"Ever change the oil in this tin can?" he'd ask as we crested a small hill and began the descent. "Oh, I forgot. You don't have to oil rubber bands. But you really should get the tension checked every thirty thousand miles."

Manny, who paid for as much gas, would have concurred, had he not been sleeping-off the effects of a late night of entertaining, cuddled up somewhere in the dash.

"Forget the rubber bands," Steve laughed. "I bet you got twin solar gyroscopes under the hood."

There was a brief pause as my brain's transmission shifted to overdrive.

"Actually," I explained, gaining momentum, "there's a treadmill under the hood. And I train small animals to run on it."

Steve continued laughing-only harder now.

"I'll prove it," I then said, making a sharper-than-what-I'm-even-used-to right-hand-turn onto Firehole Canyon Drive.

Immediately, the rolling oblong-tennis-ball sound could be heard-loud and clear-as if amplified somehow by the vacuum-sealed interior (which, by the way, is automatically created whenever two people simultaneously inhale what they think will be their last breath).

The grumpy groundhog wannabe, his stupor rudely interrupted, then made his much anticipated (by me), appearance.

"Meet Manny," I said, regaining my composure. "Looks like there'll be six more weeks of summer."

And I'm guessing that it was out of shock, from careening on two wheels for the approximate time period of thirty seconds, or the eventual sight of an angry squirrel head popping through the open lighter socket, that Steve failed to utter so much as a single syllable for the rest of the ride home. And that gave me a chance.

"I'm thinking about taking on a marmot," I said. "More horsepower. And I hear they work for peanuts. But then I'd have to go to all the trouble of thinking up a name . . ."

-from the fourth chapter, "Malice Herbivorethought"