Category: cars

The Lost Tables Dream

This was obviously a dream about change. Anxiety. Confusion.

My wife and I were young people. We had a habit of driving to work together. We were taking turns driving. One would drive one day, the other would drive the next day. The dream showed this happening. Different cars for her and me; my car was a black sports car. Don’t know any details of it. Less is known of her car.

Although always going to the same place, part of our daily drive process was to consult on our phone about where we were going. That’s because the path changed every day. So whoever wasn’t driving was tasked with looking up the destination on the map and give driving instructions.

The dream showed this. I drove, she drove, I drove, she drove, etc. She looked up the directions, I looked them up, she looked them up, I looked them up.

Traffic was busy each day but the weather was good.

Our daily destination was a parking lot by a restaurant. We’d park near there and go on our separate ways to work. After numerous days of this, I was driving. My wife was looking up the instructions. But she was struggling with a signal and I, meanwhile, had made some guesses and found the way. She announced, “Got it,” right as we arrived at the restaurant.

But as I pulled up, I noticed that it was completely different. All of its tables were gone. The usually thriving place was completely empty.

Stunned, I told my wife, “Look. Something happened.” She was busy getting out of the car and heading to work so I repeated myself several times, further elaborating, “There’s no one there. The tables are gone. The place is empty.”

She left for work. I walked over to the area and then walked through the empty place, wondering how it had all changed, seemingly overnight. What I wondered most was, where are all the tables? They had so many tables. There was no sign that any tables had ever been there. As I stood there looking, I saw others hurryng by in the sunshine.

None gave the place a second look.

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The Factory Dream

I was a young man, possibly in my early twenties. Some other fellows were with me at a factory. I’m not sure how many were present. There were at least three, but maybe five, not including our overseer. I never took a head count.

We were in a factory doing a special job. No details of that job are available. It was cold but sunny weather. The factor was a plain, spare building with a whitewashed apparance that presented an air that it was on the verge of being abandoned or falling apart. Corrugated metal construction. Gaps in the walls. Bare, cracked cement floor. Signs that it’d be used for something else before and was now on a fifth or sixth life.

Under an uneven combination of weak overhead lights and sporadic, fading sunlight eking in through large, filthy windows, we worked around a long, dirty conveyor belt putting things together. As part of this, each of us were given some small black devices which seemed to be some sort of governor and also a CPU that told the system what to do. To install mine, I had to climb up a tall metal shaft and slip it into a slot just so. Some jiggling followd and then the conveyor belt sprang into noisy activity.

I don’t know what we were making but we shut everything back down and gathered again. The overseer, an oversized white guy in his mid-forties or early fifties, receding brown hairline and white short sleeve shirt with a tie, told us that we had one more run and then we could go home. But the other run was at another factory, about a mile away.

I had a car, a dark brown 1970s era Chevy Malibu. Sort of a ratty vehicle. I asked another for a ride to the other factory. Once we got there, I realized that I would need to return to the previous factory. We’d been sleeping in some little locker room there on cots. I’d left my clothes and gear there, not to mention my car, and would need a ride back.

This seemed to irritate the other guy, a big, good-looking guy with short, curly hair. He turned surly, and then shunned me during the rest of the session and wouldn’t speak to me. I was taken back by the change and wanted to talk to him about it.

The regular factory workers arrived. They all seemed to be foreigners to go by their dress, appearance, and language. They watched me as I climbed up to install my governor, laughing and joking about it. I gathered they had some other way of doing that and my method seemed strange to them. I tried explaining, “This is what I learned,” and asked for information about the other way. They wouldn’t address my questions.

That’s where the dream ended.

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The Fish Dream

I dreamed I was a fish. Apparently a youngish fish, I was gold and orange with red highlights. Swimming alone, I became aware that I had a pretty good memory, for a fish. I developed understanding that there were fish swimming around who unknowingly carried messages on their skin, and that there were some fish who carried memories and knowledge in their minds. All of these kinds of memories and knowledge had a short life and would fade, even though it all lasted longer than most of the other fish ever remembered anything. I began hunting out knowledge and memory fish after I established that I could transfer their knowledge to myself, keep it longer, and use it. I observed how several knowledge fish would swim together in schools, and other fish would join them, using information from knowledge fish to make decisions. But schools of fish avoided other schools, even if they were the same kind of fish. So knowledge would often not get spread past a school, keeping all of the fished dumbed down.

I began resolving to change that, to become a fish that spread and shared knowledge between different kinds and schools of fish. I felt that making all of us smarter would help preserve knowledge and maybe improve our lives.

Then the dream took a turn where an individual was lost and confused, and it sort of dissolved.

Then I went into another dream. In it, I was back to driving some silver, stunningly expensive sports car. I was alone in that one, and just driving along a blacktop road. Rising and falling, the road cut through an emerald green land under a blue sky. I would sometimes stop and exit the car just to gaze at the land and feel the sun and wind. I was much younger, but better looker than real life, with a dark beard. I never saw anyone else in the dream; just some dark birds silently flyin through the sky.

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Sunda’s Theme Music

Mood: Morninlazin

Sunshine and blue owned the morning sky. The afternoon’s start delivered winds and smotherin’ gray clouds. That mornin’ sunshine feels like a mirage. It’s 43 F. High will be 44 F. Dropped into the cold zone overnight, 29 F at our house. Decidin’ that he preferred warmth over being a free animal, Papi nested in the house until 5:50 AM. That’s when he did his bangin’ to be freed.

BTW, today is Sunda, January 12, 2025.

I’ve been car watching from the coffee shop. We used to have an expression in the US Air Force for B52 bombers. We called them BUFs. Big Ugly F*ckers. I think the term should be revised for some of those vehicles roamin’ the streets. The Tesla Cybertruck certainly qualifies as a BUF. As does the Telluride SUV. My opinion, of course. Others might call them the epitomy of technologic beauty. Some segment probably sees no beauty in any vehicle, dubbin’ them all monstrosities of the modern landscape. And that’s also a reasonable response.

I’ve been watching The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey on Apple. Created by Walter Mosley and based on his novel, the main actor is Samuel L. Jackson. That’s a double win for me, as I’m fans of both. Also features Walton Goggins, another personal preference when I’m watching shows and movies, and has a strong cast. No misfires among any of them, with respect and appreciation for Dominique Fishback in her role increasing. I also admire the way the show ages and de-ages Jackson’s character, Ptolemy, aka Pity. However, when they de-aged him in some episodes, his mustache looked like a glued-on fake to me. Bit distracting for me cuz of that. I recommend the series, though. Came out a few years ago.

Today’s song was gifted to The Neurons by my wife. Al Jarreau is one of her favorite performers, and one of her favorite songs is “Mornin'” from 1983. It’s one of her go-to songs when she’s cleanin’, cookin’, and exercisin’. As she resolved to make some New Year changes, she’s been playin’ this tune several times this week. Not surprisin’, The Neurons locked onto it and have it going in the morning mental music stream (Trademark waitin’). Jarreau is a helluva performer and singer. He sings with such joy. We’ve seen in concert a few times and wouldn’t hesitate to plunk down bucks and do it again, except we can’t because he passed away. This is another of those times when technology works in our favor to help us remember wonderful people. Hope you enjoy it.

Meanwhile, watching the news continuing to come out about the devastating California fires is just soul-killing. To think that someone may have deliberately started any of them is just friggin’ horrifyin’. Yet that possibility seems to have legs. In this age of Trump, I’m stirred to worry that his hateful diatribes triggered someone to actually start fires in California just to own the libs. That’s unfortunately the sort of mentality that seems possible among that cult.

Coffee and I have again embraced one another, observing the Sunday tradition set upon by myself about half a century ago. Hope you have a solid day. Here’s the music for you. Cheers

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Twosda’s Wandering Thoughts

My car is now ten years old but it has multiple modern conveniences. This includes auto-temp control, heated seats, active headlights (which turn with the front wheels and change angles when going up or down hills to keep them level), and other goodies. While my wife loves the butt warmer, my fave by far is the backup camera. It is so useful to me. I recommend those for everybody and every car.

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The Car & Contest Dream

I dreamed I had a very fancy sportscar. I knew it was quite unique, exotic, and expensive. It seemed dark in color but I never saw its color or make, and know little about its shape other than some brief glimpses. It appeared low and svelte with organic curves, along the lines of sports racers in the mid-sixties.

My wife and I were traveling in it. Along our way, we paused to submit an entry in a contest. Everyone was participating in it. My wife took care of that entry, going in and providing them some sample of clever engineering that we’d either found or created. Coming back to the car, she told me there was another opportunity to come back to give them an entry at three that afternoon. We agreed we would return and drove on.

We drove to our destination without incident. Then, with sunset chasing us, we headed back the other way. First we stopped to submit another entry. Since my wife did the first one, I volunteered to go in and take care of this one.

Inside this well-lit, austere place, it was chaos. I found a counter where a rotund white man with a thin mustache was supposed to be handling the entries. He looked like he was in over his head. I brought our device to him for registering and entry. The thing, whatever it was, was round, small, and lightweight, easily residing on my open palm. I gave it to him with the paperwork and watched to see what happened, wanting reassurances we were properly vetted. He did some things but seemed to lose focus halfway through. I made it a point to pester him to ensure our entry had been processed. Reassuring me, he showed me a pullback lid from a small metal can, the sort you’d find on a pet food offering. I was horrified and protested, but then decided, the hell with it, I had to go.

I returned to my car but didn’t see my wife. Picking it up, I carried it out of a crowd of people and around a corner, and set it down with a thump. Still looking for my wife and not finding her, I reasoned that she must have gone off and would be back in a moment. But she rapped on the car window from inside the car; she’d been sitting there the entire time and was indignant about the way I’d just picked up the car and carried it because it’d been unsettling for her.

That out of the way, we and five other couples began driving down a curving multilane highway into the gathering dusk. I could hear the people talking in their cars. Many were discussing my car and me. I gently accelerated, easily outdistancing them, though I knew they remained behind me and could still hear them talking.

By now, it was a moonless and starless black night. I reached a point where the road went up a vertical grade. The car handled it with no problem, but at the top was a ceiling. Reaching it, I stopped the car and left it. I was at the juncture between a white ceiling and white wall with a blue and black pattern. There was a crawlspace access. I knew from my journey there that I had to pick up the car and carry it through this crawlspace to the other side. I knew I’d done it before but I was a little more tired this time.

Nevertheless, I scaled the wall and entered the crawlspace. The other cars had arrived and were queued to follow me. Reaching back, I picked up the car with my wife inside it. As I began wedging myself and my vehicle through the narrow space, I thought, this is stupid, and stopped.

There must be a better way, I thought.

Dream end.

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Sunda’s Wandering Thoughts

I’m currently contemplating making arrangements for my wife and I to go the the Oregon coast for a break. You know the thinking: get away from it all. Take well-deserved time out from the usual routines. My injuries and medical matters curtailed many of our travel plans this year. Beyond that, the burden of caring for me, cleaning the house, and well, doin’ everything, was shoved onto her shoulders for several weeks. She held up well but she could use some downtime.

The thing is, it’s winter. Snow could come at any time. And we’d be driving through the mountains, often on winding two-lane highways. She no like. As a naturally anxious person, travel heightens her anxiety. Blend in additional risks like driving on snowy, icy weather, and she’s hanging over the edge.

In that way, she’s my polar opposite. I’m a calm and relaxed traveler and driver for most of the time, taking things as they come. When driving, I do get impatient with other drivers and vehicles. I allowed the impatience to take over when I was middle-aged. Now, I gently coax it back into its shell.

So I’m up in the air about what to do. Stay or go. Probably plan it and make reservations, and then buy the cancellation insurance in case the weather is too daunting.

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A Race Car Dream

I was a young man. And I was at some kind of car race where I was to be a participant. Several emerging factors swirled and fell and rose. Nobody was expecting me. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I then confirmed, gosh, I am in this race.

Employing strange dream logic, the race was sometimes played as a card game with a board track. Other times, it seemed like a slot car setup, but then it was sometimes full-sized race cars. I’d seamlessly skip between those motifs but the dream itself was mostly centered on race control where I’d check the time sheets, find out where I was on the track, and learn my position. The people populating race control were all tall, older, and white. Most seemed British. I never saw any of the cars so I can’t comment on their colors or livery. But I would identify them. Like I told some once that another driver was piloting a Porsche 917 and another was driving a P3 Ferrari. Someone else was wheeling the Silk Cut Jaguar XJ9.

I swapped cars. I don’t know what I was driving but I suddenly announced, grinning, “I’m driving a Ford GT.” This is a car which won LeMans and the world championship in the mid 1960s and helped seduce me as a racing fan when I was nine. I didn’t specify which variant I was driving.

I learned that I’d qualified fourth but some bureaucratic snafu shuffled me to the pack’s tail end. That didn’t bother me; I shrugged it off with a grin. I was confident that I would win, as I’d qualified fourth with minimal effort. Now, recalling, I actually did have one segment where I was in the car, on the track, during the race, passing clusters of other cars. I then left the car, blink, and was back at race control to check my standing. They didn’t know who I was. I was certain I was leading but they dismissed it. I was told that I’d done something incorrectly and my laps hadn’t been counted. I didn’t know I was supposed to do that, I protested, but that wasn’t their issue.

None of that fazed me. Grinning, I told them, “But I have all these chits.” The chits were small red paper rectangles, like the old-time ticket stubs given at movies in decades past. I received them every time I completed a lap. As I told them about the chits, I held up a fistful of them. Expressing astonishment, they counted the chits and announced that I was in the lead.

I met the news with a happy grin and readied myself to keep racing. Dream end.

I enjoyed discovering this footage of the 1966 LeMans race featuring the Ford GTs. Nice to hear the voices of Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney, Denis Hulme, etc., and see them. Of course, the staged Ford 1-2-3 finish was made famous in the movie Ford vs. Ferrari, where Ken Miles (played by Christian Bale) was first across the finish line but was deemed not to be the winner because another car started further back, so it covered more distance.

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