When we last saw George W. Bush, he'd sailed over the handlebars of his mountain bike and landed flat on his back in the limestone dust of Crawford, Texas. Your asap correspondent had hoisted the president's bike off his chest as he blinked skyward, stunned and panting.
Since that day in July 2004, Bush has logged hundreds of miles on Mountain Bike One, and his skills have come a long way. Throughout a recent Saturday ride, he stayed entirely upright -- no small feat in treacherous terrain that sent four seasoned riding partners cartwheeling into the mud.
The 43rd president is also going through a rough political patch in his presidency, with low approval ratings, a protracted war and a staff shakeup that has left longtime aides deposited by the side of the road.
Mountain biking, he says, helps "settle the soul."
PEDALING PRESIDENT
President Bush speaking with Lindlaw. (AP Photo/HO/White House/Eric Draper)
Bush has always used hard exercise as a tonic for the presidency's stress. Today, Bush says, he finds an almost meditational benefit from getting dirt under the tires and pushing his own limits.
"I am beginning to understand what you meant by the Zen," the president tells me, laughing.
I laugh with him, though I'm a little startled that Bush is repeating back advice I had given him after that 2004 crash.
It's a measure of how upbeat and unguarded he is in the endorphin buzz that follows our hootin'-and-hollerin' ride through streams, swamps and loose gravel.
By design, realities outside this foggy redwood forest don't intrude here in the hills above Napa County wine country. The burden of war is on his mind; I know this because he makes a brief reference to the nascent Iraqi government announced just hours earlier.
Otherwise, though, Bush seems determined to soak up all the fun he can in this brief outing. In just a short time, a helicopter will ferry him to West Sacramento for official speechifying on Iraq, gasoline prices and hydrogen fuel cells. Then an evening fund-raiser will take him to Indian Wells, near Palm Springs.
Despite all that has happened since July 2004, despite all that's on his plate each day, Bush retrieves from his mental hard drive excerpts of our conversation almost two years before.
My message back then: relax on steep and dangerous mountain bike descents.
"My rule is -- this Zen rule someone told me -- you go down stuff like that like you are water," I had offered the commander in chief in 2004 as we stood just outside his Crawford ranch house, dissecting the cause of his crash.
TOO NEW-AGEY?
Biking with the Travis Air Force Base cycling team at Las Posadas.(AP Photo/HO/White House/Eric Draper)
I was on dicey terrain here. Bush hadn't asked me to be his national biking adviser. I also sensed then that, months into his biking career, Bush hadn't had much contact with experienced mountain bikers. I was no expert, but I'd been riding for 14 years. So I urged him that day to ask himself: "Which way would the water go?"
"It makes you relax and you just flow down all that stuff," I'd said.
Bush had no patience for this New Age talk. "Okay, yes. That's California," he said, waving a hand dismissively at me and walking away in mock disgust. "I'm from Texas."
In April 2006, however, Bush says he is starting to get my meaning.
"I remember -- I'm gonna quote back to you -- you said the Zen of riding," Bush says, leaning in close to me. He's in my space a bit, so close I can see the little mud splatters dotting his face. "I'm beginning to appreciate more what you were talking about," he says.
"There's a certain skill level that comes with riding and kind of pushing yourself, not only physically but pushing yourself from a technical perspective," Bush says. Here is Bush throwing around some mountain-biking lingo: "Technical" refers to the tricky obstacles like wet rocks, fallen trees and rain-carved ruts that can send a mountain bike careening off the trail.
"I'm a little risk-averse simply because of my age and my position to take too many risks," the president says. "But on the other hand, I'm becoming much more appreciative of singletrack riding, for example."
It's another sign of Bush's evolution as a mountain biker. In 2004, I'd asked him what he thought of singletrack -- the highly prized, narrow, winding trails that swoop through forests, down canyons or past meadows.
"What's singletrack?" the president had asked me. I'd struggled to summon an explanation for this most basic mountain biking concept. When he heard my answer, Bush instantly concluded: "I'm not a singletrack kind of guy."
Now, in 2006, Bush tells me proudly that he is building singletrack on his Crawford ranch.
EMBRACING 'THE ZEN'
Down the home stretch, it's Lindlaw! Bush! Lindlaw! Bush! Lindlaw biking with Bush in 2004.(AP Photo/Eric Draper, White House HO)
Bush seems much more confident in the rough stuff than he had in 2004. During a fast fire-road descent, he'd leaned the bike over like an old pro, breezing past the slick, loose gravel that could have upended less-experienced riders -- and did.
"The Zen, yeah," Bush says when I point this out. "It's like anything, you gain confidence."
Crashes are routine in this sport, and Bush has had his share. In May 2004, he lost traction on a dirt road, leaving skin from his chin, upper lip, nose, right hand and both knees in the dirt. A collision last year knocked a Scottish police officer off his feet.
Bush mutters something about not wanting to brag as he pulls up his bike pants and displays a line of ugly gashes on his lower calf where the teeth of his sprocket had bitten deeply into flesh many months earlier. "Kind of the tattoo of mountain biking," he says.
"It hasn't caused me to slow down," Bush says of the risk of crashing, "but it does cause one, particularly at the age of 59 heading toward 60, to maybe not take quite as much risk as I would have 20 years ago. On the other hand, I am pushing myself."
Indeed, Bush says he prefers to be "the worst rider in the peleton," using jargon for the tightly bunched pack of riders in races like the Tour de France. That forces him to improve, he says.
He is hardly the worst on this Saturday morning ride. Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., is a seasoned "roadie" but drops out, gasping, almost immediately. A White House aide struggles to keep up on a long climb. The aide, a Secret Service agent and two Air Force men get tangled up and crash on a fast descent.
I have felt this embarrassment at the hands of the exceptionally fit president. Bush had dropped the hammer on me during a 2002 run, before his knees gave out and he'd switched to mountain biking. His punishing pace had left me alone and hyperventilating in the back country of his ranch, with members of his security entourage shaking their heads as they drove past me.
Four years after that humiliation, I have the jitters, even on my own turf. Will I be able to keep up with the president?
JUST A GUY ON A BIKE
This time, my legs don't fail me. Unlike in the White House, proximity to power out here is directly proportional to the power of one's own legs.
It's a meritocracy that Bush appears to appreciate. This is about as close as he can possibly get to being a regular guy, to a place where no one hands him reams of documents or asks him to make decisions any graver than "left turn, or right?"
I can practically see him banging his fists against the presidential bubble, relishing the contact with a few people from beyond the sealed-off modern-day presidency -- people who can hang with this guy's guy for a morning.
Bush is leaning on his bike after our ride, sweat and mud dripping from his face. He cheerfully begins to field my questions. Then his eyes wander back to the trail.
This IS some of California's finest riding, I say.
Some of America's finest, he replies.
"You know, it'd be fun to maybe go through one more sprint, through the water. What do you think?" he asks me.
I'm ready to ride all day, I say, shoving a tape recorder into my pocket and yanking my gloves back on.
With that, George W. Bush clips his bike shoes back into his pedals and launches back into the soggy trail for one last taste of Zen.
"One more water sprint!" he cries.
Find Scott Lindlaw's first story on biking with the president here.
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asap contributor and former AP White House reporter Scott Lindlaw now works in the AP's San Francisco bureau.
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