This morning’s adventure

A pity it had to end

I was sailing. At first, I thought I was in one of the lakes where I often sail, but then I realized this was a bigger place; it was an ocean, albeit a very calm one, and instead of sailing in water that was surrounded by land, I was sailing on water that surrounded land, an island.

From time to time, I would come in to shore along the island, and at each port of call, there were a lot of flashing lights and loud music, and prominently displayed, a ladder of numbers, going from very small (something like $100) to a million dollars. Each time I made port, the next number up the ladder was lit up.

When I got to the $25,000 port, a man in an Elvis-type jumpsuit and carrying a microphone came up to me and said I'd qualified for the main round and asked me if I wanted to participate in it. Curious, I followed him up a hill that looked like it belonged in Tuscany, covered in vineyards, to a crumbling old tower.

When I went into the tower, I found myself on the set of a game show, similar to that of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, but with more audience participation. The stage was set up as a big kitchen, and I was to cook things; with each successful dish prepared, I would move up the ladder toward a million dollars. Members of the audience were invited to come up on the stage with me as sous-chefs. Even though I had gotten to the $25,000 level sailing, for the cooking round, I was to start off back at the bottom of the ladder.

The dishes I prepared started out simple, gradually gaining in sophistication as the numbers on the ladder were lit up higher and higher. At some point relatively early on, it was revealed that everything I cooked was somehow being multiplied by a couple of hundred and served up in a soup kitchen for homeless people.

I had just finished preparing a fettucine alfredo, topped with tender slices of herb-crusted grilled chicken breast, and I was thinking, "Wow, I've got $50,000. Nice. I can pay some bills!" I was looking forward to the next challenge.

Then the alarm clock rang. Bummer.