It was about 8 a. A fair question. They always knew if I was in Rome or London, but I occasionally forgot to tell them that I was in Omaha or Seattle, traveling with the president. Such was the case today. I had 10 minutes to shower and dress.
Just wanted to give you the heads up. Talk to you later. I hung up and jumped into the shower, smiling at the thought of my retired parents hunkered down in front of the television, waiting to see the film of me running with George W. The run had been in the works for months.
During the early days of his bid for the White House, Bush cultivated all the reporters on his campaign plane, trying to find some common area of interest with all of us.
Someone told the governor of Texasβa five-days-a-week runnerβthat I had earned All-American honors at Rochester. That intrigued him. On the night of September 10, a colleague of mine dined with then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who told him that Bush planned a predawn run at a nearby golf course the next day.
By the time our car motorcade got to the golf course and I jumped out of the press vanβnear the back of the entourageβBush had already taken off. So I sat down under a palm tree on the edge of the putting green and waited. Just as the first streaks of daylight were visible in the eastern sky, Bush came toward us, accompanied by a machine-gun toting Secret Service agent on a bicycle and another agent running right behind him. I handed my newspapers and cup of coffee to colleagues and took off after the president, who had barely slowed down.
