I'm leading a car trip back from somewhere in the Mount Hood area. Following me is a car with Leah and Lucas in it, and some other people who are indistinct.
We seem to have made a wrong turn somewhere, and gradually I notice that we are driving up the Columbia Gorge in the wrong direction, and we need to turn around. The road makes a steep bank to the right, so steep that it appears if you were to stop, the car might roll off into the ditch. There is, in fact, a car in the ditch down there, covered in mud and struggling to get back on the road. I consider stopping to help them, but I am concerned about my own safety if I stop, and then they seem to have got themselves back on the road.
I lead our party off an exit, and the water suddenly becomes very deep, reaching the dashboard of my car. It washes away a lizard that I was keeping on my instrument gauges. I should have taken better care of him - I can't believe he's been surviving there, through all the places I've parked it a stuff. He is carried away by the water, and I jump out and paddle through the chest-high water to catch him. I can barely see him, about a foot down in the murky water, but I rescue him.
Then I notice that a life-sized rubber alligator, which I had in the back of my car, also got washed out, and he's drawn a crowd of passersby who think he is real. I go over there to defuse the situation, but I notice that the rubber alligator is thrashing around as though alive! Is it because of the water? I wonder if maybe he is alive, or maybe it's not my alligator.
Leah and Lucas have pulled up now, so I tell them that we'd better get out of there right away, follow me and I'll call them on the cell phone. |