Strange night

Bicycles and Icicles' Beloved World Headquarters

So I have this dream. I'm in my living room with my father. He actually died 12 years ago, but still makes a lot of brief appearances in my dreams for some reason. Anyway, I'm living in this house by a bay full of icebergs, there's a walrus, suddenly I'm in a warm-climate wildlife park, yadda yadda yadda. (My dreams tend to be a little surreal. But that's not really a bad thing; they're sort of like acid trips without the legal risks.) I'm trying to shoot a photo of the walrus when somebody stops me to ask a strange question: What five items could I not live without? I immediately answer, 1) a really good mountain bike, and 2) my iBook. I can't think of three others. Next thing I know, my wife is telling me she accidentally knocked my iBook off the table.

"Was it damaged?!" I yell in a panic.

"Uh, I don't know," she replies. "I didn't really look." That's about right. She hates my Mac computers, I loathe Windows. I run to my computer and open it up. Of course, it's toast. I'm crushed, tormented, grief-stricken, in shock.

Then I wake up to take a leak and give it some more thought on my way to the bathroom. I still can't think of any "things" that I'd really miss. I don't even think of my collection of Grateful Dead recordings. Just a mountain bike and a laptop. Then I go back to bed and lay awake while trying to figure out if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I could think of only two items. Am I too obsessed with bikes? Am I addicted to a brilliantly designed, extremely stable computer? Do I need some kind of help?

Naaaaaaaaaaaaah. I just have discriminating tastes.

Three cheers for high gas prices.