailers Association (INFRA) whose self-described concept is...

Independent Natural Food Retailers Association (INFRA) is a purchasing cooperative owned and governed by natural and organic food retailers of all sizes working together to forge a sustainable future. INFRA facilitates member collaboration to strengthen independents' position in the marketplace.

Basically, we are all independently-operating members who share our best practices and work together so that we all can succeed in a decades-old industry that is flourishing more than ever while facing mounting competition from large-scale corporate entries into the market.  We're a bunch of Davids teaming up to compete with the Goliaths who are overtaking the Natural Foods industry.

Cornucopia has been a member almost since I first started working at the store - first as a dishwasher, then a deli clerk, stock person, grocery manager... and all the way up the line to the top.  Cornucopia took me from a broke college kid in an entry-level position to a successful business manager and fiscally-stable homeowner over the course of a decade.  Just as my story there is the kind of stuff The American Dream is made of, so to is the story of Cornucopia.

In 1976, Lynne Dougherty opened the store as a hole-in-the-wall shop to cater to those, like her, who dealt with food allergies and needed to eat clean, carefully chosen, natural foods.  The store had it's ups and downs, but it has grown to be the premier health food store on Long Island and is now operating at four times the size of the original shop and servicing the community with just about every angle of holistic living you can think of; dry goods, fresh produce, refrigerated and frozen foods, vitamins, supplements, natural health and beauty aids, pet foods, household supplies, and our incomparable deli and juice bar.  Cornucopia has stood it's ground for forty years and beaten corporate competition at every turn.  Cornucopia's story, Lynne's story, and my own, are all The American Dream.  INFRA and it's member stores are that same story, scattered all across the country.

And that brings me to my diet...
A tattoo artist once nicknamed me "The Vegan Warrior" because of my affinity for extreme athletic activities and my hardcore vegan diet - along with a habit of getting tattoos inadvertently in the most painful areas of the body.  I eat a very strict, very clean, and very healthy diet which I have dubbed The Forager Diet* - it's like eating Paleo, except vegan too.  Tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, lots of nuts and seeds, mostly raw/living foods, and plenty of niche items which one rarely finds outside of health food stores.  Growing up, I was never very healthy or physically impressive and as I've adopted healthier dietary choices like these, I've become a healthier, stronger, and more well-balanced individual.  I firmly believe that this has been an essential part of what has made me capable of achieving my goals in terms of physical fitness, personal growth, and even developing and following-through on good business practices.

I knew when planning this cross-country trip that I would not be able to accomplish my goal if I had to abandon this lifestyle.  So I began to plot my precise course across the country by planning stops at health food stores in my path.  The first thing I thought to do was to pull up a directory of every INFRA store in the country and start plugging them in along my map.  I reached out to many of the store owners who I had already met through being a part of INFRA and started planning my visits more in-depth when I realized I should turn this into something cool to share with the world.  Something to show everyone the awesome stores across the country that are a part of this awesome organization.  So here we are!

This blog will focus primarily on my visits to the INFRA member stores across the country in an effort to encourage those who read it to check out and support these stores.  My Great America has been built on the hard-working independents and entrepreneurs who have created businesses that don't just make money, but service a community and help their cities to grow.  Healthy eating, natural living, and sustainable environmental practices are what I believe to be the core of that growth.  INFRA stores embody that ethos and that is the America that I hope to find on my journey!

*The name "Forager Diet" was in response to my good friend Tim's "Predator Diet" which featured eating numerous pounds of meat per day.