ETROIT - Sometimes he sleeps in a motel next to the railroad tracks. Sometimes he eats turkey and mayonnaise sandwiches from a Styrofoam box. He spends parts of days riding a bus, and sometimes, when he calls home late, his girls aren't there.
Governor George W. Bush isn't exactly living the lyrics of a Texas country song.
But there are moments, shared by the more than 50 aides and reporters by his side, when it certainly feels that way.
Two months into the heart of Republican primary season, both Bush and his chief rival, Senator John McCain, are beginning to understand the odd grind that is the campaign trail, weathering not just tedious days and bitter disappointments but also the personal indignities of the road. And in the process, they are learning what other candidates learned before them: that running for president is a bizarre, haphazard experience for everyone involved.
Some compare it to being a college freshman, except the chartered bus part.
Others liken the experience to the movie ''Groundhog Day,'' with companions witnessing the same speech so often they can recite every word.
Insiders have a name for the ever-moving mass: ''The Bubble.''
Because amid the blur of daily political battles, as each candidate's entourage is whisked across unfamiliar lands to crowded gymnasiums and town halls, rarely is there a moment to break out into the wide world. Or buy a newspaper. Or do laundry. Or take a walk.
Weekends are indistinguishable from weekdays. Hotel stays rarely last more than 12 hours. Each morning begins with the same dreaded ritual: ''Bag call,'' in which the luggage of the entourage is surrendered to the candidate's staff before dawn, to be returned just before midnight in another strange hotel.
''It's kind of like a vast culture of nomadic people swarming across the country,'' Bush said in an interview last week over a giant bag of Fritos purchased somewhere along the way.
''The amazing thing about this experience is, this is not the candidate. It's the entire ... everybody. It's the DPS agents. It's the press corps,'' he said. ''This is like a giant group of folks, all of whom, in one way or another, have got a job to do, but are sharing an experience.'' He was referring to the Texas Department of Public Safety, which provides his security.
It is an experience that has changed over time, as the press corps has grown more diverse, and equipped with better technology. The candidates, under increasing pressure to accommodate the 24-hour news demands of cable TV and the Internet, have made punishing schedules par for the course.
The manic daily routine seems itself central to the political process, putting a candidate's fortitude on display for weeks on end. As they spend long days with the traveling press corps - sharing not only adversarial press conferences but also bumpy plane rides and rotting meals - the candidate undergoes a constant test of temperament. While rarely written about, the odd backstage moments with the press are often what shapes the depiction of the candidate's character in the long run.
Of course, the backstage moments aren't always pretty.
When a bout of stomach illness hit the McCain campaign last week, it felled nearly one-quarter of the traveling group. Two of the senator's press aides never made it out of their hotel. Even the bus driver was sick.
''Throw up on your own time,'' Representative Lindsey Graham instructed the ailing Representative Mark Sanford, as both stumped South Carolina for McCain.
When Bush aides distributed a schedule to the traveling entourage Sunday night trumpeting a two-night stay in Detroit, the pleading headline summarized the group's plight: ''First double overnight in weeks! Do your laundry! Please!!!!''
And when the Bush communications director, Karen Hughes, hopped off the campaign bus last week to stop at an automated teller machine to withdraw cash, a rarely seen commodity on the campaign trail, she caused an uproar among reporters who had spotted her from the next bus. What, they demanded to know, was she doing walking alone down the road?
''I felt like I was playing hooky,'' Hughes said. ''It was wonderful.''
The candidates, to be sure, are shielded from some of the more serious deprivations of life and liberty.
Bush has made no secret of his longing for home. He misses his high-pressure shower with a nonsteaming shaving mirror, the homemade granola of the governor's mansion kitchen staff in Austin, the ranch outside Waco he began fixing up last July.
Most of all, he says, he misses waking up beside Laura, his wife of 22 years. These days, Bush is greeted each morning by a 25-year-old communications aide, Gordon Johndroe, who is carrying a cell phone for an early radio interview.
Still, Bush was able to fly his wife in for a visit on South Carolina primary night.
And McCain, so despondent about the time he has spent away from his four children that he swears he would never run for president again, has his wife, Cindy, on the campaign bus each day.
But as the candidates are allowed just enough contact with family and familiar routine to appear at ease in the public eye, their top aides are likely to be suffering quietly in the background, if not from homesickness, then from the logistical nuisance of living out of suitcases for 45 days straight. McCain's political director, Mike Murphy, has sent dirty laundry home by Federal Express.
A senior McCain aide, John Weaver, who has been home twice since Thanksgiving, has been known to disappear from the campaign bus to buy a fresh shirt. Weaver's 7-year-old daughter told her teacher that Dad is off ''trying to get rid of a president.''
''I have a lot more clothes than I used to,'' Weaver said.
Not that anyone is looking at clothes.
If anything, after weeks traveling together, the participants have grown accustomed to seeing one another at their worst, learning whom not to approach before morning coffee, and anticipating which staff member will fall asleep on a late plane ride.
Before the New Hampshire primary, one Bush aide dared to emerge from her hotel room in light blue pajamas, an off-the-record event that offered early evidence the Bush campaign was human, too.
''It's less a study in politics and more of one in human interactions,'' said a Bush pollster, Mark Allen. ''I think it tends to start out with a wariness on both sides. But the process of planes, trains, and automobiles tends to wear down a degree of that defensiveness. Here are all these folks thrown together who form bonds they probably would not otherwise form. ... And some interesting friendships develop as a result of that.''
The bonds are clear even after seven weeks, as reporters on the McCain campaign commiserate with staff members about the weight they've gained, as reporters on the Bush campaign lament their candidate's favorite lunch meat (bologna), and as everyone, on all sides, competes to see who has gone the longest without paying personal bills. Even Bush admitted: ''Your whole perspective on life changes.''
''But what the heck,'' he said. ''It's part of running for president.''
Globe correspondent Curtis Wilkie and Jill Zuckman of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
