Still need to write up 873 and the 2006 recap...

Lots of dreams last night.

YC and I (and some other folks) went on a trip with the outing club. I remembered getting out and unloading a bunch of canoes and kayaks at some state park. This park had a cliff with a deep pool of water at the bottom. The side of the pool opposite the cliff had a ledge holding the water in, and then past the ledge the ground went down again. At one end of the pool there was a waterfall, so YC and I spent a lot of energy paddling to stay away from that. I don't think anyone ever went over, except maybe some of the kayakers who did it on purpose and didn't die at the bottom.

Before we went into the pool (or maybe between sessions), we had been wandering around on the ledge around the south side of the pool with flashlights and cameras. There was this rock structure with steps going up the sides, and a hollow area underneath with its own pool. We all thought that was pretty neat.

There was a long bike bath that I was riding home on for the second or third time. I thought it maybe a bit excessive that I was going back and forth on this trail so many times in only a few days, as it was so long. It was cold and dark, my feet were numb, and I was sort of dozing off and feeling disoriented. One stretch of the trail was surrounded by forest before it reached a road, and on the other side of that road (closer to home, farther from the park) there was a large field with a round building in it. As I was heading home, about to cross that road, I thought I had forgotten something and turned back. I rode like that for maybe half an hour before I realized that I hadn't needed to turn back for anything after all. But by this time I was so disoriented that I didn't even know which way I was headed. Another biker passed by and I asked him which way was north, and he indicated that I was going towards home already. I was still in that woodsy area farther from home. Now I had to bike all that distance again. Cold and tired and relatively unaware of my surroundings. It was an interesting ride.

In the dream I was thinking that the path was between my home and Dodgeville. Not that it resembled the path landmark-wise or even felt like I was in a geographic location along the path, but that was the distance I was figuring it was. It seemed like I was riding for hours. But the route, the setting, and maybe even the time spent riding were much more similar to that of my trips home from work. Especially yesterday, when I came home in the dark, took off along the same path to visit YC, and then came back again. On that final trip back I was looking southeast over the houses betwen Commonwealth and Odana. The path was pretty dark and the stars were out and there were various lights showing from the neighborhood below (street lights, christmas lights, lights from living room windows), and it almost felt like flying over a neighborhood in a plane. The lack of foliage gave me a view I wasn't used to seeing.

I was with a bunch of friends walking down a street in some dense residential-style neighborhood (like with a lot of townhouses along the sides of the roads). The Waltons were there, and Fizz and I were sort of walking on ahead. But then this tornado touched down on the road ahead of us, and I think we both started running, trying to find shelter, and split up. The tornado kept coming on through every house we tried to stay in, and we ended up in a house farther away, that Mary and Julia had also found. We went in and hid in the deepest closet we could find. Maybe there was a fish tank there. It was nice to see Mary and Julia again.

I was biking back from another adventure. It was twilight, starting to get dark out, and so I wanted to get home soon. We were biking back past some buildings and street signs that I remembered passing on the way out. Going both ways it felt like we had to go around one more corner than we expected. We as in whoever I was with; maybe Fizz or YC, but maybe some random guy. As we turned the corner from Gilbert onto Flad, we stopped for some reason. I was looking through my backpack, maybe to change my gloves, when several jerk teenagers came up to us and started trying to grab stuff out of my backpack. I kicked them in the shins, and that seemed to make them go away temporarily, though I knew they'd be back. I tried to get my stuff back together so we could take off again before their shins recovered, but one of them grabbed my checkbook, so we had to go after them, meanwhile trying to keep them from grabbing other stuff, and still hoping to get back before dark.

We ended up in a house that was right next to the road. We had gotten this little girl to give us our stuff back, and for some reason we were in the bathroom, and the bathtub was starting to fill with water even though the spout wasn't turned on. I figured she was summoning some evil spirit to come kill us, so I urged my guy to get his stuff together so we could scram.

Back outside, we started heading up the hill, but the troll that the little girl had summoned was coming up behind us. We had to get into our mech suits that were parked at the top of the hill. I had one and he had one. There was also a third part that went between, and then mine served as the base with his attached at the top. So it was like we turned into this tallish robot thinger with several guns. We were trying to explain to our supervisor why it was neccessary to have 2 parts with 3 seats each.

Trying to leave out the back side of the parking lot behind West Town (the exit towards Highpoint). But there was a big sign saying it was closed. I tried to get through anyway. Tires got all muddy.

And then I was trying to fight some large trollish creature from the Descent ship. It felt sort of cheap, since I was just floating above him and he couldn't really hit me, but I had gotten killed by him enough times that I didn't really care any more. After I finished him off I flew back outside. I was just above the water behind the Mancubus area of Crapi 13, and there were a bunch more creatures about the size of the troll, but beige, metallic, and not as bulky as the troll. I flew off to the southwest, and watched them follow me by walking up a grassy ramp (that doesn't exist in real Crapi 13).

Weird duck behavior on lake Monona: