I’m heading up a paved mountainside; it’s nearly straight-up and insanely, there is a dotted yellow line painted down the middle. My dashing steed is a white 1994 Dodge Neon. I’m halfway up and the engine is whining; it’s starting to sputter — gasping for relief. That beast of a hill takes over — can’t be sure of the specifics — we aren’t physicists.

And the nose of my poor car is staring at the sun — tipping slowly backward as though resigned to a now grim fate. We’re upside down, this old friend and I — then not: tumbling, free-falling. Metal grinds on searing asphalt and the screeches are deafening. Soon, I think, this must end.

It does, abruptly, and we sit right-side up. A young man is mowing grass in a frenzied state atop a dixie chopper. He is spinning in circles and grass hovers in a hazy wasabi green cloud. Our eyes meet, he nods, and I say, “Thanks for all your hard work.”

While the car is smoking, it seems functional, and I’m headed back up for Round 2.