near 60 percent. “I wanted to know if you could run an honest campaign, get elected as an honest person, and stay honest in office,” Johnson told me. “And I felt that I did that.”

While in office, Johnson had sold Big J, cashing out of the enterprise. He returned to private life, knocking off Everest and a couple of the other Seven Summits. He spent winters skiing in his beloved Taos. In 2005, while he was teaching himself how to paraglide in Hawaii, his kite got caught in a downdraft. Johnson plunged 50 feet into the trees, crashing through the branches and landing flat on his back. He shattered his 12th vertebrae, cracked six ribs, ripped his anterior cruciate ligament, and damaged the meniscus in both knees—injuries thatwould require an arduous and painful three-year recovery. He spent the first few weeks on the floor, flat on his back, smoking pot for the pain because the prescription painkillers made him feel worse.

The next few years were rocky for Johnson, and for a while he thought life might never get back to normal. He and Dee split up shortly before his accident, and a year later she died suddenly, at age 54, from cardiac hypertensive disease. “Forget breaking my back,” Johnson said. “Dee dying was the worst thing I’ve ever been through. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Things started getting better in 2006, when he rode his bike from New Mexico to California to visit a friend dying of cancer. “By the end of that ride, I finally