I thought I’d do something different this year and write about Monterey for those who have never gone and have no idea what Monterey is about. I’ll post lots of pictures as the week unfolds. I’m going to write this in real time as much as possible. Hopefully I can then be more interactive through the whole adventure. It’s now a few days before the chaos begins and I can sit down and write some of the background.

First I have to back up and start from the beginning. Once you make the decision to go to Monterey, the first thing you have to do is nail down your accommodations. Hotels go fast. I did my search on Expedia back in March and I was down to two stars before rooms became available. Two stars suck. Two stars means there is an 80% chance you’re going to use a tube TV. Oh, there were the $1,000 a night places, but that’s fine if you don’t plan to do anything but remain sick in your room or something and need the opulent room splendor to feel better. If you’re going to blow beats after ingesting what wasn’t caviar, you may do it in a $1,000 a night room on the finest possible toilet in Monterey. I’ve learned that with Expedia, subtract one star no matter what they tell you. I also cross reference new places on TripAdvisor.com to see what guests had to say. If the word “nasty,” or “rash,” or “killed it with a shoe,” appears anywhere in the review, I move onto the next selection.

When it comes to rooms, it’s the doubles that go first because so many people share rooms to split the cost and want to avoid spooning with their mechanic. Even a Super 8 will go for $200+ a night, which isn’t exactly Super. I digress, but do you ever notice that whatever adjective are in the name of anything it’s the exact opposite of what they really are? Careful Movers = breaks everything, Speedy Glass = can’t get your car done for two days, Minute Lube = is not, Best Western is never best or even all that Western, Burger King = not only is it not king, it’s never made it through the palace gate, and so on? So, Super 8 will never, ever be super or 8 anything. At best, the name is merely a wish.

I’ve got to admit, the hotels at Monterey are one of the biggest turnoffs because they genuinely feel like a rip-off. You just helped pay for the new roof all on your own. Rooms are more than twice the normal going rate so book early! In my case I booked two rooms in anticipation of friends making a last minute decision to come. Turns out, I was able to get that room to someone in no time.

Lots to do in preparation for Monterey: First I had to decide what car to bring. My original plan was to fly in and just rent a car and not deal with one of my own cars. I then decided to go on the Lamborghini Giro, and therefore the Lamborghini would be the tool of choice for the week. This meant I had to make arrangements for a daily driver and get the Lamborghini ready for the trip. This also meant I had to get the front hood clear mask replaced on the SV after hitting either a beetle or humming bird at a very high speed last month. VERY high speed. No, VERY, VERY high speed. I mean really X&#$* high speed. Fast enough to reset my watch. I was far from any other cars and saw something small and black fly from right to left before it was turned to nothing but a slight sickening yet brief noise. Whatever it was didn’t go through to the paint, but it sure left a long mark in the clear mask. I’m glad that stuff was on there. Still it was $736.00 to fix the trunk lid, one square flat section of clear mask! Friends think I was gouged by more than whatever I hit. Ouch! Whatever I hit is probably very pleased.

Friends are driving one of my daily drives down to Monterey while we transport the SV with the other cars and I’ll fly down on Monday morning to receive the cars. The transport will load up around ten and have a full day and a half, almost two days to drive 850 miles with a nice easy arrival at San Jose sometime Monday morning. We’re loading up our cars on Saturday, August 7 right after Exotics at Redmond Town Center. On the transport will be a Ferrari 360, an Ultimate Aero (the one that set the world record) my LP670-4 SV, a Carrera GT, and possibly one other car. After we load our cars on the transport I’ll have another day to get ready before I fly down to San Jose. I’ll spend Monday night at the Fairmont and possibly have dinner along Santana Row. The others will pick up their cars on either Wednesday or Thursday at the Fairmont and head over to Monterey. Me, I’m heading north Tuesday morning to participate in the Giro along with Vic who co-hosts Exotics at RTC with me.

Now for my plug about the Fairmont. There is no finer hotel staff anywhere, period. I’ve never met hotel employees more committed to getting it right and taking absolute pride in their work. They are a terrific bunch of people and a Fairmont is ALWAYS my first choice. It’s the best!

Monterey logistics leading up to this week were a nightmare as usual for this kind of event. There are about twenty friends going, all at different times, all for different reasons, different events, different hotels, some driving cars, some flying, others transporting, etc., some showing, some not, some heading south to LA, then driving north in the Stampede, and all of us had to go on a spreadsheet so we knew where to find each other and when. We needed a wedding planner. We actually had a pre-Monterey meeting with most of the attendees just to coordinate as much as possible also to help first timers get some sense of what to expect. Google Docs was a huge help. It started with a list of events on a spreadsheet with details about the event. We then listed who was going and the contact info. We also have a list of who’s where and how they got there. Everyone entered their own information including various event. It was a terrific tool.

One group of three friends are driving to Monterey from Seattle, directly to the coast, then following 101 all the way to Leggett where they will jump on Highway 1 or “SR 1,” and as another friend put it, “...where they will spend the rest of their lives driving.” SR 1 is a spectacular drive, but extremely slow, and downright tedious after a while. They leave Monday and plan to arrive Wednesday night. If they get stuck behind an RV they can add a few extra days to that estimate. They are taking a 850 mile drive down I5 and turning it into a 1,100 mile drive by hitting the coast, plus they are driving extremely slow roads. Google Maps says it will take them 23 hours and 50 minutes or an average speed, according to Google, of 46 MPH. I seriously doubt they will go that fast. I’m guessing that with typical construction, dreaded chip-seal projects, stoplights, RVs, it’s closer to 30 hours of driving. Birds migrate south in less time. Whales could do it in less time. Worse, if the fog rolls in (its fog season) along SR 1 they will all be blowing chunks every ten miles while dreaming about straight roads. My advices is to skip the sardine snacks on that stretch. I just looked at the weather next week for Fort Brag and fog is in the forecast every morning.

Much of SR 1 is along some of the most spectacular cliffs anywhere in the world and it’s a drive worth doing in your lifetime, but horrible for back seat passengers. The other problem is not all of SR 1 has guardrails. Go off one of those and you’ll beat a Bugatti in acceleration. Grazing lands go straight to the cliff’s edge and I’m wondering how many cows die of sudden yet unexpected cliff rash. Forget that, for anyone riding in the back seat, you feel like you’re riding the dreaded “Mixer” at the county fair. Pass! I’m flying.

The very hub of Monterey is the big Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance classic car show on Sunday, August 15 which brings many of the finest and most valuable cars in the world. This is the focal point to everything. Concourse is a rather formal event with the economic extremes in attendance and all the pretentiousness to go with it. You have to go in with the mindset of people watching as a part of the show, but make no assumptions. Sometimes the scruffy looking dude who was dressed by his blind sister is the billionaire. Arrogant ****** are trucked in by the ton but in most cases, they are only pretending to be important so never mind and keep on enjoying the show. I’m 100% certain that the king of all ******, the one who’d make it in Guinness if you could somehow measure it, is definitely in the crowd somewhere. Part of the side show fun is picking him out.

In the days and hours leading up to that show on Sunday is a giant list of activities from auto auctions to classic races, brand and club parties, drives, gatherings of all types, all centered around that one event at Pebble Beach. In other words ‘Monterey’ isn’t just one thing, its a giant list of menu items around a single main course. The real fun begins Thursday morning when the Pebble Beach cars are seen driving in a slow parade in Carmel. It’s really a lot of fun. You actually get to see the old classics running on the streets. They all park in the center of town giving you a chance to get close and look inside. Everyone is very respectful and people know better not to touch a damn thing.

This year, I’m participating in two events with my green Lamborghini LP670-4 SV. The first is the two night, two day drive event put on by Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. called the Giro. This event begins on Tuesday in Calistoga, CA and ends in Monterey on Thursday night at the Monterey Aquarium. The second event is Concorso Italiano which takes place on Friday, August 15. They are the only two formal events that involve my car.

I will be the first to get down to Monterey to meet the cars as they come off the Transport. Most transport companies require someone to check the cars on and off the truck. This sounds simple enough, but it’s actually a process because every little scratch has to be noted somewhere. We’re using Reliable Carriers on this trip and they have a terrific reputation, even though the name has me extremely worried. These trucks are much longer than an average semi because the loads are not all that heavy in semi terms with five cars so they typically have larger living quarters for the drivers who often wait for events from start to finish rather than chase down another load. Reliable has somewhere around 200 trucks in the fleet. Most are owner-operators and I’ll bet most of them are at Monterey. If you’re as thrilled about semis as you are cars, it’s the place to be and they look like they have just as much fun as anyone.

Packing was a pain in the *** this time because of the limited space in the Lamborghini and because I’m doing the Giro first. Duffel bags are definitely the way to go this time. One set of clothes has to go with the car on the Giro, the other has to go in the daily drive for Monterey. This wasn’t that easy because of the limited space in the Lamborghini. Also with Vic Tiscareno joining me on the Giro, we’d both need to pack light for the Giro. Vic is a Ferrari guy and has a beautiful Scuderia so he will be spending a few days on the dark side. Hopefully he survives and nobody tattoos a Lamborghini logo on his *** in the middle of the night.

The Giro is an event that Lamborghini puts on every year and it’s always different and it always ends in Monterey. Looking at the itinerary, I see we’re in for a full couple of days. This event is not cheap and from what I hear Lamborghini goes to the extreme to make it fun.

 

It’s now Saturday morning and the SV is packed and ready to be loaded in the transport. We had a 40% chance of rain and there is only a slight chance they would be right about that. I’ve never read a weather report that was so vague for this morning. We’d normally call off Exotics at Redmond Town Center, but because the Ultimate Aero that set the world speed record will be there, we don’t want to disappoint.

Most people have no concept of how impressive that speed record actually is. It’s not a matter of just throwing a lot of horsepower onto a car and heading down a road. Look at every other speed record anywhere near those speeds and what do they all have in common? They were all achieved on extremely wide surfaces. As you get faster, the roads get narrower and even a slight curve can feel like a wheel-screeching hairpin. The margin for error decreases to the point where if anything goes wrong at all, the debris field would look like a recycling truck just exploded.

To get a car to go in a straight line at those speeds, you’ve got to have very precise aerodynamics and wind tunnel test them to the point where you have some idea that the car will stick and not become airborne from a minor tar snake. So now if you design too much down force into the equation, you could have serious tire problems at those speeds. Bugatti set their speed record on a track and so did the others in recent years. SSC did it on an actual road, complete with irregularities, winds, curves, and the potential for wondering coyotes. While Bugatti may have recently reclaimed the speed record after almost three years, SSC still has the bigger set of nuts by a long shot.

unus Kahn and Jarrod Shelby dropped off the record setting Ultimate Aero at my house last night and we decided to just leave it in the trailer because there was a forecast for rain in Seattle like that’s something new. We got up at 6:00 AM, checked weather, posted that Exotics at Redmond Town Center was on that morning, offloaded the UA and headed into Redmond with the SV. We had a much larger turnout than expected and as usual, I was wearing my traditional safety vest, helping park cars, as I normally do when someone drives up in a older exotic with lots of attitude because in his eyes, I’m just a parking attendant. It’s kind of true actually, but I do it because I’m having fun.

The Reliable Carriers truck showed up on time and seemed to live up to their name so far. The driver was extremely nice and we were more than eager to help him load up. Their job is not easy. They have to do a lot of hand work just to get ready for the cars and it’s physically demanding. All of the cars went smoothly except for the Ultimate Aero which is wider than the rails on the loading platform. We knew we’d be fine once we were in the truck, but getting it in was a huge undertaking. We had to use stacked boards to raise the tires above the lip to get past a hinge in the lift gate. That took four of us. It was so tight that we decided to change our plans and chase the truck down to San Jose for the offload. I was to fly down on Monday, but instead, the three of us are in the car driving down and have to get ahead of our truck. We raced back to the house and got the last of the packing done and hit the road just three hours behind the truck.

We’re now in central Oregon and no sign of the truck yet. We decided that we’re going to take I5 as far south as Grant’s Pass then head over to 101 and go south from there. We’re spending the night at the highest star rated hotel in Grant’s Pass, the fabulous Holiday Inn Express. It lives up to two of the three words in the name.

 

We’re now in Grant’s Pass at the not so fabulous Shilo Inn. Every other place was full by the time we got around to making reservations somewhere. Included in the price of our kennel is a Continental Breakfast, which again is neither. The term now means dry toast, stale cereal, and something that resembles juice and coffee. I’ve not been down to eat yet but I’ll bet there are hard boiled eggs and pastries cut in half. Somehow cutting them in half is supposed to make you eat less and it makes them seem more valuable.

The room was freezing cold this morning and when I turned on the heat there was that all familiar smell of burning dust, hair, and skin flakes. It smells like scorched coffee or burnt animal. Just one of the added features of this wonderful place. Oh yes, it was two stars and had a tube TV.

From here we’re heading over to the Coast as we have to be in San Jose by 8:00 AM tomorrow to receive the cars. Our plan is to hit Mystery of Trees, Eureka Old Town, and Avenue of the Giants on the way down. Should be a good drive.

 

WOW thanks for such a well written & detailed write up. My guess is you must be a journalist. Looking forward to the rest of the story.

 

Thanks, I'm not a journalist, just a car guy.

 

I've spent some time in Big Sur and in Monterey. I've had a lot of friends that went to school out there.

Some things I think that are cool are Post Ranch and Nepenthe restaurant.

Great write up and impressive garage! Thanks for posting.

 

Day 2

We made it to San Jose last night around 10:00 PM. We made only two stops of any length. Once at “Trees of Mystery” which is about as cheezy as it gets and another stop for lunch in the old town section of Eureka. One of the trees on the walk is listed as over 3,000 years old. There is this 50’ Paul Bunyan statue out front along with Babe the Blue Ox. They have hidden microphones and a giant speaker up high on Paul and someone sits in the building and converses with tourists. It’s really cheezy but they do a good job of entertaining people. It’s one of those stops where you could easily pass and never ever really feel like you missed something yet, there is something about it that entertains me.

We made a few other short stops along the way to eat and get gas (old joke I know). One was a stop at a Safeway where I bought every possible nasty thing I could find as a snack for my friends driving Highway 1. I dropped off their snacks at a little store in Leggett along with a note. I then sent them an e-mail and text to make sure they stop to pick up my little gift for the drive. I figure if they are going to blow beats, why not give them something worth blowing.

It was about ten hours of driving from Grant’s Pass to San Jose, but what a great drive. I still think Avenue of the Giants would be an amazing place to take the cars, but there is no margin for error and there are just too many RVs to make it fun in the summer. If you hit one of those trees at high speed it wouldn’t so much a shake a pinecone loose. The largest we saw was 19 feet in diameter and 300’ tall. I can’t imagine running into one. I think when you hit a concrete wall you sort of have this expectation that it will be hard, but with a tree, we feel cheated because we expect it to give a little, to knock something loose. Not here. I doubt you’d scuff up the bark.

We didn’t see any interesting cars along the route and not a single car looking like it had anything to do with Monterey. We thought we’d run into the Pebble Beach contestants that are on a driving trip from my home town of Kirkland, WA down to Pebble Beach. The oldest car driven down is a 1902 Mercedes. They left on Tuesday morning, August 3 and are driving 250 mile a day stretches with no freeway miles anywhere. We never saw them in route.

The driver wants to offload the cars at 8 AM this morning so I’ll have about 24 hours to play around San Jose before heading up to the Giro. I’ll write more after we offload the cars.

 

Maybe I missed it, but what car did you drive down?
Good story... Hit us with some stats and pics...
Top speed?
Did anyone pass you?
Tickets?
Road kill?

 

Awesome write-up.. I might not be saying much but I'm following!

 

Thanks for the write up. Some times its refreshing to hear from a car guy as opposed to a journalist

 

We drove my Lexus LS460L. It's got the best back seat available for our third passenger. It reclines, etc., so it's a great ride and it's a nice car for distance. No impressive top speed in this car and we didn't see anything exotic on the way down. Not a thing. Cops were everywhere and it seemed like they were close enough to shout at each other. It's nuts. Forget speeding on 101.

As for road kill, there was enough to keep a fast food chain in burgers for a year.

 

Funny you should say that that's what motivated me to write something. Before I had my cars, I was looking for writing from actual owners so I had so idea of what the experience was really like. It was hard to find anything anywhere.

 

We just completed day 3 and it’s now early in the morning on day 4. We were up early yesterday morning in preparation for receiving the cars. Waiting across the street from the front drive of the Fairmont was the Reliable Carriers truck ready to offload.





The Ultimate Aero is an extremely tight fit and almost two inches wider than a Murcielago at 82”. The width of the deck to the four inch rails is about 83” so the Murcielago can make it off without too much problem but you have to inch it out. The UA, because it’s so wide has to be lifted over the rail height on both sides using several 2X4s and even then it’s an extremely difficult process because of how the body flairs past the tires. You literally inch the cars out of the truck and it’s not a process undertaken by the carrier and instead he directs you to drive it off and nothing is more unnerving than to back off onto a platform with a 7’ drop. The entire process went very smoothly.










We had to spend about an hour getting the cars cleaned up and ready for the week. Not much else happened during the day, but it was nice to not be moving for a day. We did make a quick trip to the mall and that was uneventful. Junus and I both had a lot of e-mail to catch up on and just pin down plans for the week at Monterey.

This is a good time to explain how this all works. I’m fairly active on a handful of forums, some I mostly just read, others I post rather often depending on the topic and the level of discussion. When I wanted to write something in real time, I knew I’d have a very limited amount of time and there are actually three others who work behind the scenes. It starts with my assistant Kim who’s been terrific at coordinating all the schedules, reservations, logistics, and is an overall pleasant person. After working with me for almost thirteen years now, she still makes me look good with others around me. Every guy I know wants to marry her but she’s already married and has been for a long time. A typical conversation after first introduction, “Is she...?” “Yea, she’s married...”



Second, we wanted to get as much content on this drive as possible and not just one or two pictures. Christian D and Tyler W are working behind the scenes on this side of it. I upload all photos (and soon we will have some video) to a central site and they go through all of it and filter out the relevant pictures. This saves me a ton of time so I can focus on writing. This is not easy managing this many forums and without their help this would all be a lot less content. A giant thanks to all three for making this work this week.

Now, back to the story.

As usual, the Fairmont San Jose was extremely professional and knew exactly what cars needed to go where and why. They really know their stuff and can’t do enough for exotic owners. They just can’t do enough for you and this is every Fairmont, so if you’re a car guy traveling with that special car, or want to see incredible cars, go to a Fairmont. Within car circles, it’s where I see the most interesting stuff. They didn’t pay me to say this either. It’s just an amazing place when it comes to customer service.







Meanwhile, the wonderful experience at the Fairmont is in sharp contrast to the poorly managed Hotel Valencia on Santana Row who charged us $20.00 to park in front of their hotel for three hours. That’s not terribly unreasonable until we were ready to depart just before our time expired. A bunch of hotel patrons where standing looking at the cars and we were stuck answering the usual car questions. As I walked over to retrieve our keys, the valet captain said it would be another $20.00 for running over the time by less than 15 minutes! They saw is standing in front of our cars and they could easily have said we were going to run over on our time and they would have to charge us. That would have been the professional, courteous thing to do, but no, not at the Hotel Valencia. What a scam. What horrible customer service too. I have no plans to ever stay at the Hotel Valencia. I know if I were manager, I’d fire that guy in a heartbeat for such narrow minded thinking. Even the Fairmont understands that top of the mind awareness is really important to the restaurant and hotel trade, and to have that you’ve got to create positive memorable experiences. Hotel Valencia would rather get the twenty bucks and I’d rather not ever go back so I paid my toll, thank you. Hotel Valencia sucks.

Last night as we pulled into the Fairmont, someone was there with a beautiful balloon white 16M Scuderia. I was parking my SV when they came out to the circle at the Fairmont, got in their car and left. It’s really unusual for exotic owners to not chat for a few minutes, but he just left without saying a word. That actually doesn’t happen very often. I didn’t get a chance to look at or photograph his car. Most exotic owners are extremely nice people and love to chat, especially about cars. The guys who are the real ****** are the ones who borrowed the car or rented it. Somehow, they think they have to act that way or something. I don’t get it.

Today is the first day of the Giro. Vic just flew in and will be my passenger. I’ll write more and respond to more threads when we arrive at the hotel.

 

Day 4

The Fairmont was beginning to fill up with serious car guys with large collections who were there taking it easy, getting business done before heading over to Monterey. It was a lot of fun chatting with everyone before we left the hotel around noon. There was a guy wearing a giant wrestling belt and he was carrying a second one. Apparently there was wrestling going on someplace near the hotel so I asked if I could borrow the belts for a picture. I just want to make it clear I didn’t win those belts.

We were running low on gas and there were surprisingly few gas stations on 29. We finally got to one but the pump wasn’t working properly. We managed to pump a whopping $0.30 in the tank. That worked out to 0.087 gallons of gas. Enough to shorten a walk to the next gas station by about 4,582 feet, which was about the distance to the next station. We were very low and the pump would only allow us to add $75.00 in gas. Isn’t that amazing that the gas or credit card companies can’t trust you to buy more than $75.00 in gas? Who picked that number? Did they do some scientific study? Why $75? Seems completely arbitrary and just short of a full tank, just enough to annoy the hell out of me. It’s like going to dinner and finding out that I’m only good for 95% of whatever I want to eat. I then had to add another three bucks just to fill it so it took three tries to fill the car.



We made it up to Solage in Calistoga around 3:00 PM, roughly an hour before check in. When we arrived we were immediately directed to a sectioned off area of the parking lot at the Solage. There were a hand full of cars from Canada, and a few from other parts of the US. There were few from California. I’m guessing they will arrive later. I’d guess there are about fifteen cars here already. I don’t know how many in total. I’ve yet to meet anyone other than the folks checking us in. So far everything has gone smoothly and Lamborghini seems to be doing a terrific job with organizing everyone.











I’m sitting outside in the sun as I write this. I’m going to brulet my own head if I stay outside much longer. More later...

 

Amazing so far!

Please, more pics of the SSC!