Bridger's Oneironautic Expeditions

Before I began dreaming, I was attempting the MILD after my second to last alarm went off, but so far, I had not yet fallen back asleep and was concerned my final alarm would be going off at any moment...

I'm arriving home at night to a house that I'm not familiar with. Walking up to the door, I notice a lot of bicycles in the front yard. As I walk over to some of them, Goose, my GF's dog, runs up to me all energetic and he starts poking his head through the spokes trying to bite at them. I continue to walk up to the door. Once I enter, I see everyone sitting around nursing drinks I assume to be alcoholic. More than my roommates are there, though, and it feels like the end of a big party. Before walking farther in, we get on the subject of dreaming, and I break into a lesson for everyone. I tell them exactly what I was trying to do this morning, "Set your usual alarm clock time in the morning, but also go back 90 to 100 minutes before that and set another alarm. Get out of bed with this alarm, go to the bathroom or something, then go back to sleep all while repeating the phrase in your head, 'the next scene will be a dream'." I say how it's a good way to induce lucid dreams called the MILD method after implementing the WBTB method. I walk all the way into the main room now and sit with a couple guys discussing what I had said. They talk about weird things that could pop up in dreams like a duck wearing a leather jacket. I agree with them and ask them if they would question whether they were dreaming or not after they saw that. I also make a joke by saying "Duck Gun" trying to relate the ducks and leather jackets to Top Gun. It feels stupid but both of the other guys laugh. Suddenly, I get the feeling to do a reality check since I realize I've just been talking about them before. I push my fingers through my other hand successfully and realize I'm dreaming. I look around the room for a second trying to stay calm. There's a lot more people now, all of them talking. I want to go back outside so I get up to leave when one of the guys I was talking to also gets up and shakes my hand. It takes me a couple attempts to get his name right, but apparently it was "Lemon". I walk outside to find it's a brilliant sunny day. Summer comes to mind as spots of vibrant colors, I assume to be from flowers, cover my peripheral vision with large trees over the road in front of the house. It appears I'm in a neighborhood. There's a small picnic table with a pull out bench in the front yard and I go over and sit down. I try grounding myself in the dream more by looking over my hands and touching the wooden bench, feeling the grains and knots in the wood. A friend comes out of the house talking in a very sad voice, but I'm pre-occupied with maintaining my awareness. I suddenly decide to toss the bench I've been sitting on far away just to see what it would do. My roommate comes outside too, and I tell him I just threw the bench to infinity. As I watch it, I see it catch the wind, though, and it falls back in to the neighborhood some distance away. The idea of flying comes to me so I prepare to do this. Instead of my normal routine of jumping into the air to begin, however, I decide to be more controlled with it. I hold out my arms and imagine myself floating off the ground. Before I leave the ground, everyone leaves in a car and the wind becomes a bit gusty. Suddenly, I find myself starting to float. It's working! I continue to focus, also taking note of the surroundings. The wind starts to carry my off, much like a hot air balloon. As I'm drifting with the wind, I try to ground myself more and think of the next thing I want to do, but I wake up

I'm walking through a mall of sorts with my little brother. He stumbles upon something that he really wants to do. In the middle of the mall is a racing simulator where every seat available is in the form of a star wars character's vehicle. He asks if it costs any money and when the operator says no, I also head over to participate. I forgot which one he gets on but it was the one I wanted, so I look for another. Every star wars character is a Jedi, or a Sith, or any other saber- wielding person. I choose Darth Maul's seat with his vehicle being the speedy land cruiser used in episode I. The operator comes over and shows me what's what controls-wise, and then straps the VR goggles over my head. I'm immediately engaged in the new scene which is just a generic, pixelated race track that is similar to older racing arcade games. The controls feel the same as well. I can get up to full speed and stay that way the whole time, even going through turns. The turning feels weird, however, partly because I don't have a steering wheel but a joystick for my right hand. I think about how much better it would be if it was in my left hand since I'm left hand dominant. I get a good lead against my brother early on, but now he's catching back up. We are now in an open field following a faint trail, and I look down to see the racing vehicles we had are now bicycles. As he continues to gain on me, I attempt to cut him off which leads to him crashing. I stop to help him back up and we both start walking. The open field begins to turn into a rain forest as we continue walking . My brother points to something behind us. and through the leaves, I am able to just make out the outline of a hippo. Knowing how dangerous they can be, I tell my brother to start running away. We don't make it far before running into another hippo, this one being the mother of the first one we saw. It doesn't attack us, though, and just walks away.