After the death of his son, Will, in the 2001 airplane crash that also took the lives of nine other members of the Oklahoma State basketball family, survival became the most important word in Bill Hancock's vocabulary. For Hancock, the director of the NCAA men's basketball fournament, survival meant discovering a path back to a nearnormal life. That path took him on his dream journey, from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic-by bicycle. The 2,700-mile odyssey grew to be more than mere physical exercise; it became a pilgrimage of transcendental proportions. Pedaling 85 miles each day was only half the battle. On his two-wheel trip across America's underbelly, Hancock battled searing summer heat and humidity, curious dogs, unforgiving motorists, and the occasional speed bump-usually a dead armadillo. His thoughts returned to common themes: memories of his son Will and the prospect of life without Will for him and his wife, who had joined him for support on the journey. Also joining him was an imaginary companion, one that symbolized grief and depression: a pesky blue moth that fluttered around his head as if Hancock were a beaming lamp pole in a darkened parking lot. Hancock tried to battle the beast one on one, taking the moth on the ride of its life in the hope of shaking free of its constraints. Possibly he could lose it around a corner in one of the small towns he would visit: Show Low, Arizona; Nazareth, Texas; Mountain View, Oklahoma; Hope, Arkansas; Onward, Mississippi. But when Hancock dipped his front wheel into the Atlantic Ocean on an August morn, the pest was still loitering overhead. The blue moth hadn't been drowned in either ocean, or in the buckets of perspiration that Hancock had shed along the highways of this country. At last the weary cyclist was ready to accept that the moth would be with him for the longer haul. Book jacket.