I don’t know about you, but I’m big into planning. Whether it’s working around the house, restoring a racecar or going to a race, I like to have a game plan. The problem is, I seem to always be overly optimistic as to how long any given task may take. On any given weekend, I may plan to tear down a motor, rebuild a Hewland, organize my tools, install sprinklers in my front and back yards and spend some quality time with the family. In the end, I’m usually just tired and pissed off that I didn’t make my “plan.” Ain’t it great to be “Type A”?
So, I suppose that it shouldn’t have come as any great shock to me, that when Ed McDonough and I set out to cover all the events associated with this year’s Monterey Historics that we would be pushing the edge of the scheduling envelope a bit. Each day we’d launch out the door at 6:00 AM and wouldn’t step foot back into the hotel until well after midnight. For the dyed-in-the-wool car junky, going to Monterey is not unlike dropping a heroin addict in a Tibetian mountaintop poppy field – Too much to do, too little time. Throughout the course of the weekend, we did four days at the track (you gotta be there on setup day, right?), the Concours Italiano, the RM auction, the Brooks auction, the Christie’s auction, the Blackhawk Collection display, a couple of parties and, of course, Pebble Beach. We might have been alright if we hadn’t tried to throw Pebble Beach into the mix.
Our final day started off with Ed and I dragging our miserable asses out of bed, showering and running downstairs to choke down a quick stick-to-the-ribs-and-arteries repast of rubbery pancakes and “mystery melon” balls. The plan was to try and make it out to the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance as early as humanly possible, in order to try and shoot some pictures before the descent of the Mongol hordes. It seems that each year you have to show up earlier and earlier to beat the crowds at Pebble. Next year, I’m planning to leave for Pebble before I go to bed Saturday night.
So, with that delightfully bloated feeling that only a hotel breakfast can create, we climbed aboard my crew-cab “dually” and raced across the Monterey peninsula. However, evil forces were at work.
Despite the early hour, we fought several miles of traffic along the twisty two-lane road that enters Pebble Beach. After some time, we came to a junction that had a prepubescent, junior police explorer directing traffic with all the zeal of a tranquilized zombie. I rolled down my window, “Which way to press parking?”
“Huh?” was young Elliott Ness’s response.
“Press parking… Where members of the press park. Which way?”
“Oh. Up this road.” As he motioned us up one of the two tributaries that he was earnestly protecting.
We shot down this deserted road until we came to another fork, this time being protected by a young female police explorer, who the forces of genetics had not been kind too.
“Press parking?” I asked, craning my head out the window like a giraffe.
“Huh?” was her quick-witted reply.
“Media parking,” I asked again, hoping to find a common language that we could converse in.
“Um… it’s like, down this road.” As she pointed me off to the right.
Now, I should mention that at this point that I was starting to get, shall we say, a little wound up. It was already 7:00 and we hadn’t even seen the parking lot, which I knew would be miles from the concours. By the time we actually made it into the concours, they’d be handing out the Best of Show award and thanking everyone for a grand weekend.
As Ed and I shot down to the end of this road, we saw another multi-road junction with a line of cars at a standstill and… Lo and behold! My good friend Elliott Ness from our first stop! We’d been going in circles. Great!
So now I was really lathered up and ready to give this guy something to remember me by, when two pedestrians, walking along the side of our truck, started frantically motioning for Ed to roll down his window.
“Your tire’s flat,” they said in unision.
Un-&%$*-ing believable! The front tire was completely on the rim.
After much cursing and head-banging against the steering wheel, Ed went to the concours, while I fixed the tire. By the time I was finished wrestling with my 7000 pound truck, Ed was back, and it was time for us to head back to the track for more fun and frivolity. Just another perfectly planned weekend, don’t you think?
