In Dreams - "And The Running Man Runs"

Wednesday night, I met with a friend who's also my property manager. We went to dinner, and I had my first beer in over a year. I also had calamari and crab won ton  so maybe that dinner combination somehow aided the vividness of the dream.

I was deployed to southwest Asia, to a fairly quiet location. It was winter, so the skies were overcast. The temperature was mild, though. A bit of a breeze wafted around the buildings. There were trees all over, lining the roads. Most roads were paved, but enough sand blew around that some covered the asphalt of the roads.

My duties were nebulous. I didn't carry a weapon, so I guess I was a staff guy. I was with a group of staff guys, and we all did similar jobs. Those jobs included a lot of standing around and talking.

Every once in a while, we would leave our building and go to other locations on base. Once at the other locations, we would sit and talk. Then we would go back to our original location. We normally did this by double-timing from place to place. Weird thing was, I was basketball sneakers instead of running shoes. I could tell the difference in my gait.

At one point, I was to go to a different building on my own, a "building 93" which was 3 to 5 miles away. I was to meet with some individual who was higher up the chain of command, so I didn't want to be late. I spent more time than necessary plotting out which path I would take that would shave time and possibly distance on the run. Even in the midst of "mission planning" the run, we also digressed and talked about unrelated stuff. With all the talking we did, I don't think any of us were actually listening to each other. The jabber didn't stop, though.

Some of the jabber was about using a particular piece of equipment. There were several components, and numerous acceptable techniques on how to use equipment. So, there were several viewpoints on which technique was most appropriate. We didn't actually turn on the equipment, however.

I finally set out, saw the senior officer, and then started jogging back. I found myself across the street from my point of origin, but traffic prevented me from crossing soonest. Funny thing was, the traffic consisted of a rickshaw crossing from my right to left & a Soviet-era utilitarian box of a compact car crossing from my left to right. Both vehicles were moving slow, but at a pace faster than I thought I could beat. I stood on the side of the road, waiting for a gap I could exploit. The rickshaw driver was a smaller guy wearing a white shirt and bow tie. He was very talkative, and he offered lots of advice on road-crossing.

Eventually, I got across the road and entered my building of origin. I had a weird sense of accomplishment, given that all I did was run to a place and run back. Upon my return, as several co-workers sat around talking. I suddenly had the urge to go pee. In our latrine, we had toilets but not urinals. Weird thing was, the toilets were oriented opposite of normal, where the back of the tank was nearer the user. So, I had to aim over the tank into the bowl. Also, the bowl seems much smaller than a normal bowl, so the targeting had to be more accurate. And, the flush mechanism didn't work. Weird thing was, it wasn't as messy as one would have expected.