First hiker

President Obama and the First Lady went hiking along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina this weekend. It was the first time a sitting president visited the Parkway. It’s so great that they would choose to go for a hike as a way to relax. But it raises a number of questions.

-Who’s the fixer who goes to Asheville and sets this up? How do you choose which trail to go on? The Asheville paper says the President and First Lady picked out the trail. But I doubt Mr. Obama is poring over topo maps in the Oval Office. Nonetheless, it sounded like a pretty spot and the hour length was appropriate. Sad to say, but an hour is about right for the Commander-in-Chief. He has enough to do, and unknowingly winding up on a 10-mile death march would especially be a disaster for the leader of the free world.

-What if you just happened to go on a hike and you ran into the President? How shocking would this be? You see a couple people coming your way and you realize that it’s Mr. and Mrs. Obama. According to USA Today, this actually happened to an elderly woman along the way.

-How does the Secret Service secure the trail? Do they have camo business suits? Do they have snipers in every treetop? And if a bear attacked, would the Secret Service just shoot it dead?

-What if the President got lost? That would be the story of the century.