Pipe Dream

              This morning, I dreamed I was walking out of Poway with an old friend, who I hadn't seen in several years. We needed to get over to the auto shop in my former high school, as there were parts that I needed to repair my car. For some reason, we decided to walk.
There was a new foot and bike bridge we decided to take. There were dozens of others on the bridge but overall it didn't seem crowded. The structure spiraled around a couple of large pipe filled spaces, they were obviously there to support the main structure, but my friend decided to step out into the open area above the network of pipes just to see how far above the ground we were. He was holding on firmly to an upright pole while stepping out, in stockinged feet, I noticed, onto a foot diameter pipe.
              “This is wide enough to walk on, but it is a bit slippery.” He noted.
              I suggested that perhaps it would be better with his shoes on, but he disagreed.
              While we were having our conversation, a family of four went by me, I overheard the conversation the mom was having with her daughter. She was claiming that you could easily walk across the large pipe and avoid having to go around the whole diameter of the support column. The daughter, only about six or seven, pointed out that the man across the column from them had said it was slippery.
              They moved about a quarter of the way around the spiral, just out of direct line of site, when my friend (whose identity kept shifting amongst my current and old friends) let out an “Ut oh!” I thought that he'd slipped but when I looked out to where he was he was pointing to where the family was.
              I leaned out over the network of pipes. The Mother of the family had stepped out onto one of the larger pipes, and had apparently slipped and fallen. She was now holding on to a narrow pipe with her arms and had one leg wrapped around a horizontal pipe just a bit lower.
              “Mommy!” came a pair of panicked shouts and the Father and boy had stepped out onto the grid to try to rescue the mom. A couple of seconds later there was a shriek and the mom had to grab onto her daughter, who'd followed her out onto the large pipe, to keep her from plummeting to the freeway below.
              My friend and I made our way over to where the family were now all desperately clutching the pipe grid, or one another.
              I took off my belt and leaned out to wrap it around the waist of the smallest child. “Hold on, we'll pull you back up."