With a little bit of shame, I admit to being judgemental of people I see walking along the road. Not if they have on exercise clothes, mind you. Clearly, people in exercise clothes are . . . you know . . . exercising. But when people are walking in normal clothes, I tend to have one of those "Why don't they have a car?" moments. I know. Not fair. But . . . why
don't they have a car?
Anyway, with my writer's eye, I just tend to try to figure out the individuals I see plodding as I zip by in my status-symbol of a 1999 Saturn, with its manual tranny and custom, manual window-lowering mechanisms. (Yeah, my whip. That's how I roll.)
Today, I was taking my sons over to Grandmom and Grandpop's for sugary, salty afternoon of treats, cartoons and video game-filled joy, and I passed two folks on the side of the road. They didn't have a car, but they did have a tricked-out bike. (By the way -- did you know Melville used the phrase "tricked-out" in
Moby Dick to describe a ship? Word.) The bike had a chopper wheel on the front -- you know, the long fork and handlebars so high up you have to reach for them like you are about to do a pull-up. It was pristine, with chrome everything and a big honker-horn on the front.
