Carmel

One of the weird things about living here is that several times during the year the  traffic turns thick, like pudding, brimming with out of town license plates. People drive poorly around here as it is, as there is a preponderance of elderly drivers in really nice cars with big engines (not a safe combo, just fyi).  However, when the tourists show up and you add the congestion to the senior driving it is just plain ridiculous. Accidents everywhere and lots of middle fingers.

The last town we lived in wasn’t exactly in a tourist destination – people don’t travel to Turlock…they just end up there. Big difference. Anyway, when you live your normal life in a place where people come to celebrity stalk and play, you can get annoyed with the tourism pretty quick.  Just driving to pick up your dry cleaning turns into a snarl of traffic and people trying to figure out which exit will get them to Clint Eastwood’s house. (answer is: he no longer lives in downtown Carmel but in a gated community in Carmel Valley, your search is futile)

So, you try really hard to just ignore these major events that make this normally sleepy town into a busy anthill filled with Lexus’s and digital cameras. However, the AT&T National Pro-Am is not an event you can ignore. It is a golf tourney at Pebble Beach that pairs celebrities with professional goflers. I think there are something like 25,000 to 50,000 extra people in town (5,000 of that is Justin Timberlake’s entourage). Some of the visitors come for the golf but I think most come to celebrity watch/stalk.

We aren’t attending the Pro-Am this year though, we had fun last year and I did get to stand right next to Justin Timberlake (wow) but things are just too busy this year to fit it in. Instead I will just deal with all of the traffic and tourists looking for directions to this place or that. I have to say though, waking up this morning to a picture of Justin Timberlake playing golf on the cover of my local newspaper was a treat. Part of me just feels good knowing that he is sleeping probably less than 2 miles from where I live. Yikes, that sounds creepy. What I meant to say was, he is close, I can feel it. Wow, that was worse.

Okay, really I’m just going to end this post now before I get labled a stalker…again. (the last time was just really a mix up, not sure why Justin had to get all formal with the police and what not).

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