President Bush was sprawled out flat on his back and blinking up at me. His bicycle was lying on his chest.

In 14 years of mountain biking, I'd seen countless crashes, and the mechanics of this one were routine: Bush's sneaker got caught in the straps that bind foot to pedal. He flew over the handlebars and crashed to the gravel, just like thousands of riders before him.

For weeks, Bush had been dangling the promise of a mountain bike ride. I hadn't advertised our shared passion, but I hadn't exactly kept it a secret in the halls of the White House, either. I let it be known to one key White House aide that I would have my bicycle with me in Texas when Bush spent a few days there in late July.

The call came the evening before our ride. The president would like you to join him for a mountain-bike ride, one of his spokeswomen informed me. I think I'm free, I told her. Yep _ definitely free.

Having been whipped by Bush on a four-mile jog a couple years earlier, I knew he was in great shape. I had once watched Lance Armstrong eyeball a sheet listing the president's vital stats, including his exceptionally low heart rate. Armstrong was astonished.

With his knees shot from years of running, Bush had taken up mountain biking. He had 22 years on me, and I had more than a decade of mountain biking under my belt, but I was still anxious about keeping up with this relative rookie.

We began at a moderate pace, doing a couple laps on pavement around his 600-acre property. He picked it up on one long climb, and my legs began to feel the familiar burn. If he keeps this up for an hour, I thought, I'm in trouble.

I held my own, and managed to climb one steep, rocky section that forced him to dismount and walk.

We wandered deep into the back country of his ranch _ sections that few inside his circle, let alone any reporters, had ever seen.

"I'm gonna show you a hill that would choke a mule," he said as we approached a steep descent covered in dangerous, loose rock.

In the blink of an eye, Bush got his foot tangled up in the pedal strap and went airborne. I was five paces behind him.

For that moment, we were just two bicyclists: I threw my own bike to the ground, rushed over and lifted his bike off of him. One second later, Secret Service agents and medics arrived and helped him to his feet.

We didn't say much about it after that, though Bush rode more tentatively.

The president likes to shoot the breeze with familiar reporters, and our shared hobby became a conversation point in lighter moments.

He liked to remind me of the hill I pedaled up _ the one that stymied him.

"What type of performance was that? You showed me up! You sprinted up the hill, and I ate your caliche," Bush said more than three months later, using the Mexican slang term for dust. "And I found that to be insulting to the president of the United States."

He hasn't broached the subject of the crash.

Neither have I.

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Scott Lindlaw covered the White House for The Associated Press during President Bush's first term.

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