While driving to the hardware store in his

fourteen-year-old, mid-size, gas-guzzling

SUV, which normally only comes out of

the garage to pull his little, travel trailer

to state parks for relatively environmentally

friendly get-aways (vs. staying in motels

along the way and at the destination), except

just then because the SUV was in the way of

the hybrid and parked behind the hybrid

instead of being put in the garage promptly

after having been disconnected from the

little travel trailer and he didn’t want to go

to the trouble to park it back in the garage,

he saw two teen-aged skateboarders

flying down the bike path being pulled by

two Chocolate Labs that looked like

thoroughbred horses/like brown unicorns

rising to the heavens. The boys and their

steeds rose, in the man’s mind, like chariots

of fire. He looked at the road ahead, saw the

Brits in their bright white apparel running

along the shore in the movie, heard the

music and felt lift off of his fossil-fuel burning

beast. It soared above the trees and then

slalomed down the powdery slopes. He

pulled back on the steering wheel and the

WWII bomber (which fit better with the

heavy weight he was driving) just rose above

the sand dunes, dipped and chopped the

top of the white caps on the big lake. Then

he dropped down in the parking lot of the hard-

ware store, removed his Cubs/leather fighter

pilot cap, breathed deeply, turned off the

ignition, got out, sauntered through the auto-

matic door and asked a clerk where he would

find the fish food. Arriving at home, having

maneuvered the warning cones which just a

few minutes earlier had been Olympic, down-

hill slalom poles, he parked the Chariot of Fossil

Fuel Fire and promised himself that next time he

would fly in the sky and swoop down the slope in

his fuel-efficient, four-cylinder hybrid.