OPEN HOUSE SATURDAY 4/29 NOON – 3:00PM
3146 FERGUSSON LANE, PEBBLE BEACH
Offered at $2,795,000
Situated on an amazing 1 acre+ corner lot in the Estate area of Pebble Beach, close to golf and all the Pebble Beach lifestyle has to offer, sits this lovely custom home built in 1974. Join me for a tour of this beautiful residence. View tour.
Hope to see you at my Open House
on Saturday, April 29th, in Pebble Beach!
Pebble Beach Authors & Ideas Festival 2016 at Stevenson School, Pebble Beach
What a great idea Cindy and Jim McGillen had 10 years ago to create a venue for great minds to come together and share their intriguing ideas. Twenty-seven plus nationally renowned authors and innovators gathered in Pebble Beach this weekend to share their knowledge and great ideas with the participants. The attendees were generous sponsors of the festival, paying guests, and educators who were invited as guests. I was lucky enough to be one of the volunteers helping with the event so I was able to hear many of the speakers when I wasn’t on duty..
Secretary Leon Panetta kicked off the festival with a thought provoking speech on Friday night. Prior to serving as the 23rd Secretary of Defense, Panetta (a local Carmel Valley resident) served as the Director of the CIA, White House Chief of Staff, Director of OMB, and before that a Congressman in the House of Representatives from 1977-1993. The amphitheater was packed with an enthusiastic audience.
Thousands of school children of Monterey County participated in the Student Ideas Festival thanks to the Carmel Ideas Foundation. Some students were also given the honor to be student presenters introducing each speaker as they came onto the stage. What an opportunity for students to have such an amazing experience!
Presentations took place in several different venues. Speaking here in the outdoor amphitheater is John Hennessy. After a 16 year term as president of Stanford University he is being hailed as transformational after remaking the university from the inside out.
He is now the founding director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars program designed to lure the best students in the world for graduate education at Stanford with the goal of “doing good for the world”.
The other venues included a large auditorium and small break out sessions in classrooms.
Cara Hale Alter was a popular speaker who has provided training to the world’s leading companies and top-100 law firms. She teaches how to project confidence and competence. Don’t miss buying her book on the subject complete with video demonstrations! Just as an aside story about Cara, she and I both recognized each other when she checked in at the registration desk, but couldn’t figure out how we knew each other. We finally figured out she had been my Jazz Dance instructor 25+ years ago in San Francisco!
Dr. Bernie Roth was very interesting and a kick to listen to. He is a Stanford professor who is the Rodney H. Adams Professor of Engineering and is also a co-founder of Stanford’s “d-school” which teaches “design thinking”. Early this year I completed Stanford University’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certification program which included a day at Stanford learning all about design thinking so I was very interested in what he had to say.
His book, The Achievement Habit is a “Don’t Miss” read.
The authors all had book signings in the bookstore and there were long lines of people clutching their books in hand for a personal moment with the authors to get a personalized autograph.
The amazing array of authors is just too long to include in a short blog entry. There was Dan Buettner who discovered the Blue Zones where there is the highest concentration of centenarians; Kathlyn Cooney, an archaeologist who has researched ancient Egypt; Professor Andrew Fraknoi, who makes astronomy a joy to learn about, and Mas Matsumoto, an organic peach and grape farmer who had written about the family succession on a family farm.
There were so many more stunning presentations with great ideas flowing that there isn’t room to talk about them all. Just make a note in your calendar to come next year last weekend in September to the
2017 Pebble Beach Authors and Ideas Festival.
Ray Romano between a rock and a hard place.
As the hardy ones who sat out on the patio with cool temperatures and cloudy skies we buttoned our down vests and waited for the next golfers to appear at this year’s AT&T Pro Am Golf Tournament. First, a golf ball landed in the sand trap in front of us and then a marshal made his way through the rough and placed an orange flag by the ball in the trap. Uh, oh . . .someone’s in trouble. Then, making his way towards the trap to check out the location of the ball was Ray Romano. Ray is slight of build and not nearly as tall as he appears on his TV show. As he looked at the golf ball he saw it was wedged close to a rock. I can imagine what he was saying to himself since there was no way he could hit that ball where it was located. Getting the nod that it was OK to move the rock, he tried, but the stubborn rock would not budge. He looked around and a fellow hurried over and helped him move the rock.
He took his shot. Ohhhh . . . into the sand again. As he diagnosed the situation he realized he needed to walk all around the sand trap in order to enter leaving the least amount of tracks for his caddy to rake over. As he walked right past us he glanced our way and I gave a silent wave. He said, “I’ll get out of here eventually.” Little did he know at the time how challenging it would be.
He wasn’t about to land in the sand again so this next time he swung with determination . . . this time his ball sailed over the green, hit a tree high and his ball fell into a heavy rough. Sometimes you just have a bad hole! Luckily Eric Compton, his pro partner, had a better score on the hole. No need for Ray to go on suffering. The marshal picked up his ball from the very deep grass and handed it to Ray. As the group left the hole, we waved to Ray and hoped his next hole would be so much better in the 2013 AT&T Pro Am Golf Tournament.
The AT&T Pro Am Golf Tournament is in full swing on the Monterey Peninsula. Practice rounds began on Monday. A Charity Shootout between the San Francisco Giants and the San Francisco 49ers attracted crowds on Tuesday ending in another indignity for the 49ers. On Wednesday golf enthusiasts could view the 3M Celebrity Challenge with the likes of Andy Garcia, Huey Luis, and Ray Romano vying to support their chosen charities. (More about Ray Romano in my next entry.) The actual tournament began on Thursday morning and takes place through Sunday (Feb 8th) in Pebble Beach on three golf courses – Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill, and the newly redesigned Monterey Peninsula Country Club Shore Course. It’s on the latter course that I ended up with a front row seat to view thet tournament play today!
As Alain Pine realtors we are lucky to represent many of the finest luxury properties on the Monterey Peninsula. Currently listed by one of my associates is a dramatically positioned home on Cormorant Road front and center on the Shore Course 7th green with wide open views of the golf course and crashing surf beyond. A group of us gathered to watch the play not more than 10 feet from the sand trap where a number of golfers balls landed. First group up after I sat down included Brandt Snediker, a pro, and Heidi Ueberroth, one of the few women playing the tournament, who is president of global marketing partnerships and international business operations at the NBA (National Basketball Association). She is also the daughter of Peter Ueberroth, ex-commissioner of Major League Baseball and one of the owners of the Pebble Beach Company. Watching this group play out the hole was uneventful, but the next group was quite entertaining.
Note: Little did I know as I watched Brandt Snediker that he would become the winner of the tournament taking home the big prize on Sunday.
