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This was the first of two lucid dreams from last night, and my first serious Great Barrier Reef attempt.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #130: The Turtle

I'm swimming in a shallow cove with my 4-year-old son "E". I tell him that he's helping me practice for a planned dream about the Great Barrier Reef and he seems excited to help. We come across a cave just under the waterline, swim into it, and emerge in a cavern where all these other kids are hanging around. I wonder whether all these kids are helping their moms and dads prepare for a Great Barrier Reef dream. This feels strange to me and I become lucid.

There's either a scene change or a memory gap at this point, because my next memory is of walking by myself through the grounds of a university. I pass two men who stare silently at me as I walk by. They're both in their late 20s and look almost like identical twins, except that one is dressed in a suit while the other wears glasses and a flannel shirt. I think that there's something I need to ask them, but I can't remember what it is. (I think I'd meant to ask them the meaning of life for Task of the Month.)

Nearby is a plaza with a tall stone column at each of its four corners. Perhaps a dozen DCs are walking around this plaza, looking happy but aimless. I exchange a glance with one tough-looking DC as I walk across the plaza, and something about him just rubs me the wrong way. I take a half-hearted swing at him, as if I'm trying to slap him upside the head. He ducks out of the way, and immediately I wonder why I would do something like that.

The DC moves aggressively toward me and I move to dissolve this problem that I've caused. I hold up my right hand to the DC and walk casually away, saying, "It's cool." The tension abates and he walks away. Whew.

I remember my intention to get to the Great Barrier Reef. I hulk-jump high above the Earth, knowing that I'll see water nearby. Sure enough, there's a sparkling blue ocean to my right. As I descend, I notice a cute DC standing in the water, waving at me as she watches me come back down to Earth. As I near the water, I realize that she's Wife!

Before I can say anything, I plunge into the water. This is one of only a handful of times that I've been underwater in an LD, and I'm pleased to see that I can breathe normally. I try my voice, and it's perfectly clear: "[Wife]! Can you hear me?" There's no reply and I don't see any sign of her. Okay, focus. I need to ride a sea turtle, find a great white shark, and bite it. Without dying. The task feels really intimidating to me but I start searching.

I swim in random directions for a while until I finally catch sight of a turtle. The turtle has no interest in my company, though, and speeds away from me underwater. I don't have any plan as to how I'm going to catch him, so I just try to swim faster. He kites me along like this for quite a while until I have a false awakening in some kind of hospital.

Wife and I are here trying to improve our dreaming abilities. I'm astounded but pleased that she's interested in dream work now. She tells me that she's trying to hit her REM cycles by setting alarms that correspond with the take-off times for airplanes. Skyler White (from Breaking Bad) walks into our room and starts speaking to Wife in a husky, almost male voice. She's apparently a researcher at this hospital. This all seems strange to me and I briefly become lucid before the dream ends.

I'm not sure if this was a DILD, MILD, or WILD. I did a WBTB at 4, said a mantra while falling asleep, and the next thing I knew I was in a dream already lucid with no recollection of any transition period or normal dream. I had three dreams and woke up at 4:45 so .

I was standing in my room, already lucid, only to find two of my friends on my bed having sex. What the hell?! I yelled at them to stop and leave and they complied with annoyed looks on their face as they walked out the door. Not the way I wanted this dream to start out, but I was lucid so I didn't really mind. That little incident made a sex lucid the first thing on my mind but I really wanted to work on the TotY so I thought about which one to do. The Colosseum task was the first to pop into my head but I had decided to save that one for last. Instead I figured I would do the Angel Falls on, South America, I think it was for.

My friends had left the door to my room open on their way out so I walked over, closed it, and envisioned myself at the foot of Angel Falls on the other side. When I opened the door, it was just my hallway. Let's try again. I closed the door, pictured Angel Falls all by itself on the other side and, when I opened it, I was greeted by a large waterfall in the middle of a rain forest. This must be it! I stepped through the door and was immediately hit with a hot, humid air that made my clothes stick to my chest. This stickiness made me realize that I hadn't stabilized yet so I quickly rubbed my hands together and took in a big, deep breath which was quite difficult with the humidity.

I had been in a rain forest once before, in southeastern Mexico, but these seemed much thicker and wetter. In front of me lay a huge waterfall, though quite thin. The whole thing was probably 1000 feet high but only 10-20 feet wide with a surprisingly little amount of water in it. I looked at the bottom to make sure there was a sufficient pool of water for when I jumped down and it looked like a good size: about 40 feet across and seemed deep enough. I started to float up to the top of the falls and noticed that there were a lot of rocks and bumps along the path of the waterfall, something which couldn't be seen from the ground. In order to get past these I would have to jump fairly far out.

I reached the top and landed on a small, rocky outcropping just alongside the falls. I looked over the edge and started to plan out which route I would take. I looked at the pool below to find a good landing spot, one that would be deep enough but also big enough to hit. I picked a spot in the pool that was darker and looked deeper than the rest. I took a few steps back, took a deep breath, and then leaped off the edge. I curled up into a ball and yelled, "Cannonball!!!" There were a couple seconds of awkwardness as I kept falling after I yelled that. The second I thought, "Hmm, I probably should have hit the wat-" I slammed into the water, right on my butt. That was uncomfortable.

A split second after I hit the water I felt a soft, muddy bottom and my feet sunk in a few inches. I pushed up from the bottom to re-surface but my feet got caught in the mud a bit and made this a wasted effort. I slowly floated back up to the surface and, upon lifting my head out of the water all I could see was white. There was suddenly a big cloud of mist from the waterfall, something that should've been there the entire time but for some reason never was. Well, that was it, I got another TotY done. I proceeded to fill that urge I had at the beginning. Right when I reached the pique of that, I woke up.



I had prepped myself for a DEILD in the dream prior to this and was ready for when I woke up. I relaxed and went back to sleep, making sure to stay awake. After only a few seconds I was back in a dream, in my room once again, and checked my hands to make sure I was in a dream. They looked normal as a whole but seemed a little off for some reason. I did a nose-plug to be sure and I could definitely breath. It was still nighttime and was completely dark in my room so I walked over to my light switch and flipped it on. Of course, this didn't work. I was messing with it for a second but then realized, "Dur, it's a dream!" I yelled out, "Lights, please!" and the room became bright.

I figured I would go for a second task since this was technically another dream. I decided on the Australia one and went through it in my head to be sure I wasn't missing anything. I had to hitch a ride on a turtle or something and then bite a great white shark, I think. I decided to try something new to get from my house in America to the great barrier reef in Australia. I went outside into my backyard and, for some reason, it was summer, which helped for what I wanted to do. I jumped into my pool, inspired by the Angel Falls task, and pictured the great barrier reef. When I resurfaced I was off the coast of what I believe was Australia with corals and fish around me. It worked!

I had never tried breathing underwater so I though this task would be a good place to try. I went underwater and at first tried to hold my breath to see if I could just do that forever but it didn't work, I had to breathe. I hesitantly took in a small breath through my nose and was somehow able to breathe, though it felt quite odd and still freaked me out a little bit. I looked around underwater, looking for a turtle to ride on since I wasn't sure what else I could. I saw brightly colored fish and a lot of coral but no turtles. I came back to the surface and looked around. I looked on shore just a few dozen yards away and there I saw a handful of turtle lying on the shore. I whistled to them, trying to get them to come over, and, now that I think about it, treated them like dogs .

But it worked. A couple of them looked up and over at me and began to make their way to the water. It took them a while just to move the 15 feet to the water but once they got in, they zipped right on to me. I grabbed one by its "shoulders" as it came by me and just hung on for the ride. It swam all throughout the reef, from various blue-green coral to pink colored sand at the bottom. There were countless amounts of fish, from rainbow striped to orange clown fish hiding in anemone. I rode around on the turtle for a few minutes but then remembered that I had to bite a great white shark. I looked around and all I could see were gray reef sharks circling down on the floor of the reef. They weren't doing anything interesting and I knew it had to be a great white so I let go of the turtle and headed out to see.

I had never really swam before in a lucid dreaming either so this had a lot of firsts for me. I experimented with swimming arm over arm like you're taught when you're a child, but that did little when I was completely underwater. I then tried moving my legs up and down, similar to a dolphin, and that worked quite well. I was moving much faster and had a lot more control that I did just flailing around aimlessly. Just a few seconds after I got the hand of swimming I saw what looked like a great white off in the distance. I swam towards it and as I got closer I could see that it was, indeed, a great white.

Sure, I could go up and bite it plain and easy, but what fun would that be? I pictured an orca whale, the only creature I could think of that would hunt sharks, or at least attack them. I felt weird and, when I opened my eyes, I had transformed into an Orca Whale! It felt odd not having arms or anything, and my vision was quite different, given that my eyes were now towards the side of my head, but it was definitely more interesting than being myself and going up and biting a shark. I spotted the great white and headed over to it. I picked up a lot of speed, opened my mouth, and bit right down on its tail, slamming into it with full force. The shark was obviously caught off guard and, being alone, tried its best to right back. I dodged its attempts to bite me back and continued to hit it. After about 30 seconds of me biting him in various places and dodging all its attacks, it swam off into the distance. Take that, Jaws!

I started to turn back into myself afterwards and pictured me with my arms, legs, body and head, as well as come clothes. I could feel my arms (which were now fins) turning back into themselves and by legs (which were now a flipper) separating again and my whole body grew smaller. Right as I was about to become myself again, I felt the dream start to fade. I quickly finished the transformation and rubbed my hands together, remembering that I had never stabilized this time. Unfortunately, it didn't work and I woke up.

Luckily, I was able to prepare for another DEILD that would end up begin successful. Instead of doing a third task I just mimicked the ending of my first dream. I'm still not sure whether the first one was a WILD or MILD, but I got lucid so I didn't really care .