I am walking on a waterfront promenade paved with large stones (like some city streets in Spain) when I began chasing, or get chased by, four children who are I think dressed entirely in brown, like little monks. I follow them into a house and continue to play a sort of tag or hide and seek with them. The house is a long rambler and the main hallway running the length of the house is partly obstructed with dead and dying potted trees, as if someone stopped watering them quite a long time ago.
I sit down on an old sofa in one of the rooms. A black woman is casually sprawled on the floor in front of me. Her face is open and round, her hair rather short and curly and I notice that she has a short white goatee on her chin, like Colonel Sanders. Perhaps it is because of the goatee that someone else in the room is saying to her "I didn't know that you became gay", but I am thinking that they meant to say "trans" instead of "gay". I need to leave but I'm not sure how to say that to the others in the room so I just get up and walk away. As I reach the front door at the end of the hallway I realize I left my backpack behind and I'm somewhat embarrassed as I return to the room to retrieve it but no one seems to notice. I forget something else and have to return again and again no one seems to care. I suddenly realize that when I followed the children into the house and sat in the room with other people I had completely forgotten about social distancing. As I am opening the door to exit, Ben comes up and I exclaim to him "Man, it's really hard to remember about this social distancing stuff" and he says something sympathetic in return, then shuts the door behind me because I have a little trouble getting it to close.
I'm surprised to discover almost a foot of fresh snow on the ground when I step outside. It seems to be nighttime though I can see okay. One lane of the street has been plowed so I start to walk in the cleared area but have to jump out of the way when a young man guns his car backwards towards me. Maybe he yells at me, I'm not sure, then he continues to race his car backwards down the street, stopping at a house some distance away. I follow the car into his driveway and wade into the snow as if to detour below the house then, realizing that the road veers up and to the right, cross through a flower bed onto his driveway. As I do so a rose cane breaks off and sticks to my coat, then a larger trunk of a small tree does likewise. The mother of the young man looks out of the house, sees me and yells at her son "Did you do that to him?" referring to the debris sticking to me. I assure her that I am okay then continue trudging through the snow along a fence which runs along the road. Discovering that I cannot get through the fence to the road, I backtrack until I find an opening to get back into the plowed road again.
I had thought that I was in Jackson but I do not recognize my surroundings. Ahead of me I see a group of runners approaching. Much like my surroundings they appear to be colorless, a sort of grayish flesh color, but when they get closer I see two Marathon Maniacs among them dressed in bright scarlet and yellow gear. One is a Main Maniac but I don't recognize him so I don't say anything to him. The other is being supported by two other runners, one on either side, as he stumbles along like a soldier wounded in battle. I look for someone familiar and recognize Fran Cunningham so I ask her what road we are on, and whether it joins up with Route 16 or some other road I would know. She doesn't seem to want to talk but she does tell me that the name of the road is Laurelhurst and that it does meet up with 16. As it approaches the intersection, our road descends a hill covered with rough brown ice and both Fran and I skid down it on our feet but we don't fall. Across the intersection there is a bus stop so I wait there with a couple of other people.