Early June.
The first two weeks of June were a never-ending list of chores and activities jammed full with last minute preparations, one workplace crisis following another, and an annoying series of details that demanded Dean's attention. Coupled with this tight schedule was a self-imposed training regimen so vigorous he surprised himself with its intensity. Physically, he was feeling a whole lot better than he had in years. The scales showed seven pounds less, he was eating baskets of fruit and goody-goody health food, plus he'd laid off the booze completely.
Dean was making progress. After a series of phone calls to Denver and some monstrous lies, Dean managed to finagle a slot on the bike tour, not an easy accomplishment given the short time before the popular event. A call to Leland Anderson on Memorial day secured his superior's approval to move up his vacation from July-when he'd planned to bike in Iowa and since canceled-to June. In part out of appreciation but more out of guilt, Dean voluntarily worked the holiday, sending a pleasantly shocked Lenny Harrigan home to his new wife.
On Tuesday Dean borrowed a thousand dollars from the City Employees Credit Union and booked his plane flight to Denver for the evening of Friday, June 11th. His finances were not a pretty sight. The phone bill, thanks to Fred's vigorous activities, was only a few commas less than the national debt and he was knocking on the ceiling of his newly acquired Visa limit. Not only was Ol' Yella, his car, making peculiar noises, but his landlord had just hiked up the monthly rent. This bike trip was going to stretch things tighter than his pre-training belt.
In order to minimize expenditures, Dean planned to skip the motel bit and camp out on the tour. Although it was decades since Dean's Boy Scout days and he didn't relish the thoughts of bedding his exhausted body on the ground, he felt, in addition to saving money, his chance of running into his quarry in a camp ground was better. After all, the last report, if you could call it that, involved a motor home. Dean had purchased a small tent and sleeping bag for the Iowa trip, both items light enough to be hauled on his bike. Organized tours provided sag wagons-vehicles to haul luggage from one overnight stop to another-but Dean preferred carrying his own gear rather than taking time to sift through a thousand sets of belongings nightly. But the June mountains of Colorado required more and different clothing than the July lowlands of Iowa, and he would have to pack carefully. He studiously perused the biking catalogs for the additional gear he would need for the trek and crossed his fingers he'd chosen correctly.