Dream - Crashing the car, then saved, then a woman who was drinking

On Sunday, August 25, 2002, or thereabouts, while sleeping in the afternoon, I had a dream. The first part of the dream is lost, but later in the dream I was driving somewhere, perhaps from Fallon, Nevada. I may have been going to Reno, but the roads were closer to what exists going back to Arizona. The road was not a complete match for reality in any case.

I was driving the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile and was extremely tired. The road led uphill and was only two lanes. Rain was falling. The road turned to the right and leveled out. I turned the steering wheel, but had to turn and turn for the wheels to turn enough. I finally had the steering wheel turned all the way to lock, and it wouldn't turn anymore. It was still not enough. For some reason, the car couldn't turn at a tight enough angle, and instead turned in a broad arc that sent it around the corner and onto the opposite side of the road. The road bordered a cliff at that point, and did not have a guard rail. Both wheels on the driver's side went off the road, and then the car turned nose down and tilted until the windshield was pointed at the ground. I saw muddy ground and puddles far below, rushing up very fast. I wondered how I was going to get out of this one and grimly thought "God be with me."

There was a period of blankness and then I woke up, still in the dream, and found myself parked off the side of the road. I was still in the same area, but the road now had a long, wide paved parking area at the edge along the cliff and a guard rail. I was parked at a slight angle facing the guard rail. Another car was parked a ways back, along the way I had come. I was concerned that the person in the other car was watching me, but I was also amused by it.

I was not as tired after my nap, but I realized that I had forgotten to pick up the Saturday paper before I left town, and had completely forgotten the Friday paper. It was too late now for the Friday paper, but I figured I should go back to town and get the Saturday paper. I was reluctant to do this, but turned the car around and did it anyway. It was now early morning.

When I got back to town, a relatively short distance, it was evening. I drove through the parking lots of adjoining small businesses, directly from lot to lot, looking for a newspaper machine. Eventually, larger businesses appeared, such as grocery and other stores. They had large doorways on the sides, near the front, and I slowly drove through them into the stores and inside along the fronts of the stores, still looking for newspaper machines. People were in the stores shopping and paying for things, but the stores were not especially crowded. I felt that the stores had been built to allow cars to drive through like this, and nobody seemed to notice me, but I became increasingly disturbed and decided to go back into the parking lots after exiting this store. I went into the parking lot and turned right, heading in the direction of the street. It was dark, and may have been extremely early in the morning, just before dawn.

At some point I was no longer driving the car. A Mexican woman came out from the store. I felt that I knew her slightly. She was going home after working there. At the sidewalk, there was a dark spray pattern, in a Christmas tree shape a few feet long, like a bottle or glass had been violently knocked over. The stain was dry, but I felt that it was relatively recent.

The woman, who was perhaps in her thirties, thought that her sister had left it and was concerned that someone would find out that she had been drinking again. The woman searched for a cork that she was sure was there. She wanted to find it to remove the evidence. I finally found a small cork, but it was really tiny and got away when I tried to pick it up. It bounced energetically several times, perhaps going eight feet in the opposite direction, that is, behind me. I was not able to initially relocate it, but finally did. I woke up before securing it, however.