Andrew Leyden pointed out an article in The New York Times yesterday that compared and contrasted George W. Bush and John F. Kerry’s bicycles, trying to infer something about their personalities. The author of the Times piece, Charles McGrath, is pretty clearly not a cyclist of any kind, since he dutifully recites statistics and reports comments from people like the executive director of IMBA without analyzing them too much.
I dug a little deeper into stories that have been printed recently about the candidates’ biking habits, and found some more interesting stuff for Operation Gadget readers.
If you only read the headline and the first paragraph of the Associated Press article on Bush’s mountain biking in Crawford, Texas, Bush shrugs off crash, you might think this is another article that’s designed to be fodder for Jay Leno and David Letterman. There is a lot of interesting information in the article if you read it in its entirety. The President said that he burned 1,200 calories on an 18-mile off-road ride across his ranch that took place last Monday. I can compare that to a 21-mile ride I did on the road last Thursday, where I rode for 1 hour, 16 minutes and burned 1,312 calories.
Keep in mind that President Bush is more than 20 years older than I am. If he’s burning 1,200 calories in 1 hour, 20 minutes of riding over any terrain, he’s hitting it hard. If I got the opportunity to ride with him, I would be somewhat concerned about being dropped.
President Bush rides a Trek Fuel 98, a nearly top-of-the-line carbon fiber mountain bike. This is considerably lighter and more appropriate for his ride than my 10-year-old Marin Bear Valley SE was for mine. I looked at a photo of President Bush on his bike that was credited to Eric Draper of Agence France Press, and it looks like Bush has gotten some good advice on customization. He’s replaced the factory Shimano 520 clipless pedals with a set that have toeclips. Given the technical nature of some of the trails on his ranch, I would probably be more comfortable with toeclips, at least initially,
I was a little bit surprised that the President didn’t go for the disk brake option on his Fuel 98, but maybe he’d choose differently if he had to buy another bike today. It looks like he went for the top-of-the-line helmet, the Giro Atmos ’04, definitely the Limited Edition Lonestar version (note the large white patch on the rear of the helmet). I wonder if Lance Armstrong gave him that one or if he bought it.
There is also a fair amount of information on the Internet about John Kerry and his customized Serotta Ottrott road bike. Bikebiz.co.uk reports that Senator Kerry rides with Modolo KX Carbon handlebars that were replaced shortly after his early May crash. According to information and photos on the Serotta bikes user forum, Kerry’s Serotta is also equipped with a Campangnolo gruppo, which puts him in the traditionalist camp of road cycling.
I don’t have a lot to go on for the Junior Senator from Massachusetts’ typical bike workout, although he looks like he’s in pretty good shape. A front page article in The Washington Post from a couple of weeks ago, John Kerry: Restlessly On the Road paints a slightly troubling picture about the candidates recent ability to carve out time in his schedule for serious riding:
A zealous athlete and outdoorsman who rides an $8,000 custom Serotta Ottrott bicycle and thinks nothing of wind surfing, Kerry, 60, has found precious little time to stretch his legs. No longer can he wander off solo for a 30-mile bike ride. He has repeatedly asked that time be built into the schedule to allow him to exercise outside — but the time, aides say, simply evaporates.
Since I ventured a guess on George W. Bush’s level of cycling fitness, I’ll do the same with John Kerry; Based on what I’ve read, I think I could stay with the Senator on a training ride, assuming that I was riding a decent road bike myself. (Remember, he’s over 20 years older than me, and has a much more intense work schedule.) If I were spending $8,000 to get the ultimate road bike, however, I think I’d have to take a serious look at the Limited Edition Lance Armstrong Trek Madone 5.9. I don’t know if I’d go for it, considering the audacious paint job, but it has to be a great bike.