Member-only story

Designated Driver

D. Thayer Russell
6 min readJun 15, 2020

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Driving the drunk with pleasure, designation, and occasional resignation

A sunset from a perch in the Del Monte Forest and the Pebble Beach community where this story takes place. Photo by the author.

“So if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive?

Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive?

It’s driven me before and it seems to be the way that everyone else gets around

But lately I’m beginning to find that when I drive myself, my light is found…”

- Excerpted lyrics from the song “Drive” by Incubus, released in 2000. Songwriters: J. Pasillas, A. Katunich, C. Kilmore, M. Einziger, B. Boyd.

Another Drunken Tale

I was working the Monterey Peninsula during the weekend of the 2017 Pebble Beach Food and Wine festival, an annual bacchanalia for the restaurant and entertainment industry when the titans of viticulture commune with local and global culinary deities for a weekend of drunken debauchery in one of the world’s most affluent playgrounds. I had already picked up many a rider that night and weekend who had been extremely intoxicated on fine wine. Most had admitted to being too drunk to pay much attention to the food.

I picked up a young man from what looked to be a real wild party at the Spanish Bay Golf Club. The crowd out front of the clubhouse looked more like what one would see in front of a Hollywood nightclub as opposed to the…

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D. Thayer Russell
D. Thayer Russell

Written by D. Thayer Russell

Educator and eternal student. Prefer paper pages and overt spines over webpages and covert designs. Avid reader and writer of creative and original content.

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