Erwa's Dream Log - August 2012

I went to sleep around 2 AM last night. I woke up once around 7 AM to use the bathroom but didn't remember any dreams. Then I went back to sleep and had a dream I remember.

The first part was a car chase. A police car was pursuing someone. The pursuee was headed toward a bridge which led to a mountainous region. At the intersection in front of the bridge, there were already a bunch of police cars. The police car following the fleeing car was close behind and thought the fleeing car would go straight and over the bridge. However, at the last second, the fleeing car turned at the intersection, weaved through some police vehicles, and escaped. The police car that had been chasing couldn't react fast enough and went straight instead.

For the remaining parts of my dream, I was biking or carrying a bike.

First, I was biking uphill in San Francisco, going the wrong way up a two-lane one-way street. To make matters worse, both of the lanes had trolley tracks. I saw one trolley coming, so I biked past it in the other lane. I kept biking uphill, trying to reach the crest of the hill, but I wasn't going very fast due to the incline. I remember shifting down a gear, but that didn't help much. It was night time, and though I couldn't see trolleys rounding the top of the hill, I could see their lights peeking over the hill. When I saw an intensifying light and heard the warning sound (like the toot a train gives as it approaches an intersection), I decided that it was too risky trying to dodge the trolley. [Now that I am awake, this scenario reminds me of some levels in Donkey Kong Country, where you are climbing two side-by-side ropes and bad guys are firing cannonballs down at you. In order to dodge them, you have to change from rope to rope as you climb.]

I backtracked a little bit and found an opening in the wall to my left (facing downhill) and went through it. I ended up in a stairwell with escalators, parallel to the trolley tracks. I felt like I was in one of those long staircase + escalator shafts at the entrances of subways. Unfortunately, the escalators were all going down while I wanted to go up, so I was forced to carry my bike up the stairs.

The next thing I remember, I was biking around New Haven, trying to get back to Yale [In real life, classes actually start today (Wed 8/29).]. I biked around for a bit and saw some street names that sounded familiar to me, like Neighborhood (which is not a street I know in real life), but I still couldn't get my bearings. Which way was north? No idea. Which general direction was Yale toward? Didn't know. Then I saw a Marriott Hotel in the distance. I knew that was near campus, so I started biking toward it.

I got lost again somehow, so I stopped and went into a building, which turned out to be a library. I carried my bike and climbed the stairs to the 5th floor, where I encountered Brianna Greenwald leaving. I told her I felt a bit depressed (probably because I couldn't find Yale [I'm probably just having post-graduation college nostalgia]) and asked her if she had time to chat for a bit. She said okay and told me to meet her outside. As I was leaving the 5th floor, a man on the other side of the room saw me with my bike and told me I wasn't allowed to have a bike inside. I told him I was leaving.

I went down to the first floor and found Brianna again. Then I realized I didn't have my bike any more. I retraced my steps back up to the fifth floor. I entered the fifth floor and poked around but didn't see my bike. I went back in the stairwell and saw my bike leaning against the wall in a corner. I was about to head back down when Kayla Keating entered the stairwell. We exchanged a few words and she decided to join Brianna and me. As we were just about to descend the stairs, I caught the eye of the man who had seen me earlier, and I heard him say out loud, "Was that the same guy I saw earlier with the bike?!"

On the first floor, while Kayla and I were searching for Brianna, I decided to ride my bike slowly around. A lady, who appeared to be a student just studying in the library, yelled at me from across the room. "What the heck do you think you're doing, riding a bike around in a library? Get off your bike and get out of the library!" We exited via the nearest exit, and on my way out, I could still hear the lady yelling at me, though I also heard someone else telling her to "be nice". Before we found Brianna again, I woke up.

Two days ago, a Yalie bought my used textbook for a Chinese language class. I shipped the book to her the same day. Last night, I dreamed that I had forgotten to ship the English translation companion book to her. After I was awoken by a phone call, I was relieved to realize that no such companion book existed.