George W. Bush Bikes With Injured Vets, Reflects On White House

RAWFORD, Texas -- George W. Bush had been riding his mountain bike for almost four hours, and he was out of gas.
I was 12 riders behind the former president as we cycled, single file, along a winding trail cut through Bush's 1,500-acre ranch. We had been riding almost nonstop, in 90-degree heat, for 30 miles, over terrain that was at times technical, challenging and potentially hazardous. Rocky sections delivered a pounding to both bike and rider. Roots threatened to upend us. At one point, a narrow path along a ridge line dropped off steeply to the right, 50 to 75 feet to the gorge below. Bush had called the section "hairy."
It was the second day of Bush's third annual Warrior 100K, a three-day mountain bike ride that he has hosted at different locations since leaving the White House, to which he invites military veterans, many of whom had been seriously wounded in the wars he initiated. It's a ritual of thanks and bonding that might seem fraught from the outside, but that everyone who takes part seems to enjoy.
This year, 75 riders participated in the event over Memorial Day weekend, 13 of them veterans wounded physically or psychologically, or both. The rest of the peloton was made up of a few guests of the veterans, Secret Service agents, mechanics, medics, an assortment of people who have ridden with Bush over the past several years, and a few odds and ends, like me, the only reporter along for the entire ride.
There are 41 miles of mountain bike trail on Bush's property, and ranch staff, along with volunteers, had created 21 miles of those trails in the six weeks or so leading up to this event, his ranch manager told me. We saw most of them that day, and rode another 14 miles the day before and then 21 miles the day after.
Bush, who always rides at the front, pushed the pace, yelling and cajoling his fellow cyclists. At 66, he takes great pleasure in smoking riders who think they can hang with him. "Get moving, Stork!" he shouted at Ed Lazear, using the nickname he had given his former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
At rest stops, Bush was impatient to get going again. He'd pause, drink some Gatorade, chat, grin, bask in the endorphin rush, make a few jokes, and then hop back on his carbon frame Trek Superfly 100 Elite.
"Yah, baby!" he'd exclaim.
By the end, however, he was exhausted. "I was gassed," Bush admitted to me the next day. "Thirty miles is a long way on a mountain bike. I was tired."