Batch

09-11-2013 -- Can't remember too much of the earlier parts of this, but I find myself down in the Lauderdale/Hollywood part of Florida, probably doing some mystery shops. I am tired, hungry, depressed, and I don't have much money. I think I need to find somewhere to sleep for the night and continue with the shops in the morning (happened frequently when I had a lot of shops in the Miami area, back when I had gas stations, banks, restaurants, and Kinko's locations all on the same trip) but I just don't have the money for it, and nobody seems to want to help me in any way.

Finally I end up sitting in a restaurant, eating a meal, half falling asleep, and there is a bartender who is bringing me a huge bottle of whiskey, and seems worried I am going to get drunk or something with it. He shouldn't worry, as the shots I am pouring are very small. But I am just feeling very down and put upon.

Soon I've stopped with the boozing and walked out of the place with a friend, and it might have been Keith, though I am not completely sure. The area is kind of a cross between the dog track in the Hollywood/Lauderdale area (which I know from doing gas stations and other mystery shops in the area) and the parking lot at (and across from) Pleasure Island.

We're wandering, going somewhere that Keith has promised to lead me, and soon, even though I am still walking on pavement, it is kind of half walking in a shallow body of water, and a decent sized motor boat is near us, and we are trying to get close enough to climb into it, and Keith has arranged for a little sailing. The funny thing is, the person running the boat seems to be Brian Keith (Parent Trap, Hardcastle and McCormick) who I just watched about a week ago dressed as Sherlock Holmes in a couple of episodes of Murder, She Wrote.

So we go for a small sail, which in dream time only lasts a minute or two, but probably represents an hour or two. Then we're dumped back in the parking lot. Keith has things to do, and is getting ready to leave, Brian Keith is heading off, and I am being just kind of dumped, still no money, nowhere to go, and I finally give up, nobody wants to spend a lot of time with me, or help me out too much, and I figure I should just get in my car and head back to Orlando. So I start walking through the parking lot, trying to remember where I parked, and even what I am driving.

So I keep looking for my car, and cross the street in what seems to be the overflow parking, and I can vaguely remember I may have parked here ... but I look around the section of the parking lot where I think I would have parked, and can't find any car that feels like mine. Of course, since I only got the car about two days ago, and parked it there yesterday, I can't quite remember what kind or color of car it is, anyway.

So I keep stumbling around, slightly tired, trying to find my car, when I start to notice the no parking warnings, and I begin to think there may be a good reason why I can't find it. As I look around, I find that this seeming 'overflow' parking is actually located in the parking lot of a police station or possibly a jail, and I see some cops talking, so decide to go speak to them and try to find out if my car might have been towed.

I reach where the three cops are talking and joking at a sort of podium, but they largely ignore me, so I keep trying to speak and get their attention. But they are kind of loud and boisterous, and I have almost no voice, so it takes a while for them to notice me. Then two of them walk off, leaving me talking to a female cop with wild blondish hair (think a slightly heavier Alex Kingston) to speak to me. I ask about finding out if my car has been towed, and she says she'll check, and wanders off for a fair amount of time.

She eventually comes back and tells me that, yes, my car has been towed and impounded. It is inside their facility, and I will have to go inside and pay a ticket or fine before I can get it back. Unfortunately she indicates that the entrance is on the other side of the building. I am on the northern end of the east side of the building, and I cannot tell from what she is saying if the entrance is on the south side or the west side, but I am hoping it is the south side, since it is a large building.

So I start walking around the building. The part I started at was kind of like a small loading dock, and I walk a fair distance to reach the south side of the building, and though I find emergency exits and the like, I cannot find an official entrance, so I have to keep going to the west side. But as I reach the southwest corner, I find all kinds of traffic control devices in use. Gates that seem like railroad crossing gates, which drop down at high speed if you try to walk through the areas and don't belong there, and at least one steel mesh gate (think roll-up gate at a mall store) that comes down with great speed and could minorly crush someone.

I'm almost running around trying to dodge these things, and not wanting to be forced to walk a long way around to get out of the parking lot and onto a side walk to bypass them, as it would mean a lot more walking, and I'm a big guy who is already getting kind of tired. But luckily I find one set of the crossing bars that are kind of short, and there is a gap of perhaps five feet between two of them, which is more than large enough for me to make it through, so I continue on walking through a very large warehouse-like loading dock area with many big rigs, and continue on until I find the entrance to the facility on the west side.

I walk up to speak to a few cops at the entrance, and explain they have my car, and a bit about my situation (including having enough money to get gas back to Orlando or pay a small fine, but probably not both, and one of them takes pity on me, and tells me he can help me get my car back, and he'll make sure I can afford it. Unfortunately, he leads me all the way around the north side of the building, and then the east side on the outside of the wall, so I not only have to walk the entire east side outside the wall, but then have to walk almost the entire east side again, inside the outer wall, to reach the point I started from.

But things have changed a bit since the last time I was here, and now, rather than being just a big, open parking area, it is more fenced in, with more of those dropping gates and train crossing-type gates, and I find myself at a place where I am kind of climbing out on a ledge, wrapping my arms around a pillar and trying to find my footing around it. The cop just walks past me and opens a door, not risking life and limb, and I look at him and say something like "even better." I swing back around the pillar and start to step through the doorway when I wake up.