Oilpressure

I trust everyone had a good Thanksgiving. It was good to push away from the daily grind. That’s not to say we did nothing. I got a lot done around the house and Susan put on one heck of a spread for our Thanksgiving dinner, which also included her two sons and my daughter.

I slept very well Thursday night/Friday morning, after eating a lot of turkey and I could sleep in.

I don’t usually have good dreams. Mostly they are just weird dreams that make no sense at all. Sometimes I’ll have nightmares, but they are not the norm. I don’t usually wake up with night-terrors. I usually wake up and think to myself "that was weird". But occasionally I will have a dream that is so terrifying that when I wake up and realize it was just a dream – I get a keen sense of relief. Rarely do I have a dream that was so pleasant, that I hate being awakened from it.

But that was exactly what happened Friday morning.

There is a superstition that if you tell about your dream before breakfast, it’ll come true. I don’t really subscribe to that school of thought, but I do think that if you tell someone about the dream just after it happened – you tend to remember a lot of the details.

It’s not unusual for me to dream that I am driving an Indy car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Usually, it’s just an opportunity to turn some laps on an empty track; it’s never during the race for some reason. The laps are uneventful, but in my dream I always impress whoever let me drive the car that I was able to turn some competitive lap times without crashing.

Friday morning, it was different. Things were so specific the way they happened that the dream seemed totally believable. That’s why I made sure to tell Susan about it the second I woke up (and before eating breakfast).

There were a few illogical things, as there are in any dream. I was in my early thirties, about half the age I am today – but everything else about the dream was pretty much present day. Did I tell you that I sometimes dream about dead people? Robin Miller and my mother both made appearances in this dream. Miller died in 2021, and my mother passed away about a year earlier. But both were alive and healthy in this dream.

The next race for the NTT IndyCar Series was the Bommarito 500, at Worldwide Technology Raceway (Gateway), just across the river from St. Louis. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLLR) had an open seat for that race. Graham Rahal and Christian Lundgaard were definitely in the dream, but the driver in the No.45 was nameless. It wasn’t Jack Harvey, nor was it Pietro Fittipaldi. It was never made clear in the dream who the driver was, but whoever it was had some type of conflict and could not drive at Gateway.

This is where it gets weird. For some reason, Graham Rahal called me and asked if I could drive their car for the weekend. Without even thinking about it, I said yes. Keep in mind, just like in real life – I had no racing experience. I was just a fan. There was no logical reason for Rahal to call me, but dreams have no logic.

I arrived at the track practically before any other team showed up. About the only person I recognized was Robin Miller, who knew all about what I was getting into. He pulled me aside and set me down to give me a few clues. I remember he said “Rule No. 2 – don’t crash the car”. Then he said “Rule No. 1 is whatever you do – don’t take out Graham. You don’t want to know what happens if you do that”. He then proceeded to tell me that the public has never seen the side of Graham if a teammate takes him out.

Understandably, that bit of advice scared me to death. Later on, I saw Graham who said something to the effect of “Don’t believe anything that Robin tells you. You’ll be fine”.

Here is where things get a little fuzzy. There was a lot of downtime at the track, No one could believe I had been tabbed for that ride for the weekend, but I was determined to prove I belonged. My memory gets crystal clear however during the first practice. I was not the fastest, but I put up a time somewhere in the Top-Ten. I remember that when I got out of the car after practice, my mother was sitting on the pit wall. She let me know how scared and proud she was at the same time. I think in real life, she would’ve forbidden me from ever getting back in the car.

In qualifying, I out-qualified Graham. I didn’t see him until before the race, I’m guessing this was a true night race, because it was already getting dark before the race. I saw Graham and he was no longer affable. I could tell he was furious I was starting further up the grid than he was. Robin Miller’s warning was on my mind, and I wanted to make sure to steer clear of Rahal during the race.

As I was standing in the pits, ready to climb into my car for the race – I began to hear this strange sound. It wasn’t really a moan, but more like a groan. I tried to ignore it as I was preparing for the race, but I kept hearing it. As it turns out; just as I was about to have the opportunity of a lifetime, by driving in an IndyCar race – my dog, Maley, had run out of patience and wanted to be fed. When I opened my eyes she was sitting right by the bed, looking at me with a perplexed stare. She is used to eating around 5:00 each morning, and it was after 7:00 am on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving. She had waited long enough.

So I don’t know how the race would’ve turned out, but I do know this – this was one of those rare dreams when I wished I could’ve gone back to sleep to see how it would’ve played out. Unfortunately, that never works on the good dreams.

This was also one of those rare times when Susan got up before me. She was sitting out in the den, when I came strolling out. I immediately told her about the dream, so that I would not forget it.

I want to apologize to Graham Rahal for how he came off in my telling of this dream. It portrayed him as (a) hot-headed and hard to get along with and (b) having poor judgement by putting someone like me in his car. Remember…this was not reality. I’m sure a psychoanalyst could have a field-day with this dream.

Am I the only one that has dreams about racing? Does this dream sound crazy, or does it seem fairly normal? As soon as I told Susan about my dream, she suggested I should make it my first post back on this site after Thanksgiving. I figured, I could since it is the offseason. Crazy or normal? What do you think?

George Phillips

This entry was posted on November 29, 2023 at 4:04 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.