I’m not the first to observe that time passes more quickly as you get older. I didn’t realize until the day before the Pebble Beach Concours that this year marked the 30th‘Monterey Week’ I had attended.
How different an experience it was in 1989 compared to 2019 can be easily be imagined and I will go into more detail on that in a future post. First and foremost, it was a ‘Monterey Weekend’ 30 years ago. That it has become far longer, busier and more hectic is certainly to be expected, not least because back in ’89 I was not working in the collector car field. It was still that now faraway time when I attended all events such as this for pleasure alone.
And it certainly isn’t that I don’t still derive a great deal of pleasure from what has turned into my busiest week of work in the year. This August I was more obligated than ever before. I had my annual co-emcee duties at the Carmel-by-the-Sea Concours on the Avenue on Tuesday and ended with my second annual appearance on the ramp during the prize giving at The Lodge on Sunday.
In between, I had clients looking to purchase cars at the various auctions around town; a Sports Car Market Insider’s Seminar to moderate at Gooding & Company and two other seminars to moderate in the Pebble Beach Forum series; one titled “A Bright Future for the Past: A Conversation with Tomorrow’s Restorers” featured a panel consisting of internationally renowned restorer Paul Russell, appraiser and writer Dave Kinney and four McPherson College automotive restoration students.
The second was my fourth in the series in the Forum, “Assess & Caress with Donald Osborne & Jay Leno”. Our topic this year was “Replica, Re-creation or Revival —When Should What’s Gone Stay Gone?” A fun and serious discussion on the nature of creating cars that are lost, were never made in the first place or cars that may be too valuable today for actual use.
Filling out the week was shooting almost two dozen videos for Collier Auto Media at the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance, Bonhams auction and on the field of the Pebble Beach Concours on Sunday morning.
I also had several clients with cars on display in the Concours for whom I provided moral and emotional support. A bonus was the pleasure I felt at the end of the day with some going home with lovely hardware. But, while I was more obligated than ever before, it was in a few small, relaxing and renewing pleasures that this year set itself apart.
First and foremost, I realized for the first time that as it was literally impossible to do everything and to be everywhere, I could actually choose at the end of a very long day on my feet that the evening could be a quiet one. Returning to our rented house in a quiet part of Pebble Beach, with the fog slowly coming in and a lit fireplace providing welcome warmth, I could gather myself and reflect on and better appreciate the wonders of the day.
This is not the Monterey Week for everyone. If it’s your first time, or even your fifth or tenth, there would still be too many experiences to be had to consider missing any opportunity. But it is heartening that after three decades of Monterey, I still find so much to do and I’m able to make the choices that make those events in which I do participate mean even more to me.