The First Thing Barack Obama Did After Finishing His Book
For those of you who haven't reached the last page of "A Promised Land" yet, Barack Obama's memoir (part one) is 768 pages long. It "often reads," reflects the Los Angeles Times, like "a conversation Obama is having with himself." That's a lot of pages of self-reflection, especially if what the former president told The New York Times is to be believed. "I was very somber about this whole process and basically became a little bit of a recluse for a couple of years," Obama told the news source, "and just was going to classes, wandering the city, mostly by myself, and reading and writing in my journals." We were picturing Barack-Obama-the-writer as more of a Robin Williams in "The Dead Poets Society" and less of a tortured Edgar Allen Poe figure. (Oh well, and poor Michelle.)
At least the first thing Obama did when he finished his book was to turn his attention back to his wife. That's according to a recent interview that Obama gave with Entertainment Weekly.
Barack Obama describes his first post-book activity
Per what Obama told Entertainment Weekly, as soon as he finished his memoir, he "went on a long bike ride with Michelle. She'd been so patient and supportive, and it was great to spend time with her without a book hanging over our heads."
The Obamas, of course, are no biking amateurs. For starters, Barack Obama had a nine-slot bike share station installed in the White House in 2010, something that only came to our attention when President Trump decided to have it removed (via US News). In 2015, People reported that family bike rides on Martha's Vineyard were "a ritual as regular as [the Obamas'] annual trip to the Massachusetts island." HuffPost swooned that while bike riding on Martha's Vineyard, the then-president commented to the press pool, "Hey guys. Nice day, huh?" And, remember in 2017 when Barack and Michelle Obama took a trip to Italy, where Travel and Leisure wrote that he was "peddling his heart out while mountain biking"? Then, the Daily Mail boasted that "even the exercise and Italian sunshine" couldn't make Obama break into a sweat.