GARY JOHNSON ENJOYING LIFE, MAY NOT BE DONE WITH POLITICS

TAOS -- Worn Levis.

High-dollar, high-tech, moisture-wicking pullover.

Saffron-tinted Oakley shades.

Ten percent body fat.

It's got to be either your run-of-the-mill trust funder Taos ski bum or
former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson.

Or both.

Johnson, the exercise-obsessed, libertarian-leaning Republican who moved
out of the governor's mansion a little more than a year ago to allow Bill
Richardson to move in, has taken up residence with his wife, Dee, in a
three-story, six-bedroom house on the ski slopes here-- high above the
trees and way below the radar.

Gone are the suits and ties and the crew cut befitting a tight-wad
conservative who slashed jobs and reined in government spending. He's now
wearing ski pants, bike shorts or a Speedo. And he's now got a mop of long,
curly hair.

Johnson is living the life he has fantasized about since he was 18: a house
in Taos, a pocketful of money and nothing to do but ski-- all day, every day.

"This is something I've always dreamed of," Johnson says as he gets ready
to explore the 16 inches of fresh snow that a recent storm dropped on
Kachina Peak. "I've skied 100 days this season. No time for the barber."

Johnson, who popped into politics 10 years ago as the rich but unknown
owner of an Albuquerque construction company, spent about half a million
dollars of his own money to unseat New Mexico icon Bruce King in 1994.

He came into office as a wide-eyed contrarian bent on applying to state
government the same principles that had helped him build his millions.

He vetoed bills, built roads, cut jobs, pushed for school vouchers and
then, with term-limit rules preventing him from running for re-election
again, he announced that he wanted to make marijuana legal.

Governor 'Puff'

Think the current governor is famous? Remember back a few years to the
reaction to Johnson's dope idea.

Nicknamed "Puff Daddy" by the nation's drug czar, he appeared on "60
Minutes," "Face the Nation" and "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher"
along with just about every other news show. He was featured in the pages
of Playboy, Cannabis Culture and High Times.

In all of those interviews, Johnson spoke openly about smoking a lot of
weed in high school and college and enjoying it greatly-- and about how he
came to understand drugs to be a liability and quitting.

The Puff Daddy perception prevails, even though Johnson is now as clean as
a whistle-- no liquor, no dope, not even coffee or a candy bar.

It doesn't hurt that Johnson now looks the part of the stoner ski bum,
thanks to a nice tan and the hair that's curling over his collar, the
longest the 51-year-old has worn it since college.

"You're going to show these pictures in the paper and there's going to be a
letter to the editor," Johnson says: " 'I knew that guy smoked pot. I just
knew it.' "

Even though he is resolutely out of politics-- he's watching CNBC, the
money channel, these days, not MSNBC, the news channel-- Johnson still
works on the drug issue. He founded a nonprofit organization, Americans
Against the War on Drugs, and travels occasionally to make speeches or
lobby on the issue.

When he made a trip earlier in the year to Washington, D.C., to lay out the
case for marijuana legalization to a number of congressmen, the trip
required something that Johnson thought he had put behind him-- wearing a
business suit.

"I think at that time I had skied about 18 days straight. I left here, went
down to Albuquerque, got on a plane, went to D.C. and here I'm walking the
halls of Congress," Johnson says. "It was so surreal."

Rich and Happy

Mostly, though, the Johnsons have holed up in their Taos house this winter.
The place is a three-story Territorial-style beauty with big beams,
gleaming pine floors and sleeping space for 26. The couple bought it just
before Johnson left office. They also bought 25 acres of river valley a few
miles down the mountain. And they have their home in Tierra Monte in the
Sandia Mountain foothills, where they spend about half the year.

Funding for this fantasy life is provided by the proceeds of the sale of
the construction business, Big J.

Largely on the strength of municipal bonds and real estate, the Johnsons
are now very, very rich. And that seems to delight them, even though they
were already millionaires when they were governor and first lady.

Even though the couple has traveled in the past year to Nepal, France,
Mexico, California and the San Juan Islands, and Johnson has bought $140
bicycling shorts with abandon, he confesses with some wonder that there's
been no dent in the fortune.

"We can't spend it fast enough to keep up with our return," Johnson says.
"Really. Barring revolution, it's never going to run out."

It's a charmed place to be-- wealthy enough at 51 to never have to work
again and with some major accomplishments like being governor and climbing
Mount Everest behind you. It's also a little like standing on the edge of a
cliff without the option of going backward.

"I could have never been governor and I could have held onto the business
for the rest of my life and I could have died as a successful business
owner," Johnson says. "And that's what so many people do. So this is kind
of blood-boiling, being at this point. There's some excitement: What am I
going to do?"

Intensive Training

If you're Johnson, who used to get up at 4:30 in the morning when he was
governor and run 20 miles before getting to the office, sitting still and
soaking it up are not an option.

Goal-oriented to an oddball degree, Johnson is setting his sights on
becoming the world triathlon champion in his age group. It means he's
training to be able to run a marathon, bicycle 112 miles and swim 2.4 miles
in 10 hours. He's shooting for winning the Ironman Hawaii this October or
next year.

So Johnson has settled into a life of training.

He's up at about 6 and spends a few minutes watching CNBC on the commodious
plasma screen TV that hangs on the living room wall.

Then it's into town for 70 minutes of laps at the Don Fernando Municipal
Pool. By the time Johnson is back up the mountain and sits down for a
breakfast at 8:30, he has swum two miles and ingested 960 calories.

Then it's time to strap on a heart monitor and skis and ski over to the
chairlift a few hundred yards from the door of his house.

Johnson is on the chair by 9 and started on a day of skiing. But not just
skiing. Skiing Gary Johnson-style.

That means taking the chairlift as high as he can, removing his skis and
hiking about three miles along a ridge to Kachina Peak (elevation: 12,300
feet), putting the skis back on, skiing downhill to a chairlift and doing
the circuit again.

On a good day, Johnson completes five circuits before 4 p.m.

He and Dee cook a good meal-- some fresh fish, vegetables and big salad,
light on the carbs-- read or watch a movie and hit the sack by 10.

The next day, Johnson does exactly the same thing.

Johnson has for years exercised on a point system: Running a mile equals a
point. Bicycling three miles equals a point. Swimming one-quarter mile
equals a point. Everything, rock climbing, hiking, mountain biking, in-line
skating, has some points.

When he was governor, Johnson accumulated 80 points a week. Now he
accumulates 140 points a week.

It is the equivalent of running 140 miles a week or cycling 420 miles,
which is on the scale of what Olympians manage.

("For your own knowledge," Johnson says, "I believe that if you do 28
points you're a fit person. That's swimming a mile every day or running
four miles every day. You get no credit for walking, but if you're going to
take a six-mile hike, you get six points.")

And Johnson only counts his miles and points after his heart rate reaches
140 beats a minute. "It's so anal," he says. "I wear a heart monitor."

Wants a Debate

Being a super athlete has always been at odds with advocating loosening
drug laws, but it was sports where Johnson first encountered pot.

He smoked his first joint the summer between junior and senior years in
high school. He was turned on to pot by fellow jocks at Sandia High School.

"Guess what, you can smoke it and there's no side effects, no down side, no
hangover," Johnson found.

He cut back from regular pot smoking shortly after he graduated from
college. His epiphany came after he smoked a joint on the chairlift while
ski racing in Idaho and noticed his next races were seconds slower.

"I didn't quit, but I quit smoking regularly then," Johnson says. "I smoked
it off and on for a couple of years. My last was at least two years before
I ran for governor."

Since then Johnson has come to believe that spending millions of dollars
and imprisoning 1.6 million people a year for drug violations is one of the
nation's biggest follies.

The Libertarian Party asked Johnson to run for president in this election,
largely based on his drug position, and he declined. But he is thinking
about running for president in 2008 or 2012 as a Republican.

Johnson's vision is to run on the drug issue much like Eugene McCarthy ran
on the Vietnam issue against Lyndon B. Johnson-- not to win, but to force
the issue into the debate.

Johnson says he would have to see a significant bump in his wealth-- he
would want to have about $15 million to spend on the race-- and there would
need to be an open Republican primary in the year he chose to run.

If the timing was right, Johnson says he would love to talk about the topic
again on a national stage.

Roaring up the mountain and back to the slopes, Johnson is as jazzed about
the proposition as he is about the fresh powder that awaits him.

"Is there a bigger issue facing us today that is so fixable?" Johnson asks.

Gary sez:

POT: "All drugs are about enlightenment. You feel great, you're able to
talk openly, you explore feelings, and then you come to find out the more
you use it, it has the opposite effect."

SKIING: "The first time I went skiing (as a 13-year-old on Sandia Peak) I
think I went 10 runs without stopping or falling. So I thought, 'This is
the sport for me.' "

PRESIDENT BUSH: "I'll probably end up voting for him. But the whole war
thing bothers me. I felt from the onset that we could have monitored Iraq.
And a lot of civil liberties are going out the window in the name of
homeland security."

TAOS: "I think Taos is as good skiing as anywhere in the world and I've
skied everywhere in the world. I've always wanted to have a place here.
People are nice. It's beautiful. There's a lot to do."

BILL RICHARDSON: "The basic difference between Bill and I is I left office
with a $1.5 million (governor's office) budget and his budget now is $4.2
million. And I had control of over 400 exempt positions and of those I may
have hired 40 and those 40 then hired the balance of the 400. Richardson
has hired every single one of those people. You can't run an effective
business or organization like that; you have no allegiances to the task.
What that means is the allegiance of that person is to Bill."

HIS FROST- BITTEN LEFT BIG TOE: "This was the most crippling injury of my
entire life. A lot fell off. Then it was growing back like a lizard's tail.
I had surgery, a skin graft, they took off 3/8-inch of bone. I couldn't
swim. I couldn't bike. I couldn't run. I couldn't put on a shoe."

BEING GOVERNOR: "People have three settings-- dim, normal and bright. Every
person I came in contact with every day when I was governor turned their
light on bright. That was really cool."

TAOS SKI VALLEY-- That guy roaring up the mountain in the giant Ford F-350
crew cab looks more than a little familiar. There's a protein shake in the
cup holder and the synth beat of a trance CD blasting from the speakers.