The day after a tragic plane crash claimed the lives of 10 young men affiliated with the Oklahoma State University basketball program in January 2001, longtime NCAA men's basketball tournament administrator Bill Hancock walked into OSU Athletics Director Terry Don Phillips' office, shook his friend's trembling hand and thought, "This is every sports administrator's worst nightmare."

Hancock literally was living his. His 31-year-old son and OSU basketball publicist Will was one of the 10 who died in the January 27 accident after the Cowboys had played the University of Colorado, Boulder. The plane was one of three that Oklahoma State had chartered for the return trip to its campus in Stillwater, Oklahoma, but it crashed about 40 miles outside of Denver after taking off in snowy conditions. It was the worst air tragedy involving college student-athletes since 1985.

Now, more than four years after the crash, Hancock has written a book chronicling a cathartic, cross-country bicycle journey -- and a gradual awakening from what he still fervently wishes was a bad dream.

His insights make the book a must-read for any athletics administrator who has stared down tragedy, and even for those who haven't.

Incredibly, "Riding with the Blue Moth" begins with a nightmare -- Hancock's own vivid dream 10 days earlier that Will had died in an accident. The vision was so strong that it shook Hancock from his Indianapolis bed and prompted him to call Will in Stillwater. "His calm voice was reassuring," Hancock writes. "Like George Bailey in the movie 'It's a Wonderful Life,' he lived again."

It is no surprise, however -- certainly not to the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people within the intercollegiate athletics family who know and admire Bill Hancock -- that "Riding with the Blue Moth" is not a book about dying, but about living. Those familiar with the former Division I Men's Basketball Championship director (he retired a year after the tragedy and now serves as the tournament's media coordinator on a contractor basis) also will not be shocked that Hancock wrote the book not so much for his own healing, but as a salve for others facing similar, unfathomable challenges.

Hancock describes early on the joy he gained from making things better -- both in his NCAA tournament role since 1989 and as a father since 1969. "Forget your practice time? Call Bill," he writes. "Need a bus pass? Ask Bill. Locker room dirty? Find Bill. Trumpet valve stuck? Dad can fix it. Girlfriend likes John better than you? Talk to Dad. Algebra problem got you stumped? See Dad."

"But I could not fix this," Hancock says about the accident. "This was beyond anything I had ever experienced -- beyond anything I could imagine."

Ironically, Hancock's idea of pedaling across the United States was concocted well before the accident. He was about to turn 50, and the man who had run 15 marathons, including New York twice and Boston once, pledged to himself a coast-to-coast birthday present on wheels instead of foot.

"But I gave up those dreams after Will's death -- or so I thought," Hancock said.

Perhaps Hancock's wake-up call came about three months after the tragedy, shortly after his family received support from what he calls "many hundreds of warm, wonderful, caring people in the intercollegiate athletics family" during the 2001 basketball tournament. At a meeting with a group of Will's close friends who continued -- as a memorial to Will -- their traditional attendance at the Kansas City Royals baseball season opener, Hancock experienced an epiphany. Knowing that losing their friend was life's first great calamity for most of them, he wondered how he would respond to the forlorn "What do we do?" looks on their young faces.

"What would I have said if one of them had been on that plane instead of my son and Will had asked that same question?" Hancock writes. " 'Live,' I thought. I would have told Will to remember his friend forever, and to honor his memory by living every minute as if the whole world were watching and learning from him."

That thought was a beacon for Hancock. He decided the future was something to explore, not bury.

Thus begins Hancock's 35-day, 2,700-mile trek across the Southern states in July and August 2001, from Huntington Beach, California, to Tybee Island, Georgia. "Not once did we discuss the journey as a balm for our souls," Hancock says of he and his wife Nicki embarking on the trip. "We were going on an adventure. Nothing more."

But it was more.

The pages that follow are part diary, part textbook -- a little bit of American history 101 and a whole lot of life 2005. Each chapter, each page of putting one foot in front of the other, is a lesson learned. Hancock frames them as instructions for Will's daughter Andie, born just two months before the crash, but all readers are beneficiaries of Professor Hancock's teachings.

Along the way are encounters with Hancock's band of "angels": The desert construction worker; the talkative freeway Samaritan; "Arizona Bud Man;" "One-Eyed Pop" in Pie Town, New Mexico; the suicidal woman; and the "Peach Angel," whose meeting with Hancock goes from awkward to transcendental.

Also along for the ride is the pesky Blue Moth, a term Hancock interpreted from his grandmother's pronunciation of the cold fronts ("blue nawthers") that swept across the southern plains of Hancock's youth. At first a tedious trail mate, the Blue Moth ends up riding shotgun with the sages.

The book reads as smoothly as a Hancock-directed Final Four. There's humor ("I still had not seen a single live armadillo. No married live ones, either." and "After all, changing a tire is not sprocket science."); there's imagery ("The morning headwind whipping through a dry cornfield sounded like a thousand starched Easter dresses on parade."); and there's poignancy ("Will was as comfortable reading a Bach score as he was examining a box score -- just like his dad.")

But mostly, there's the realization that life is not a solitary endeavor.

"The angels whom I met while biking across the country showed me how to have a second chance at life," Hancock writes. "They stayed with me until I could fly on my own. Sure, I would have a Will-sized hole in my heart for the rest of my life. But I could live again. I could open my shell and help others."

Hancock has made a career out of helping others. "Riding with the Blue Moth" is his latest -- and perhaps most profound -- contribution