Monterey sure is chilly this time of year

One of my vendor contacts was kind enough to shuttle me and a friend down to the Sea Otter Classic last Saturday. I was really looking forward to the trip: after all, they had advertised the presence of mimosas in the invite flyer. Plus, the event takes place at Laguna Seca in Monterey and I hadn't been to that track since I was a little girl (ah, fond memories of early hearing damage). Well, Saturday dawned cold and rainy--rather miserable, actually--and to top it off, I was battling a cold. But I am a trooper, so I loaded up on tissue and cough drops, grabbed some green tea to go, and stopped off at Walgreen's for an umbrella--my last one lost its life in a battle with SF winds...I don't care what anyone says: San Francisco is the Windy City. Chicago only got the name because of long-winded politicians anyway. But I digress.


As it turns out, I'm alone in my trooper-ness when it comes to press: I was the only one to show up. So it was me, my friend, and three PR reps. Awesome--more mimosas for me then. After a bumpy two-hour ride, we pulled up at the track and....dude, there are hot biker guys swarming all over the place. As it turns out, I should have done my research. Here I was thinking the Sea Otter Classic was just street racing--you know, spandex and all that. But no. It is all types of biking: street, mountain, and BMX. Well now, this is my kind of event. Sadly, it was far too cold and wet for me to hang out outside, so I sequestered myself to the Harman Kardon/Volkswagen/Trek garage where they fed me tri-tip sandwiches, brought me bottles of red wine, and generally gave me the star treatment as I was the only member of the press there. I could do worse.

Drunky McDrunkertons

As I've mentioned, there's a wine bar down the street from my work that causes me endless headaches, but it is so good on the wallet that I can't resist being a regular. It turns out, there's no corkage because it's considered a "store," which is why you can get reasonably-priced bottles of good wine and enjoy it in a nice, laid-back setting (without freezing your ass off at a city park or something of the like). Some of my girlfriends from work and I really needed to take the edge off last Friday and--although we tried to mix it up a bit and go to a new happy hour locale (we were foiled)--we ended up back at Vino Venue. And, well, I'll let the pictures do the talking...

This was after bottle #5

Note the pressence of wine glasses in each and every shot

At least we had some cheese to soak it up.

Peace out...it's way past time to go home