Batch

05-31-2013 -- [Earlier bits, good stuff with some chases and some signs of dream powers, but nothing I can remember in detail. Then the parts that I can remember, which I enjoyed quite a bit, and which ties in to many other dreams I have had.]

At breakfast, and am refusing some sort of hard, nutty Grapenuts-type cereal because I am trying to learn to make some sort of incredibly decadent breakfast food made of eggs, milk, and obscene amounts of butter. It seems to be some extremely overdone cross between an omelet and french toast. Reading a sort of picture book, and I think it is one of the Alvin Maker books. But it is oddly like the start of Disney's animated Sleeping Beauty in that I turn the page, look at the picture, and it comes to life before me and plays out for me.

Story seems to take place in Colonial times, and somehow Alvin has pissed off King George, and is being banished from both England and the Colonies, but I have missed how, and so am turning back a couple of pages to try and find out what happened (sort of time travel by page turning.) It never comes all that clear, but it more or less boils down to Alvin couldn't help but make a rude comment after King George said something extremely stupid, and in a fit of anger, was banished.

Things are turning live, and we've been banished and are about to board a ship bound for somewhere in Europe where we can try to make a new start, but all the ship's crew is making threats and giving us insults, mad that we dared to say anything negative to King George, and we're starting to get annoyed. There are three or four of us at this point. I think Alvin, two of his brothers (I am one of these) and little Arthur Stuart. The ship's captain is coming on to my two older brothers, but not me (because in the dream I am my real fat, somewhat ugly self), and though at first he is polite about it, he is getting more rude and pushy all the time.

So as we're getting annoyed, the older brother sneaks off the ship and grabs a small wooden rowboat and brings it back aboard. He is sneaking up behind the captain, as he is pressuring Alvin to give in to his advances, and a cross between a young cabin boy and Arthur Stuart is trying to warn the captain, but he is too involved in his wooing, so the older brother just sneaks up behind him, knocks him on the head with the rowboat, and knocks him out. We set him adrift in the same rowboat we hit him with, and steal his ship, starting a sort of pirate motif.

I raise the sails, but don't know how to properly tie them off, so have to settle for wrapping the rope around the metal thingy several times, and hope it will be good enough, and we sail off into the sunset. But as we sail, things change. What was a huge ship on a huge ocean is turning into a ever-shrinking ship on a ever-shrinking river, and is soon turning into a cross between Knott's Berry Farm and Eisenhower Park, a sort of river that I have frequently dreamed about. The ship probably started out looking like the Columbia (big sailing ship at Disneyland), but has now shrunk to look much the same (but with Jolly Roger sails) but about twice the size of Mike Fink's Gullywhumper (a much smaller ship at Disney).

We're now on a river encircling an island, but the island is largely square. Alvin and Arthur have kind of faded away, Dave D. (I think) is now with me, and we've also got a woman with us. We have two ships, the 'big' one (which isn't so big anymore) and a smaller one that is kind of a cross between a canoe and a rowboat which Dave and the woman have been fishing in. Eventually, the woman goes off fishing by herself, and Dave and I are now on the pirate ship.

Things are changing, and we are now on this river in an amusement park, but they've closed down this entire section of the park, and eventually plan to remove it. We've stolen the boat to go sailing and playing around the area we used to play around as kids, once more before they tear it all out. So we're on the 'back' side of the river, to the south, and are sailing through rapids-like waters, through narrow paths, over small waterfalls, and occasionally through some very sharp rocks that I am afraid may tear out the bottom of the boat, but thankfully, that never happens.

We come to the east side of the river, and the water levels are getting lower, the river is becoming a narrow stream, and on the island I can see the wooden remains of a large lift hill (or perhaps a drop, who can tell, with the poor condition it is in) of a huge logride they were once trying to build, but which was abandoned long ago. We continue around, counter-clockwise to the north side, and the water is lower, still. The stream is breaking up into several small channels, lower and narrower than they used to be.

Soon we're on the west side again, where we originally stole the ship, but what was a virtual ocean is now narrow paths of water that we can barely fit the ship in, at all. Then we're on the south side and back to the east side again, and this time around, I am more interested in the partly-built log ride, and am trying to get a closer look at it, but as it shrinks, the water of the river is getting ever-further away from it. By the point we're back to the north side, we're going through larger and larger sections where there is no water left at all, but the ship keeps moving all right, so I am beginning to wonder if it has wheels on the bottom of it.

Soon I think I have taken a slightly wrong turn, because by the time I am on the west side again, I seem to be almost in a sort of cave passage, and there is no water at all. I glance to my right through a gap in the cave wall and find myself looking up about ten feet to the actual river bed. Yeah, I got in a wrong channel, and am now in a narrow cave passage on the edge of the island, itself. I find an opening where I can cross back into the river, and the boat somehow manages the slight slope back up. It seems there were several passages that were lower than the level of the river, itself, that criss-crossed the island. Guests never saw them because the water level was too high, but they allowed park workers access to the stalagtited caverns the log ride would have partly ridden through.

At this point for a little while, Dave and I were on different ships, and we came close to crashing in to each other a couple of times as we started to explore these tunnels under the island. I miss the water, and seeing large, black pipes that are part of the emergency sprinkler system, I find myself wishing one of them would break, and start providing us with more water. I guess my wishes are powerful, because suddenly several do, and huge streams of water are now falling from the 'sky' (we're under an island, remember). I try to get closer to the lift hill to look at it, but the repair workers who are suddenly appearing to fix the sprinkler system are too close, so I have to veer away.

By this time we're swinging around from the east side to the north side again, and it now once again has the appearance of a huge, placid river (or even ocean), so those broken pipes really filled things up quickly! Problem is, security is now after us, as well, and they are catching up quickly. There are a couple of big, tough guys, but they are being led by a very attractive blond lady. We hear workers telling her they found small wheel tracks that indicated somebody ran into the sprinkler pipes, and they are placing the blame on us. I would swear that we came nowhere near hitting the pipes, but they don't believe us. Somehow I talk the beautiful lady into coming out on the ship's figurehead with me, and it actually is a wooden recreation of Elliot the dragon's (Pete's Dragon) neck and head. I show her it, as the tallest point of the ship, never could have reached the pipe, and am trying to come on to her at the same time.

Very pleasant dream. Lots of fun.