I was out for a run, barefoot, in an urban area.  I tried to get my bearings, get oriented, to figure out where I was, where I needed to get to, how far it would be, etc.  I was mildly cautious about being barefoot in the urban area, just because of the increased chance of stepping on broken glass or stuff that was filthy or potentially toxic if absorbed through the skin.  I was trying to quantify the worst-case scenario, like for example, if I had to run all the way across town, how far would that be? 20 miles maybe? If so, I’d probably be at least OK– I’d make it eventually, but I’d probably be pretty sore, and pretty exhausted.  Then some guy said that I was in Cologne (Köln), Germany, which I suppose gave me some encouragement because I knew it at least wasn’t one of those huge sprawling metros.  (I remember one time back in the day, when studying abroad in Germany during my undergrad, I ran across Stuttgart with my buddy one night after going to the discos and it being too late for public transit– apparently we didn’t want to spend for a taxi and felt like it might be fun anyway.)  So then I just remember driving up an incline into a more industrial type area, then went a bit further and was suddenly driving the car on a very narrow steel beam, high off the ground– it was like a horizontal frame of a building, new construction maybe.  One of the tires slipped off the beam momentarily, which led to a brief scare, but control was recovered.  I kept going a bit further, but got to a veritable dead-end, where the beam just stopped in mid air.  There was some sign or something to do with root beer– I don’t know what exactly though.  Then I turned around, went back toward where I’d been before, then found a vertical cable that I was able to slide down in a controlled fashion, like a fire-pole.

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