Funky Altitude Dreams

It's funny what sort of things you dream as you go higher and higher in elevation. Altitude Dreams, they are called. In many ways, I typically enjoy altitude dreams. Some are great, some are weird. Sometimes you wake up absolutely laughing, your tent-mate looking at you with a dazed and confused look.

Everyone knows the dream where they are trying to run and run, but can't. At altitude, this Sisyphus-like dream involves you trying and trying to climb... endlessly trekking but just not making any progress to where you want to get. Then because it can't be that simple, throw in someone in a clown suit.

I had a great one the other night. In this one, a wormlike co-worker named Bob Combs is standing in a bathing suit- in itself a really funny dream given his Mister Universe physique. He's standing halfway up the Lhotse Face minding his own biz when a giant dragonfly with a Buddha head buzzes overhead. The dragonfly offers to give Bob a pedicure and when he agrees, the dragonfly drop-kicks him through two giant upright fingers- just like the game you play in High School with folded paper. The giant fingers convert back to Nuptse and Lhotse once he disappears into the horizon.

Oh, and a word of warning... it's much easier to have funny dreams after watching and quoting "Blades of Glory" than it is after a movie like "1408". Yikes... many are based on things you experienced that day, or maybe even watched in a movie. As a result, none of us want to watch a horror movie before going to bed for fear of re-living that movie a short while later. Only this time while hyperventilating and waking up in a cold sweat. Because then, you shiver endlessly thanks to 20-degree weather. And that doesn't make the dreams worthwhile at all.