"He's kind of taking it in from the backseat," Philip Sauma said.
On a tandem, the pilot steers, brakes and shifts while the stoker provides the extra power from the backseat.
"Not out here," she said, pulling her baby from the backseat and grabbing her older son by the hand.
(A friend of mine's toddler had taken to singing, "Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?" from the backseat of the car).
George, from the backseat, moves to comfort Andy, grips the tops of his arms, asks Andy to tell him what happened.
And on a recent episode of NBC's "Parks and Recreation," Rob Lowe's unflappably positive character exclaimed "OMG" from the backseat of a car moments before the driver decided to drown him out with banjo music.
Looking back, it may very well have been my first glimpse of those Western skies, from the backseat of my dad's 1964 Chrysler 300, that later turned me into a color photographer.
A few weeks later I was driving Molly and her friend Andi home from the mall when Andi piped up from the backseat, "My parents won't let me have music by Nine Inch Nails".
Looking on from the backseat are Mona, a young Wiccan, and her boyfriend, Oyster, an ecoterrorist; these tag-alongs, depraved in their own ways, seem like runaways from a grunge-era road movie.
"It's been great," comes the verdict from the backseat as, armed with the Ordnance Explorer map from our lodge, we hunt for the Half Moon Inn close to home.
Try being just as small, stepping from the backseat of the family car, and facing up to 4,000 feet of mountain that rises without end, literally to the clouds.
