9/3/09

Okay all you amateur Carl Jungs out there, take this one for a spin. I went to bed nice and late last night, as I'm often inclined to do. No alarm clock set for today with all the extra time on this trip, so I was fully prepared to sleep until the sun rose. Then a freaking dream entered the equation.

As nearly as I can recall, in the dream, I was telling a friend of mine (who bore an eerie resemblance to John Goodman) that his wife couldn't have my car. I just wanted to get the thing paid off so that I would have one less thing about which to worry. (Full disclosure for those of you in the Freud school of thought: I am down to ten payments left on my car in real life, in case that matters.)

So I left my friend's house and started driving. I am guessing that I must have been driving home or something. I don't know. Anyhow, I stopped at this little hotel called the Snow Inn. I don't recall having any reason to stop, but there I was. Obviously I've seen The Shining, so that would be my first point of reference here, but there were no similarities to The Overlook Lodge at all. Well, the hotel was empty. I guess that's a similarity. I was in a major city of some kind. The weather was fine. The hotel was small. The corridor was well lit.

And here's what happened at The Snow Inn. I walked in the door. I moved a tin bucket and picked up a piece of candy, still in its wrapper, from the floor. The bucket had been obscuring the candy, but I couldn't have known this until I moved the bucket. I walked to the end of the hall. The elevator door opened. I looked inside. I saw... nothing. I walked back toward the entrance of the hotel, watching in every direction for anything. I saw... nothing. I left the hotel. I can't say for sure whether or not I took the piece of candy with me. Yeah, that was all that happened. Pretty dull, I know.

But here's what I don't get. At this point in the dream, I (in real life) was consumed with such an overwhelming sense of dread that it woke me. I mean wide freaking awake. And we're talking 5am 'no man's land' territory for me here. I never get up that early unless I'm coerced by an outside element. Goosebumps, cold sweats, heart racing. Dude, there was nothing in the hotel. Nothing scary. Nothing troubling. Nothing interesting. Nothing exciting. There was nothing there. I tried to go back to sleep, but I ain't even kidding man, it wasn't happening. I was all wound up.

Well, there you go. Have at it if that's your cup of tea, but the upshot of the story is that I started driving wicked early today. I guess what I'm trying to say, in a roundabout way, is that this sucked. On the plus side though, I had covered almost 450 miles, even after taking a half hour breakfast break in Laramie, before the Tigers knocked off the Tribe in ten innings. This expanded their division lead to five games. Beauty. It was nice and cool last night as well, so I think the two hours that I did manage to sleep were plenty refreshing. I didn't feel all that tired once the sun came up.

I've now stopped at the Bosselman's in Elm Creek, Nebraska for the night and found... no freaking PB&J. This is horseshit. Anyhow, I guess I have something like a thousand miles to cover between now and Tuesday. My friend in Iowa, it turns out, is visiting her family in Michigan this week. So it looks like I don't have any particular timeline to follow for the next day or two. I'll just have to drive for a while and then stop for a while and then drive for a while... or whatever. Probably not getting a PB&J sandwich, from the look of things. Whatever.