I drive north to Alaska. Shadowy friends ride in the car. We stop at a general store near the Arctic Sea. They sell seagull meat. I'm a vegetarian so I won't buy any.

I head on north. No road now. Great rocks all round; the car begins to float a yard or two above them.

The coast. I head on north! Drive out over the Arctic Sea. Scattered rocks stick out as if it were a shallow pond; even several miles out, the rocks are still only a few feet across, hinting at waist-deep water.

On the rocks are strange tan objects shuddering in the wind, like tan pup tents. Turns out they're brown paper bags anchored by small rocks and shells. These are the homes of arctic gulls.

I tell my friends "The gulls use the sonar-echo of their own squawk to tell which house is theirs." They're distant kin to whales.

Beyond the gull-home rocks, I sense a vast invisible entity. It is a whale man. I have a tremendously important conversation with this whale-metaphysician which was gone the moment I woke up even though the rest still quite clear.

We collect the gulls and the whale in a group and tell them "We bring great news: we have organized a bike ride into space, for anyone who wants to go; just leave Earth behind."

The night of departure, in our tall dorm by the sea, my dorm-mate Terri wakes me and we sneak out to meet her many sisters and brothers. We circle the building to the south side to meet the gulls and whale, and start wiring ouselves together. Our own willpower will drive our body masses out into space--we need no bikes! A latecomer, boyfriend of one of the Learys, is hastily wired in.

We all touch the power-leads; as the power goes on, feel a vivid upsurge of the group love we had from the start; I know all will be well on the journey out.

As our bikes begin to rise, I wake...

• Whale who gives wise advice: The Redwood Country myth of the Inland Whale? Echoes Baleena 3 months ago, a surreal whale dream hiding serious longterm advice...

• Just abandon this world for a higher one: a common motif in mystical experience. And I had good reason to resent the flesh; I'd had recurring fevers and pain since age ten. But neglecting the body--or the Earth--now seems a poor solution. "Wherever you go, there you are."
• The whale-metaphysician's advice: at the time, I assumed this was just solemn dream-nonsense that couldn't stand the light of day. But when I reread Baleena closely, I found practical warnings in its surreal imagery... now I wish I'd tried a bit longer to recall this second whale's advice.

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