I started off on my way to work on my new electric-powered bike.
I was pretending it was a space-age transport vehicle and I was a test pilot.
As I made my first sharp left turn into a street, I was impressed by how well the bike maneuvered the turn as I came very close to hitting the curb.
Entering a large square, I slowed down to let an older man cross in front of me.
He saw two of his friends and they asked him how things went, to which he replied in English with a thick foreign accent, that he had gotten the job he applied for.
I continued on my way and as I left the square a young couple rode up beside me, the young woman coming close enough to have startled me.
A few blocks later, I was stopped at a traffic light when the couple pull up just beside me on the left.
Looking over at them, I noticed the sky off to the west had become black as night due to the impending storm.
When the light turned green we cycled off and I thought that I’d better get a move on if I wanted to get to work before the storm hit.
A few minutes later, the young couple cycled up close to me again, this time it was the young man who was edging closer and closer nearly causing me to run into to the curb.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the young man’s hand reaching over to my saddle bag and felt the pull of his hand on the strap.
I tried to recoil thinking that he was trying to slyly open my saddlebag and rob me of its contents.
But then, I was soon able to see that he wasn’t trying to rob me, but that the belt on his girlfriend’s jacket had somehow gotten caught in the strap on my saddlebag and he was frantically trying to untangle it, thus saving us all from having an accident.
We were able to finally pull safely off the road and stopped in front of a restaurant where the young man said he would go in and ask to borrow a pair of scissors so he could cut the belt that had been caught in my strap.
As a passerby asked what happened, I jokingly told her the story and said that the young woman may never free herself from my saddlebag and that the only remedy would be for her to marry me, which drew laughs from the two women and served to lighten the tense moment.
After the young man cut his girlfriend’s belt away, I did the couple goodbye and started back on my way to work.
Just then, I realized in was my nine-year-old daughter’s birthday the following day and I hadn’t bought a card, so I stopped and checked my phone where I browsed the website of my friend Gloria’s card and gift shop in the Lincoln Village shopping center.
I saw a few oversized birthday cards for children in English and decided to make a quick detour to pick up a card and a small gift for my daughter.
I arrived at Gloria’s shop just as she was getting ready to close for the day and as she was attending another customer, I told her I would have a look around.
I spotted the oversized cards on a shelf above the service desk and reached up and pulled down the entire selection, though the one I wanted from the website wasn’t among them.
Just then Gloria appeared and we exchanged greetings. She told me she had a very busy day and was eager to close the shop and get home to her family.
I told her I had come for a birthday card I’d seen on her website but didn’t find it in amongst the other cards.
She said she was certain she had it and told me to wait while she checked in back.
Then I woke up.
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