Asleep, and dreaming deep

I can always tell I'm getting enough rest when I remember my dreams in the morning. Further, I can tell I'm either getting too much rest or stressed about something when the dreams are complex, endless and bizarre.

This morning was a perfect example. Over the weekend I didn't stay up past 10 p.m. and slept at least nine hours each night. So when I woke before dawn out of an elaborate action dream, and then fell back asleep and continued it, I wasn't surprised. What is unusual, though, is that I can't place the source of the dream. Usually a book or movie will have some connection, but I was watching some silly French Canadian cartoons (thanks, bro) and then reading a British mystery before bed.

Here's what I can recall, 13 hours later:

I was in a large house, possibly in the suburbs, with my family. I think throughout the dream I was a middle-age man. (It's fairly common for me to be another person or animal or even many creatures during a dream.) We were in hiding from some bad people who wanted to kill us. Our supply of water was somehow cut off, and they were hoping to force us out. They set a bomb or something, and I had only a few moments to get a few things together—a gun, but I couldn't find the bullets—before escaping. I had a very fast motorcycle that went 200 miles per hour, and somehow it was made of plywood, or I was using the plywood to carry my wife and child, who died in the explosion. I took these few things and made it out the side door just before the bomb went off. I drove uphill with the headlight off, to avoid being followed. Yet they followed me. Much of the rest of the dream involved high-speed chases on roads, overpasses, freeways and steep hills. Later I stopped at a bar to look for someone, I think, or maybe to sign up for a road race, but then had to speed away once my pursuers came close. I made it to a friend's warehouse by riding along a grassy concrete embankment above a stream. I put the plywood-sandwich bodies in a sort of storage area and my friend helped me hide them. I went inside to stay out of sight and probably to rest. Soon after, my pursuers found me there.

I don't remember any more. I don't think there was any conclusion or anything really tense happening at the end. I just woke up. The strange thing about writing out most dreams is that they usually seem very brief. But even while I was dreaming, I knew how long and complicated it was.

This wasn't even one of the stranger dreams I've had, but it stayed with me throughout the day because of its lack of connection to anything I can recall. Just what was going on in my brain?