Escape from Pebble Beach

Amidst all the hullaballoo of Pebble Beach, all the purple Rolls-Royce Phantoms and guys who bring parrots to parties (seriously), sometimes you need to escape for a couple hours. Sometimes, at an event devoted to celebrating the car, you need to get in a car and actually go somewhere. So I snagged a Bentley Continental Flying Spur Series 51 and set off to find lunch in Big Sur, about 30 miles distant.

You may think that “Flying Spur” sounds like a karate move used by cowboys. But I’m here to tell you that it’s also a car that goats find extremely interesting. And I know that because I got held up by a herd of goats in Carmel. Barely a mile from the Lodge, the epicenter of highbrow snootiness, my path was blocked by a big mess o’goats wandering across the road and eating tasty underbrush or whatever it is goats eat. Whose are they? Are they always hanging out near the Lodge? Are they members at the club? I don’t know. What I do know is that they took their time crossing in front of the Bentley, perhaps admiring their goat visages in the vast chrominess of the grille. Meanwhile, a guy behind me in a Honda Accord kept impatiently inching up behind me. I threw my hands in the air—the international gesture for “Goats! What are you gonna do?”