Overheard Starbuck

"I like how bicycles look like skeletons or bent twigs on wheels."
---"A wicker bike."
"Cars are more like shiny rooms, or self-propelled carapaces."
---"Exo versus endo: vertebrate versus insect. ... I wonder if anyone ever put a bike inside a taxidermied animal?"
"Don't young bullfighters train with bicycles that have horns for handlebars?"
---"I think that's only in the movies."
"Bunuel?"
---"Are there any classic Japanese movies featuring bicycles?"
"The Japanese like the Brits are 'train people'. ... I bet bicycles are ubiquitous in Chinese movies."

---"As part of the oil conservation program being planned by the energy advisors for Mrs. Clinton's presidentcy, bicycles are set to be featured in a number of tv programs and major motion pictures. ...Within a year of the federal government's "Bike for Energy Freedom" campaign speed limits on streets and highways in every city and town in America will need to be lowered to cut down on the carnage from automobile and bicycle mishaps."

"You sit and drive a car but you pedal a bike. ---You can stand & pedal."
---"Pedal is such a flowery word."
"'Pedal to the metal'."
"On a bicycle?"
"What might be the bicycle equivalent of 'pedal to the metal'?"


"Every activity that requires a sizable investment of time and or money has unique words or phrases which practitioners use to describe its most intense moments?"
---"Broadcast sports & cable-tv have standardarized descriptions of intense physical and mental activity." ... I bet they got phrase books of acceptable modifiers."
"We could all use a 'dictionary of intensities'."
---"For sure."