A long, hot week in Howard Dean's themed campaign plane.

CHICAGO?Forget about Texas, where we've just flown in from. This is, hands-down, the hottest political event I've ever attended. The penultimate stop on Howard Dean's "Sleepless Summer" cross-country tour is a rally held on the roof of a convention center where, a few floors below, the Communications Workers of America are holding their annual conference.

It is boiling up here. I have no idea what the actual temperature is, but the effect of the sun on the concrete rooftop is incredible. I'm reminded of something I read in a history textbook once about Ivan the Terrible herding prisoners of war from the combat of Pskov into Red Square, and roasting them alive on a giant frying pan.

Like all the events on the tour, this one is massively attended, mostly by what appear to be twenty- and thirty-something college graduates. The thousands of bodies all crammed together on the roof create a double-sizzling effect. On the cobalt-blue dress shirts of those few in attendance not dressed in white Dean t-shirts (the Steve Jobs-ish denim-colored dress shirt and khaki pants is a characteristic costume of the Dean supporter), you can actually watch the sweat stains expanding by the second.

Far to the front, the candidate, also dressed in blue, is beginning his speech. "We're going to have some fun at the president's expense here today?" he begins, setting off a ripple of applause.

I frown and scribble in my notebook: "Chicago. 5."

This is the tenth time I have heard Dean's speech in the last three days, and I've developed a code system to describe it. Dean's stump speech has 15 or 16 interchangeable parts that vary slightly from venue to venue, but contain the same punchlines each time. After the third time I heard the governor speak, I broke the speech down and numbered each of the parts, memorizing the numbers so that I could record each speech simply by writing down the numbers in sequence. My notes for Portland, OR, for instance, read, "PORTLAND: 4-5-1-6-3-7-8-9-10-11-15-12-13." The abbreviated Town Hall address the next morning, on the other hand, reads, "SPOKANE: 7-9-2-6-3-10."

There isn't space enough to set down the entire code here, but here are some examples. "Seven" is the Iraq section, one of Dean's favorites and one of the most closely scrutinized parts of his address. It begins with the candidate showing "toughness" by explaining why he was in favor of the first Gulf War and the invasion of Afghanistan ("They killed 3000 of our people and I felt it was a matter of national security"), then moves on to emphasize in martial tones that as commander-in-chief, President Dean would not hesitate to send troops abroad to defend our country. "Seven" then ends in an applause line: "But I would never send our sons and daughters to die overseas without telling the truth about why we were going!"

"One," usually the opener of the Dean speech, is about balancing the budget and concludes with a small rhetorical flourish: "If you want to balance the budget, you'd better elect a Democrat, because Republicans don't know how to handle money!" [applause]

"Nine" outlines a theory of non-confrontational foreign policy, contains the line "We won the Cold War and didn't fire a shot," and elicits cheers with a call for a return to "high moral purpose" in our international behavior.

"Ten" is the bit some of the reporters refer to as The List. It's about health insurance and it finishes by asking why, if we're the most powerful nation in the world, we can't do what "the British and the French and the Germans and the Japanese and the Italians and the Irish and the Israelis and the Canadians" have done, i.e., insure their citizens. The applause in "ten" usually kicks in somewhere around the Italians, and if it gets loud enough the candidate will sometimes skip the last phrase: "Even the Costa Ricans!"

(The latter phenomenon first came to my attention at the first stop on the tour, in Falls Church, VA: When the crowd wiped Dean out in the middle of the Canadians, American Prospect reporter Garance Franke-Ruta tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hey, he forgot Costa Rica!")

When Dean in Chicago moved from "five" to "three" ("This president has run up a $3 trillion deficit?"), I split the roof and ducked into the air-conditioned lobby. There was a credit-card- operated Starbucks vending machine there that quickly robbed me of two bucks when I tried to get a bottle of water. In the language of this campaign, I apparently lacked "connectedness" with the machine. Hungover and in a foul mood after an extraordinary night in San Antonio involving some Dean staffers (more on that some other time), I punched the machine with my fist.

"Bitch!" I screamed. "Give me my fucking money!"

Just then I noticed that someone was watching me. A bookish-looking girl in her mid-20s was successfully pulling a soda out of the neighboring credit-card-activated Pepsi machine. She was carrying a notebook and looking at me sympathetically. "Are you okay?" she said. "Do you want me to get you one from this machine?"

I unclenched my fist and tried to smile. "No," I said. "That's okay. Thanks, though."

She smiled. "That's okay," she said, then stuck out her hand. "I'm Olivia. Are you covering this?"

I then noticed that she was looking at my name tag. It identified me as press, but the name was wrong. In one of the additional humiliations of that morning, the Dean campaign had failed to supply me with a credential for the CWA convention. Every one of the other 40 or so journalists on the trip got a personalized press nameplate, including reporters from such publications as Modern Physician and the Memphis Flyer?only New York Press had been overlooked. As a result, I had had to take a substitute tag from a Dean staffer named David Horwich, and that's whose name was pinned to my chest. It was a totally accidental thing, but it was adding to my karmic problems. I shook her hand.

"David Horwich," I said.

"Olivia Patchowski. Nice to meet you," she said. She explained that she was a freelancer who covered politics for some Middle Eastern newspapers; she'd lived in Israel, had some contacts over there, was just starting out in the business. She asked me who I wrote for.

I looked around, then looked back at her. "Guns & Ammo," I said quietly.

Why not? The governor had a good rating from the NRA.

"Really?" she said.

"Yeah," I said. "The governor's actually on our next cover. He did this spread where he's?shooting a pig with a bazooka."

She made a face like she'd just been hit with a rubber dishwashing glove. "That doesn't sound like Howard Dean," she said, frowning.

"You don't know the governor," I said. "When we were doing the shoot, we kept proposing things that he could shoot with the bazooka. We were like, 'How about a straw target? How about a mannequin?' And he was like, 'How about a pig?'"

"And you were like?a pig it is?"

"Exactly," I said. "I mean, he didn't even hesitate."

"Wow," she said, laughing.

Ten seconds later, the pig story was in the past and she was commenting that Guns & Ammo must pay very well. "All of those trade magazines?" she said. "That's great work if you can get it."

"Yeah," I said. "And the sports mags are great, too."

She shook her head. "Maybe I should go into sports," she said.

"It can't hurt," I said. "You might as well try."

We went back outside to catch the speech. While Dean in the background pushed through "twelve" and "thirteen"?"Blah blah blah John Ashcroft! [hooting and boos]," "blah blah blah send him back to Crawford, Texas! [cheers and raucous applause]"?we exchanged contact numbers. I told her to look me up if she was ever in New York. She said she would, then disappeared into the crowd.

I went back to taking notes on the speech. A few minutes later, Governor Howard Dean dealt me a very big surprise.

THE PREVIOUS DAY, we'd flown in the morning from Spokane to Austin, TX, where the governor was scheduled to make a brief appearance at a fundraiser before hopping on a bus to a rally in San Antonio.

An old friend of mine, Kevin McElwee, who now lives in Dallas, had arranged to drive down to meet me at the Austin event, then drive me to San Antonio. When I arrived with the rest of the Sleepless Summer contingent at the site of the fundraiser (a coffee shop on the outskirts of town called the Ruta Maya), Kevin was already there waiting for me.

"Hey," he said. "The cops were just here. They just rustled out a squatter across the street with shotguns."

I looked to where he was pointing. Right behind the two "Sleepless Summer" buses were a pair of squad cars with flashing lights. About 50 yards away I could see a crude canvas roof spread out over a pair of trees. There was an African-style tent city not 70 yards from the site of the governor's fundraiser.

I mentioned to one of the reporters that there were cops with shotguns sweeping a group of squatters across the street. He nodded, then quickly disappeared into the Ruta Maya, looking bored.

Traveling with a huge pack of nationally respected journalists is a very funny thing. At least two or three times during the course of the trip, something objectively amazing but irrelevant to the immediate assignment of the "Sleepless Summer" tour would happen right under the noses of 20 or 30 reporters, and they not only wouldn't budge, they wouldn't even see it.

Sometimes the commotion would even have something to do with Dean, and they still wouldn't move. The best example of that had been the previous afternoon on the tarmac of the airport in Portland. We had just finished watching an enormous Dean rally at Portland State University?about 5000 people turned out, an enormous number for a candidate at this stage of the election process?and we were now on line, waiting to get into the campaign plane, nauseatingly dubbed the "Grassroots Express" by the Dean staffers.

(The plane inside was decorated with plastic tufts of grass. "At least it's better than John Edwards," cracked Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "His bus in Iowa is called the Real Solutions Express.")

Due to post-9/11 security issues, the process of boarding the charter plane required a lengthy TSA-mandated search procedure, which itself is interesting, because George Bush apparently has a waiver of these procedures for his campaign trips, allowing him to save time and travel to more stops per day.

But that's another story. The issue in this case is that the wait on the hot tarmac was a real pain in the ass, and most of the reporters, when they were in line, had little on their minds other than getting the whole thing over with as quickly as possible and getting into the plane to wolf down their campaign-provided bag lunches.

I was at the back of the line in Portland when I noticed the candidate standing off by himself in front of the nose of the plane. Against a background of a blue sky, he was standing before campaign staff photographer John Pettitte and making a series of grotesque contortions?pointing variously at the camera and off to the side, making a rapid-fire series of painful-looking grins, puffing out his chest. It took me about two seconds to realize where I'd seen this act before.

"I don't want to sell you anything," I said. "I'm just CRAAA-ZEEE! Come on down to the showroom today!"

All the reporters in the back of the line whipped around and stared at me in plain disapproval. Only Sandeep Kaushik of the Seattle Stranger laughed. He and I talked it over for a minute and decided to go see what the governor was doing.

It turned out that Dean was having photos taken for the cover of a book he has coming out soon. Pettitte later told me that campaign finance rules prohibited Dean from having the picture taken at an actual campaign event like the Portland rally. "That would be a use of campaign money for a private venture," Pettitte explained. "We had to do it after one of the events."

Which made sense?but the sight of the governor up close in mid-pose is an image I won't likely forget soon. Without any prompting from Pettitte, he was feverishly muttering snippets from his stump speech in the middle of the Crazy Eddie gesturing. "We're going to have some fun at the president's expense today?heh heh? We're going to take America back?"

Pettitte snapped away. The governor looked deranged. It didn't seem to bother him that Sandeep and I were standing there, taking notes. By the time we got back to the line, most of the reporters were on the plane.

Anyway, in Austin the reporters were apparently not interested in the squatter fracas. Kevin and I crossed the street and found a burned-out homeless couple, covered in scabs and dirt with about four teeth apiece, sitting anxiously on a pair of ancient lawn chairs. They had a small pup-tent that was covered in duct-tape patches, and the man?sunburned, with a scraggly beard and glasses?was playing glumly with a hyperactive pit bull puppy.

"Nice dog," I said, walking up.

"Thanks," the man said. "His name's Scooby."

"Doobie?" I said, reaching down and letting it chew on my hand.

"Scooby," the woman said. "Like Scooby-Doo. 'Cept he's Scooby Wicker."

We introduced ourselves. John and Cynthia Wicker were originally from Michigan and had come down to Austin to look for work. Somewhere in there was an epic tale of a traveling booze-case marriage, but we didn't have time to hear it.

"What happened?" I asked, pointing to a trio of shotgun-wielding cops in the distance.

"That guy over there?in that tent?he hit me with a hatchet," Cynthia said, pointing.

"Wasn't a hatchet," interrupted John. "It was a big ole stick."

"Whatever," she said. "A big ole stick. That guy is crazy. He's always coming over here and bothering us. At night, you know, he's always stabbing holes in our tent with a knife. You can see the patches."

I could.

There were three groups of tents. I pointed in the direction of the cops. "He lives over there?" I asked.

"He lives in this one"?she pointed to a giant, relatively luxurious tent behind me?"and over there. He's moved over there lately because there're some elderly people he can take advantage of."

"Takes their stuff," assented John.

The cops, meanwhile, were walking over from the old peoples' tents toward the big luxury tent. Trailing behind them was a surprisingly clean-cut-looking man in jeans and a blue polo shirt, and he was in handcuffs.

"He claims he works for the CIA," John said. "Also said he was in the Marines and fought in the Gulf War. He's always telling some kind of story."

"He buries his weapons," Cynthia said. "His knife?he's got it buried." She stood up and called out to the police. "You've got to DIG!" she screamed. "He keeps that stuff BURIED!"

"No work down here at all," John muttered. "It's all taken by Mexicans. Ain't no unions down here except the electrician's union."

"And you're not an electrician, so that sucks," I said.

"Nah," he said. "If I was, I'd join, but I'm not."

"Who called the police?" I said.

"Well, we did. We had to. I mean, he was getting really violent," Cynthia said. "But they're not here to kick us off. The owner of the property said we have two more months to stay on."

Meanwhile the police were drifting in our direction. As they did, the suspect started walking sideways, crablike and still in handcuffs, back in the direction of the old peoples' tent.

"Officers!" he called out. "I'm just walking behind you here, this way! Just so you know!"

"Okay," said the one female cop, who still had her shotgun drawn.

"Well, I'll let you go," I said. "You see, there's a guy running for president here, he's giving a speech right across the street there."

"No shit," said John.

"Yeah," I said. "Well, good luck."

"Thanks," they said.

On the way out, Kevin and I nodded to the cops. "Officers," I said.

They nodded. Behind me I heard the puppy yipping at the cops. Back at the event, Dean was already speaking. I didn't go inside, but the speech was being broadcast on a loudspeaker outside the restaurant. When we got there, he was just settling into "four."

"We need jobs in America. We've got to build roads and infrastructure, and invest in renewable energy," he was saying. "And we've got to bring broadband internet communications to even the most remote parts of America, so that those communities can share in the economic development of this country."

I raced back across the street, where the cops were finishing up with the Wickers.

"Forget something?" John said.

"Nah," I said. "I was just listening to this guy's speech. He was saying that we need to bring broadband internet communications to the country, so that there would be more jobs. I was just wondering if you thought that was a good idea."

"Jeez, I don't know," John said. "I guess it would be nice. I think they got that?what is it?"

"Broadband internet communications," I said.

"Well, I don't know," John said. He turned to Cynthia. "Do they have that at the Salvation Army center?"

"No," she said. "They don't have anything. All they got is this job training counselor who don't do shit. You apply for all these jobs, and they don't even take your messages. Now there's a place you ought to do a story on. We stayed there like three months."

"It was four," John said.

"It's like jail," she said. "Lockdown at seven o'clock. Full of black people, all dealing drugs left and right. The guy who runs the place, he once had this restaurant deliver all this fancy food there, and then he took it right out the back, loaded it up and took it home. Probably ate it all himself."

"There's a place you ought to do a story on," John agreed.

"Course, it's nice that he wants to do that, this guy," Cynthia said, pointing in Dean's direction. "But it'll never come to anything. We're moving back to Michigan anyway."

"Going to go back and work in the fields. I got an uncle," John said.

"Well, I've got to get back," I said.

"Thanks for coming by. Thanks for listening," Cynthia said. "And tell that guy there's peoples living in a tent over here."

"Will do," I said.

"I'm voting for Bush anyway," John said. "At least he's doing something."