From Carmel, California
[Sorry…no quiz or Top 3 list today…I’ll get back to that next time.]
And the topic for today is…Me
So here’s the deal. I can already tell you the next BC will be Mon. Feb. 28. The start of this trip has been a mess, though today, Sunday, worked out better.
It all began on Saturday when I was supposed to leave Newark for San Francisco at 11:00 a.m. I knew a few days before, though, this wouldn’t be the case because the forecast was calling for winds of up to 60 mph and Newark can’t handle high winds well with as few runways as it has. I arrived at the airport to see we were still on time but I didn’t believe it and sure enough my instincts were right. We left 1 ½ hours late.
I had planned the time of the flight so I could still have daylight to then drive the 105 miles from San Fran to Carmel. With the headwinds, however, we lost more time, instead of making any of it up, and arrived at 4:00 p.m. local rather than the scheduled 2:15. OK, no biggie. The weather was rainy but at least I’d have daylight most of the way. [Kids, when you get older you’ll understand the daylight deal on long drives. It’s just that I hadn’t been down this way in a long time and, frankly, my main thought was hitting deer if the drive was at night.]
So my bag is first off at the claim area and then I look for the rental car location and that’s when I realized San Francisco Airport sucks. The signage is incredibly confusing but after about 10 minutes of wandering around aimlessly I found the AirTran that takes you to the rental car hub. It was about 4:30 p.m. at this point. But then I waited…and waited…and waited…with the occasional message that the AirTran was experiencing minor delays.
Let’s just say what should have been a 5-minute ride to the rental car hub, including waiting time for the freakin’ thing, turned into over 50 minutes. Bottom line, I got on the road about 5:45 p.m., it was dark and rainy.
So I had my trusty Google Maps directions and I knew the drive was broken up into like five, 20-mile segments and the holiday traffic was fine except then on segment three, I see a sign flashing “Heavy snow at the summit.”
What?! I knew the captain said it was 42 when we arrived in San Fran, and I was listening to an all-news station that talked of snow in the ski areas, but I wasn’t headed to the ski areas. I was driving near the coast, headed south.
It was then I glanced at the dashboard which had the air temp and it read 40 so I thought ‘There’s no snow up ahead.’ But then the road, Rt. 17, started heading up…and up…and the air temp was dropping and I thought, ‘I didn’t know there was a mountain here!’ 39…38…37…36…35… ‘Oh [garbled]!’
The car temperature reading hit 35 and the rain started mixing with snow. Then at 34, as I kept going up, it was snowing heavily. Another sign flashed “Extremely Icy.”
Well, I’m having some fun with you. It did indeed snow very heavily for about 10 minutes of my drive but the temperature reading never hit 32 so I felt OK. It’s just that for a long stretch no one was going over 30 mph. Of course at the same time it must have been a beautiful drive, only it was freakin’ dark!
Then the road goes down and you hit the valley on Rt. 1 and now it’s about 7:30, near Santa Cruz, and it’s just two lanes and all I see are Mexican bars along the road and a ton of signs warning of drunk drivers and I’m thinking, ‘[Garbled], it’s still raining hard, I can’t see well, and some drunken [begins with ‘M’] is going to hit me head on,’ it being a holiday weekend and the partying starting early, you see.
Well, I finally pulled into Carmel around 8:15 p.m., when I thought I’d be there about 6:00. I check into my hotel and the room is the pits. Circa 1970. No three-pronged outlets, for starters, and I’m working on this column off the freakin’ luggage rack, if you can imagine. OK, it’s a shelf I put my luggage on but it has just enough room to fit the laptop and I can barely fit a chair in front of it.
But I am in beautiful, gorgeous Carmel, however, and I knew I was just about three blocks from Clint Eastwood’s Hog’s Breath Inn so by 9:00 (remember, it’s midnight back home where I started this adventure) I was situated at the bar. Johnny Mac, I did indeed have the “Dirty Harry Dinner,” chopped sirloin, mashed potatoes and veggies. Delicious. And I had more than one “Hog’s Breath Pale Ale” so I was back on board. The place is great. A few pictures of Clint (who most of you will recall was mayor of Carmel awhile back), and some terrific cartoons it seems a local guy did of him and the Inn. On the television at this hour was the NBA All-Star Game Slam Dunk Contest. I really wasn’t watching, but I’m assuming it was on tape at that hour and ask me if I give a flying [garbled] that Blake Griffin leaped over a car for his trick. That’s just incredibly stupid, given the guy already missed one season due to injury. Trust me; if on Monday you’re talking to your cube mates about Blake Griffin’s slam dunk, you really need to get a life. The only thing that is important these days is the Carmelo Anthony trade talks, typed your editor, mischievously.
By the way, I also don’t give a damn about Bahrain. But I digress.
Thankfully, after all of Saturday’s rain, Sunday dawned sunny and bright and by 7:00 a.m. I was strolling along the streets of Carmel, looking for newspapers. Geezuz. No one around here gets up early! I mean I had every right to be sleeping in after a stressful day…and more than one Pale Ale…but with the time change and all I was ready to roll. Anyway, it took forever just to find a place open for coffee. Never did find a paper joint. [You see, I hate the Web. Give me a hard newspaper every day over the alternative.]
Well, by 10:00 a.m. I hit the 17-mile drive and it’s been at least 12 years since I’ve done it, and that was part of a trip where I wasn’t staying in the area so I remember just whipping around, rather than really enjoying it. Today, though, I took my time and totally fell in love with the place…long walks at the various stops (especially at Spanish Bay…I wish I was staying at the Inn there), and so I took a good three hours doing the entire loop (including the obligatory two pints at the Pebble Beach Tap Room, where I caught some of the Daytona 500 and the beginning of the final round at Riviera).
Then, having returned to my hotel, I went down the block to a cool spot, Brophy’s, for some chow (a delicious bratwurst sandwich and, err, a pint) and I was watching the two noted sporting events when I get a message on my cellphone that StocksandNews is down! Thank god Dr. Bortrum emailed me, because he had heard from my Uncle C. who couldn’t read that other column I do at his usual Sunday sitting.
After all these years you have a pretty good idea of my discipline but I’m totally dependent on the freakin’ tech staff and they blew it big time. I told them to put together an iPad app and in doing so they crashed the site but didn’t know it because they didn’t check to see if the thing was still up!
Alas, I got back to my hotel room around 4:00 p.m., took what I thought would be a nap, and woke up at 9:00 p.m.! So here we are.
And here’s the deal with this trip. Normally I plop myself in one location for a few days and can get into a routine. This one is going to be different. Monday I head to Big Sur; Tuesday, Santa Barbara; Wednesday, Santa Monica; Thursday, Laguna Beach; and then Friday and Saturday, San Diego. There is a ton of driving in between, including long side trips to the Nixon and Reagan libraries, so there is also major down time the entire way. That other column I do take’s precedence so this is a long-winded way of saying Bar Chat will resume next Monday (posted late Sunday night, hopefully). I didn’t come all this way to spend most of the trip in a hotel room. And that’s a memo.
I didn’t realize that Bill Murray got some key swing tips from Vijay Singh on the range at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which is why Murray held up his end of the bargain in winning the pro-am title with winner D.A. Points. Vijay is a strange guy. He is a surly SOB around the press (which goes all the way back to the way they treated him when he was involved in a cheating incident in his Asian Tour days), but he is also said to be a super friend, if you can get into his circle, and is extremely generous with advice. He turns 48 this week and it would be fun to see him win again. He’s obviously suddenly playing well, witness his effort at Riviera, won by Aaron Baddely, the third PGA Tour title for him, as 51-year-old Freddie Couples stumbled.
But I’m sitting at the bar at Brophy’s, watching Riviera and Daytona, when I couldn’t help but comment to one of the guys there when Aaron Baddely’s wife was first shown, “Wow, what an awful chin job!” What the heck was she thinking?! I had just seen a story on the local NBC affiliate back in New York on chin jobs, for both males and females, and count me out on that one, sports fans. Mrs. Baddely looks like a freakin’ witch! I mean I can do better things with Silly Putty then the doctor did with her. Just sayin’.
Meanwhile, how about 20-year-old Trevor Bayne winning at Daytona?! Goodness gracious. The previous youngest winner was then 25-year-old Jeff Gordon. They say that Bayne shaves just once a week, for crying out loud, but most importantly, this was his second Sprint Cup start, ever! And I thought it was great that he was driving a Wood Brothers car. If you’re of a certain age, they’re all you heard about back in the days of Richard Petty and David Pearson. The Wood Brothers’ dominance. I can’t believe they hadn’t won at Daytona since 1976.
As for College Basketball, my dream game, San Diego State-BYU, is fast approaching and the Aztecs have won out since their only loss to the Cougars about a month ago. SDSU doesn’t play again until Saturday’s huge contest, but BYU has a toughie against Colorado State beforehand.
And when the rankings come out on Monday, just where do you put San Diego State? What a week it turned out to be. It started with Kansas losing to Kansas State, hours after they were selected No. 1 in the AP poll. Then this weekend, No. 2 Ohio State lost to Purdue, 76-63; No. 3 Texas lost to Nebraska, 70-67; and No. 4 Pitt lost to a surging St. John’s team, 60-59 at the Garden. San Diego State, should they defeat BYU and then at least get to their conference tournament final, certainly deserves a No. 1 seed come March Madness.
Just a few other contests of note this weekend. West Virginia had a nice win over No. 7 Notre Dame, 72-58, and Virginia Tech suffered a devastating loss to Virginia, 61-54, to kill their NCAA tourney hopes, at least in the eyes of your editor.
Oh, and my Wake Forest Demon Deacons went to 1-11 in ACC play in losing to Florida State, 84-66. We didn’t cover the spread and I lost $67,500 on the game, bringing my cumulative losses this season on Wake alone to $568,000.
A University of Cambridge study has found that sheep are not as dumb as we think they are! They just play dumb on TV. You see, friends, sheep actually have the brainpower of a monkey, and even some humans! Yup. They not only respond when you call their name, but they can identify food in the old blue and yellow bucket trick. I mean I have a real hard time with that one myself! So the lowly sheep could be rocketing up the All-Species List…whenever I get around to doing that. [I’m afraid next time I do it I’ll lose any remaining shred of credibility I have, forever. But I still see no way “Man” sneaks into the top 100.]
Len Lesser, “Uncle Leo” on “Seinfeld,” died the other day. He was 88. Talk about a resume. He appeared on “Get Smart,” “That Girl,” “The Munsters,” “The Monkees,” “ER,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” and also the flicks “Birdman of Alcatraz” and “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” a favorite of us Clint fans.
You know who’s a jerk? Tony Kornheiser of “Pardon the Interruption” fame. Citing a Washington Post reporter, Kornheiser said a fix was in to get Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the pole at Daytona. If he ever shows his face in pit row, he’ll be pummeled.
Former NFL player Dave Duerson died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the chest. He was just 50. Duerson’s family is donating his brain to the group doing work on chronic traumatic encephalopathy for NFL players. It’s all about the cumulative effect of the concussions these guys absorb. It’s really sickening, and I still say it threatens the sport itself in our lifetime. We will witness the death of a player on the field one of these days and I’m not so sure what fan reaction will be then. I’m not too sure what mine will be. Hell, I wrote the other day how scary it is that Pittsburgh Penguins great Sidney Crosby still hasn’t returned from a January concussion (at least last I saw).
You know who else died? John Strauss, age 90. Strauss composed the theme music for the great comedy “Car 54, Where Are You?” Granted, the show that starred Fred Gwynne and Joe E. Ross might not hold up well to today’s comedy standards (whatever they are), but I enjoyed the re-runs as a kid. It ran from 1961 to 1963.
The lyrics were written by Nat Hiken, the show’s creator.
There’s a holdup in the Bronx,
Brooklyn’s broken out in fights.
There’s a traffic jam in Harlem
That’s backed up to Jackson Heights.
There’s a scout troop short a child,
Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild.
Car 54, where are you?
And former New York Mets manager Joe Frazier passed away. He was 88. Frazier managed the team to 86 wins in 1976, but when management refused to go after free agent talent in ’77, with Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman then being traded mid-year and Jon Matlack shipped out after the season, the Mets floundered big time and Frazier was let go after starting the ’77 campaign 15-30. He was succeeded by Joe Torre, who also sucked, but Torre is a good [someone who butter’s people up] and wouldn’t you know, he ended up with the Yankees when all was said and done and the rest is history.
That’s all for now, folks. Both the big and little hand on the clock just hit 12:00. We’ll resume our regularly scheduled programming in one week, though maybe check in around Thursday morning to see if I’ve found the time for more Pulitzer-caliber material.
Like I don’t have the time to write of a fatal shark attack that got zero press outside Australia last week! Yup. Happened on Thursday near the aptly named Coffin Bay. From the Sydney Morning Herald:
“Police say the diver (Peter Clarkson) was returning to the surface when two sharks, believed to be great whites, attacked him.
“The skipper on the boat saw the attack. He reportedly told ambulance officers: ‘I saw the beast come up and take him. There’s no way he could have survived.’
“A spokeswoman for South Australian Ambulance Service said paramedics were on the jetty when the boat returned and the skipper was treated for shock.
“South Australian dive operator Leon Stewart said he had heard ‘Chinese whispers’ that Mr. Clarkson had an encounter ‘about three or four weeks ago’ with a great white, while other divers had reported an unusually large number of great whites in the area.
“ ‘There were 17-19 [great white] sharks spotted near the Neptunes [outer islands] last week,’ he said. ‘That’s high volume. We were a bit concerned about the number of pointers, and then this happens.’”
Holy Toledo! 17-19 in one area?!!! How the heck am I supposed to go to sleep now?!
