Dream Interchange, Condo Warming

      Dreamed N and I were traveling on a highway we'd travelled regularly. We were talking, so I missed our exit. N insisted we take the next one, but when we did so I spotted the next exit 13 miles sign and pulled into the center hill inside the curve of the transfer ramp. I looked around, this was a transfer that had only an on ramp to this new freeway that we didn't want to really be traveling down.
      "It's only a 26 mile round trip," N noted.
      "But there's no transfer ramp here back to our freeway. Look!" I pointed to the sign on the other side of the freeway that indicated a junction with our highway in 8 miles, going in the other direction than we were headed.
      "We can run along the frontage road and cross over ahead."
      "We tried that last time, and flipped the car. Even though Little Red (my Honda Insight) is smaller than Cecil, I still don't think we can make it." I started across the ramp to the narrow trail that wound its way down the hill along a ridge next to the freeway.
      We followed the track for several minutes, annoyed by the insects and heat. Finally we came to a small ridgeline where the two wheeled track became a narrow one wheel path and steeply sloped at that. "This is where we fell last time." Last time was in a previous dream. I like it when my dreams contain references to previous dreams like it was just a matter of course. I noticed a small town not too far off the slope ahead. N didn't want to navigate the narrow path, so we climbed up into the brush along the top of the ridge and made our way to the town.
      The main road of town stopped at the top of the ridge, a guardrail with red diamond signs marking the view of the freeway from thirty yards above. I noticed as we walked towards the town along the hillside, that the hill was actually large concrete posts and lintels.
      The ground was made of four foot cross sections covered with dirt and scrub. Because there was sometimes a few feet between the concrete beams, you could see through one foot gaps into a fairly well lit underground area. It was vast and empty, between sixty and eighty feet to the floor. It looked like the floor was tiled in a crazed mosaic pattern that wasn't a pattern at all. N didn't want to cross the beams, as you sometimes had to jump the gaps.
      "There might be cracks or the gaps might be hidden."
      I went into town, checking the path carefully. I found a route that was overgrown enough that you didn't have to look underneath if you just followed the safe path. I came back and led N along the route to town. N was still a bundle of nerves until we climbed over the guard rail onto a piece of pavement with grass-filled cracks. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the town was also sitting on top of a huge underground cavern full of pillars, I had seen it when I had approached from another angle.
      In town, we were able to have a cool salad and a very good tuna sandwich at a little drugstore lunch counter. The folks we met were very pleasant. We got a standing tour of the town from the druggist, turns out you could see the whole thing from the sidewalk in front of his place. Eight buildings made up the whole of downtown. There was a gas station a couple miles down the main road, you could make it out from downtown. There were several houses on the surrounding hills.
      "Are they on top of a hollow gallery as well?" I asked.
      The druggist looked at me like I was crazy. It turns out that none of the town's folk knew about the hollow ground under their home. They had never been out past the guard rails.
      "They're red diamonds there for a reason, that hill is unstable. It's why our road don't connect to the freeway until six miles up ahead."
      "There's an interchange not more than half a mile that way," I pointed the way we came.
      "Yes, but this town ain't on that highway." was all the answer I got.
      We headed back, N insisting that we go overland rather than the way we came. The trip seemed much further along that route. In fact, I got to the point that I knew we'd walked much further than we should have to get to the road. I turned back around and we headed back to town. Once in sight of the town, I took us across the scrub to the hillside, found our two tired track, and led us back to the interchange.
      While we were at lunch the interchange had changed. There were dozens of roadsters piled up in the center of the curve of the interchange, so many, I couldn't find Little Red from the roadway. A mansion was being constructed on the top of the hill beside our original highway. We climbed up, hoping to find someone to help us find our car.
      From the mansion, I could see little red, there were about three roadsters piled up behind her, blocking her from view from anything but above. There was no one home and the place was unfinished. I commented on how the roadsters looked like the Monopoly game piece. Only instead of silver, some of them were red. They were scattered like they had been placed from above. The only tire tracks into the circular area were mine.
      "I found a phone, called Triple A, they're sending out a towtruck, what mile marker are we at?"
      I squinted and looked for the mile marker at the interchange. "One thirty seven; almost a mystical number."
      N relayed the information without my comment. We walked down to the side of the road to wait for the towtruck.
      The driver of the truck was surprised to find an interchange here. "I didn't know this existed, and that freeway, either."
      He went right to work hooking up the roadsters and towing them out of our way. I helped him. The roadsters not only looked like the Monopoly pieces, they were a cast hollow shell like them also, the wheels part of the casting, just painted black. I could tell the whole thing was weirding the towtruck driver out. "My wife isn't gonna believe this dream," he confided to me while N went to the cooler in our trunk to get us something to drink. (It isn't often that other characters in my dreams know they are dreams also.)
      Sipping on ice cold water, the tow truck operator refused to take our credit card. "Are these your roadsters?" he asked.
      "No" I answered, but wondering if, because it was my dream, then they might well be considered mine. We exchanged looks.
      "I'll just take the plate numbers and the department of motor vehicles will send the owner a bill. Thanks for the water. If you want to follow me back up the ramp I'll run my hazard lights for you."
      "Thank you, but we're going to head out the other way." I pointed down the freeway.
      The tow truck driver got in his truck and backed up the ramp a ways, changed his mind and made his way down the interchange. We followed him a couple of hundred yards bahind. About a quarter mile down the freeway, he put on his lights and turned around in the median, heading back the way to the 8 mile interchange, N looked at me, I shrugged, and we followed. We decided to take the exit to the little town we'd visited for lunch, and take a room there, if we could find one.

      In my second dream, just before waking, I had moved back into the condo on Autumn Drive. This in not something I would really do without a very good reason. Darned if I know what that reason might have been. While I was moving my stuff in a half dozen women and one of the women's boyfriends came over to "help."
      Help themselves to my stuff was the real reason. I almost caught the guy as he ran down the stair with my DVD player. I pulled out a pistol, but in true to my dream abilities, I couldn't even fire it if I was aiming at him directly. He was very far away when the thing finally fired, ineffective at that range other to spur him into faster motion. It made a good impression on the women, however.
      I made them strip and go outside (except for the girlfriend, her I made sit in a kitchen chair where I tied her with her own lingerie. (Not something I thought I would ever do, but I was really ticked off.)
      I found a bunch of my jewelry (like I have any in real life, don't know where all this came from) in their clothing. As I emptied the pockets and seams I tossed the clothing out the front door to them. They took off when I threw out the GF's clothing. She screamed after them to come back with her clothes, but they ran off. "Some friends you got there. How long before your Boyfriend comes back."
      She muttered. I handed her a cell phone. "Better call him, tell him I'll trade a working DVD player for you."
      "But what if he won't trade?"
      "Then you've not been a very good girlfriend for him and you should seriously think of finding someone better."
      Negotiations apparently didn't go well.
      "Better put something on for the police." I tossed her a long shirt and an old pair of shorts. She flopped down on my bed, giving me a nice view of a very spankable bottom. I was really tempted to take the DVD value out in trade, but then, I wouldn't have had anything to play my DVD's on.