Surrealism

I was at the entrance to the tunnel again. It was a sewer grating, like the one that Jean Valjean came out of when he was carrying the body of Marius Pontmercy. But the inside was a good deal less wet. In fact, it didn't look much like a sewer system at all; it looked like the nicely decorated underground tunnels with stained glass windows and everything that the beast had in that old Beauty and the Beast t.v. show. The tunnels were built like a maze, but I'd been through them once before so I knew my way around.

Right inside the entrance, I found my bicycle. It was missing one wheel, and was sort of folded up like an insect and lying down. At first I was surprized to see it there, because I knew I had it outside, but then I realized that the one I had outside was just a copy, transfered by hitting control-C and then control-V (only it might have been apple-C then apple-V if I was using a Mac). The wheel on the copy was real, though, because for some reason I moved that using control-X. At any rate, now I had my real bike back, sans wheel, and I could take it up to the surface because nothing was chasing me this time.

I carried the bike, which stayed conveniently folded up, through the tunnels, and made it to the exit uneventfully. At the end were a set of stairs, which turned out to be the stairs at the back exit of Der Sportsman, the local sporting goods store. The area for working on bicycles had been enlarged and moved out near the front. When I put the bike down on the floor, it unfolded so I could wheel it (on just the back wheel) out to the front. The other wheel was already out there, but the copy bicycle had of course deteriorated by this time. An employee offered to put the wheel back on for me, and turned the bike upside down to put it on the machine.

While it was on there, he noticed that I had a website linked to the bike, and mentioned that he could access the hard copy form of that website while the bike was hooked up to his machine. The URL was to the forum where I keep in touch with friends from college. We've been having some website issues lately, so I said that would be great if he could activate the hard copy; maybe I could get that fixed as well.

The hard copy of the forum got activated outside in front of the shop; it was mostly made of big steel pipes, with traffic lights attached in places. It was two stories high. In hard copy form, it was easy to see what the problem was: On some of the pipes, there were steel rims sticking out that needed to be hammered down. Fortunately, Cal, who works in the maintenance department at my old college, was there. He knew how to fix these things, and climbed up there with a big hammer. While he was hammering away, Matt, who also visits the site, stopped by. I explained to him that Cal was fixing our website problems for us, and he was very impressed.

Voice in the Darkness

I was lying in bed, and heard a voice coming from the left side of the room. Based on what it was saying, it was supposed to be Sauron talking to Gandalf. There were two problems with this. For one thing, I wasn't Gandalf; I was me. For another, the speaker was not Sauron; it was Smaug. I knew it was Smaug because I recognized the voice. I couldn't figure out why Smaug was impersonating Sauron, but I was really hoping he wouldn't figure out that I wasn't Gandalf. I thought the best thing to do was to just keep quiet and listen. I can't remember the details of what he was saying, but I do remember that he kept calling Gandalf "Mit," which was a nickname -- short for "Mithrandir," his Elvish name.

Action Kitty

I'm not sure whether I was back in California or back in Idaho, because the town I was in had elements and people from both. I was attending a weekly Bible study with students I knew from California, which was being hosted at Toby's house. It's been a while since I've been in contact with Toby. Anyway, he had this new cat, which was named Action Kitty. This didn't seem strange at the time, but Action Kitty was capable of saying her own name. It came out like a meow, but the syllables were distinct and you could definitely understand what she was saying. She would walk up to you and say "Action Kitty!" when she wanted to play, which was about once every ten minutes. Unfortunately, Action Kitty had some sort of degenerative disease similar to leprosy and was only expected to live for a few more weeks. Most people weren't aware of this because her thick fur hid most of the symptoms. Toby said something about her slowing down a lot. I was incredulous about this, and he said I should have seen how active she was before she got sick.