"And spend some of his millions," added Fred.
The flight out on Friday night had been a comfortable few hours spent at thirty-odd thousand feet, sandwiched between a cloud-covered countryside and a starlit sky. In spite of gaining two hours with the time change, it was still late when the cross-country travelers finally bedded down in a quiet motel in Golden, Colorado, after a shared ride from the Denver airport. Early Saturday morning, the two had boarded a charter bus with scores of bikers for the 372-mile, eight-hour trip to Cortez, Colorado, where they found a pleasant little town abuzz with the activity of 2,000 riders and hundreds of support personnel.
The last 200 miles of the bus ride traversed the first three days of the bike tour route after which the tour would turn north and enter the really tough mountain portions of the trek. Or so some of the hard-bodies on the bus said-this was the easy part! Wolfe Creek Pass at 10,850 feet was unlike anything Dean had ever seen and easy wasn't the description that came to his mind. The climb didn't quit-it keep going and going and going. It scared the dickens out of him, and Fred's constant chiding of "No way, no way," didn't help. Dean figured he was in very big trouble.
But there was a plus to Dean's first day in the west. Except for his army hitch and a few late night military flights, Dean had never been west of the Mississippi and he'd never seen scenery as spectacular as Colorado in late spring. The bus trip was glorious. Traffic was light-nonexistent by eastern standards-made up mostly of Jeeps or pickup trucks, the latter with a dog pacing the back bed in perfect balance. The backdrop was the mountains; mountains with snow tucked in their crevices and, on the higher ones, sugar dust capping their tops in white, stark contrast to the deep green of the pine forests running up their sides to the tree line and the magnificent blue of the sky above. The sky fascinated Dean. He had never in his life seen a horizon so cleanly defined, a pencil line drawn without a breath of haze. All this and air so fresh each breath was a new exhilaration.
The town of Cortez, located in the southwestern corner of Colorado, was near the only spot in the country where four states converged. This area was homeland to a civilization dating back to the time of Christ. The Anasazi, "The Ancient Ones," as the present day Navajo call them, built cities and a society for 13 centuries before abandoning this high Sonoran desert, all before Columbus ever set sail. The reason for their exodus remained open to speculation. Mesa Verde National Park, the most popular of these spectacular ruins, was but one of thousands in the area where the bikers camped. Dean was sorry he hadn't taken more time and extended his stay. Marion Anderson, his lieutenant's wife, had offered use of her recently acquired place in Ouray, Colorado, a small town just two hours to the north, but Dean had declined. Once he saw the area, he knew he'd made a mistake in not accepting her offer and staying longer.