Tire Change

With an impending graduation and no job lined up, John Windsor sat in his apartment at St. Mary's College and listened to his old high school friend pitch him an idea of traveling across the country on a bike.'

Hours later that January night, Windsor and Jonathan Zorn, classmates at St. Paul's High School, were already pinpointing their journey on a large map of the country — a trip that would take them from the wooded coastline of Oregon, through the flat Midwest and all the way to the rolling hills of Virginia.

The pair had never been on a bike trip longer than three days. Still, with a love of the outdoors, and no job lined up after school, Windsor needed little...