Relative Something

Yesterday I enjoyed a lunch date with friends whom I most often see at our annual week-long bike trips, and for some strange reason this morning, I woke from a classic themed dream about being ill-prepared at the start of one of those trips. In a way, the details don’t matter, because the general impression of anxiety, over things not being in order, form the bulk of the focus, but the details do tend to have a certain entertainment value.

It began with the normal brief bike ride from the first overnight camp where we park our cars to the place where we will have breakfast. I found myself riding off of pavement, intending to cut a short distance across grass, but suddenly the area was too soft and wet to ride easily and even though others made it just fine, I ended up doing a loop in a struggle to navigate the situation and remain upright. I was not in the best gear to achieve this and wasn’t prepared to shift. How entirely dream like.

Then the dream kept going toward that ever more extreme pattern of bizarre. I was leaning my bike to park it in order to join everyone for breakfast when I noticed the back wheel was way too far forward and closer inspection revealed the crank and pedal were no longer attached to the chain ring (I’m sure this was a subconscious homage to my good friend, Gary Larson, who actually suffered such a fate while riding on the trip last year), and then as if that wasn’t enough, the right half of my handlebar was no longer attached; as if it was a two-piece part to begin with.

From there the dream became a challenge of trying to locate the Penn Cycle repair van, which was outside some doors for a moment and then gone as if he had left to get some breakfast of his own. It continued with my walking in to try and tell someone my situation and that I wouldn’t be riding the first leg. Then I was trying to navigate the breakfast with more classic dream characteristics of not being able to find what I’m looking for, and instead, being continually presented with additional challenges like suddenly being outside in my socks and then perched on a flimsy staircase where the first step appears to be straight down and too far for my reach…

All in all, pretty entertaining little dramas, from the perspective of now being awake and able to recognize they aren’t real. I don’t have any planned trips currently on my mind, so who knows what it is that transposed my wonderful lunch with cycling friends into the cycling dream of anxieties. I think it is a good thing that the weather has turned a bit too chilly to interest me in going for a ride for a little while now.