I dreamed I was ice skating with my little buddies, but instead of being a flat oval, the rink was more like a Hot Wheels track or roller coaster. You started up high and tucked yourself down and let gravity take over, then at the end you climbed back up the stairs to go again. We raced, and I tried not to win, but my higher mass made it hard to slow down.
Then I lost a skate, and was tooling around the track looking for it. This rapper with lots of chains and gold teeth, surrounded by fans and groupies, saw me searching, and gave me a brand new pair in exactly my size, much better than my old pair.
I stopped off for a while at a friend's double shotgun house in uptown, that they were renovating, but then it was time for me to go to San Francisco for a conference. I missed the exit for my hotel, coming south from the airport, and ended up on the Golden Gate Bridge. Fortunately I was in the left hand lane, and there were plenty of turn arounds built in. I managed to exit on Cooper Street this time, and found the Embassy Suites on the shore. All the rooms had balconies, and valet parking and room service were all included in the price.
So I handed off my car keys and the belhops said just leave my luggage and go get checked in. All the rooms had balconies, was the big selling point of this place, and sure enough my room had a balcony looking over a beach. It also had a broad ramp from the balcony down to the sand. My friends Joanna and Arianne, who were joining me for the conference, showed up then, and we talked about what we wanted to do.
I really wanted to go find some fried chicken and eat down on the beach. Joanna was game, but Arianne didn't want to go to the beach at all. When I asked why, she said it was because of killer whales. I looked down from my balcony to the moonlit sand and waves. The sea was gentle and transparent and even in the moonlight, faintly, opalescently turquoise. The water was so clear that we could see the dark, feathery branches of cypress trees inundated only at high tide. I didn't see any killer whales, and didn't even want to swim, just sit on the sand and eat chicken, but I agreed that was more of a day time plan.
I went outside just in time to catch the end of the Box Parade. A bunch of giant boxes strung with imaginative loops and whirls of Christmas lights and set on carts hauled by a couple of people each were making their way up the road and over another nearby bridge to the warehouse they'd be stored in. I kept trying to get pictures, but people kept walking between me and the parade and messing up my camera's focus.
Then suddenly it was the next day, Sunday, and my two friends and I were making our way from the Embassy Suites to a nearby corporate office building for the conference, via a tunnel system that connected the two. I was just grumbling about being up early on a weekend, when I woke up.
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