Ranch-hand President Bush finds Olympians 'really inspiring'

Five months from today, President Bush will have been former President Bush for one day.

The president's insistence that he would "sprint" to that finish not withstanding, from the report provided by the spokesman on duty at the traveling White House in Crawford, Texas, it sounds as though he is indeed on vacation at the moment.

Gordon Johndroe, a deputy White House press secretary, said the president called Pakistani Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gillani to express sympathy for recent terrorist attacks, former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to thank him for contributions to the fight against terrorists, and advisors in Washington.

White House counselor Ed Gillespie, who traveled with Bush on Wednesday on the only off-ranch trip planned during the nearly two-week holiday, stopped by.

But otherwise, it was vacation time. So, Johndroe said, there would probably be "some work on the ranch." That means chopping away at the ever-growing water-sucking cedar.

It was all too much of a schedule, apparently, to allow the early-to-bed president to stay up Wednesday night to watch Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh triumph in the finals of the women's beach volleyball  Olympic competition.

"He did not stay up, I think, to the very end," Johndroe told reporters in Crawford. "But he was told this morning about the results, and you can imagine he thought it was very good."

Told that Walsh had expressed thanks for Bush's inspiration -- the president met the twosome in Beijing at the start of the Games -- Johndroe said Bush himself found the Olympians "really inspiring."

-- James Gerstenzang

Photos: Top, President Bush and Laura Bush in 2003. Bush, Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor at the Beijing Olympics. Credit: Top, Stephen Jaffe / AFP and Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images