All Revved Up and Nowhere to Go

Everyone’s talking about Bugattis and Ferraris. Throaty engines dominate the typical serene streets of Carmel by-the-Sea for the annual Concours d’Elegance. Sitting on the patio of the renowned Dorris Day hotel, a 40-something male in pink chino shorts and a grey cashie sweater, with his perfectly non-descript well-appointed wife and their mini McLaren baby says - with all the soul of a J. Crew ad “It feels like Santa Fe and Telluride and La Jolla - the shopping I mean.” My heart sinks. He’s talking about holy ground here - Miller, Kerouac, Jeffers - and now a curated reduction to one trendy restaurant and his wife’s “yummy lunch and luxury consignment shop.” Wait stop. The trees! The 1920’s library! The jagged coastline! The library! His wife orders and asks the server for her lunch to be “yummy.”

“She’s such a good sleeper” she extols to her family 4-top about their little carrothead. Do they give awards for that? And then the conversation inevitably turns to money. There’s the plans for the ranch and the home on the Cape, and the trip to New York and the this and the that and suddenly all I can hear is the sound of Pink Floyd’s cash register. I floor it to the Mission - Clint’s place - outside with the sheep and their wooly thread-count hoping the natural serenity will restore my faith in something - and it does, until the man behind me backs into my chair, revs his mouth about the poor service and drifts a fat puffy fume of cigar smoke into my lane.