By Stacy Jones

(from left) Duncan Graham, Steven Rockwood, Peter Krause and Reed Perry are joined by Jim Kirstein (third from left). He was so inspired by their effort after meeting them in a California bike shop, that he flew to Annapolis to join them for the final leg of their trek. He also donated more than $1,000.

Taking in D.C. from the seat of his Cannondale F5 bike, Steven Rockwood felt ecstatic to see Georgetown’s Fletcher’s Cove, the first recognizable landmark he’d laid eyes on in two months.

After riding their bikes from San Francisco to Ocean City, Md., Rockwood, a junior mechanical engineering major, roommate and junior architecture major Duncan Graham, and two other student-cyclists arrived home to eager friends and family. They had $3,500 in donations for the LiveStrong Foundation (they’ve since raised another $1,500), hundreds of pictures and dozens of blog posts from the road to show for it.

“My mom and a few other people in the community set up this huge thing so when we were riding into Ocean City, there were hundreds of people waiting for us,” says Graham. “It was so nice just getting home so I didn’t have to think about where I’d be getting water and food anymore.”

The trip was a dream of Graham’s. Four years ago he heard a story on the radio about a father and son who completed the coast-to-coast ride and couldn’t get the idea out of his head.

An Eagle Scout with a healthy appetite for adventure but little long-distance cycling experience, Graham decided this was the year to buy a one-way ticket to California. He and his friends would begin with a dip in the Pacific Ocean and end with a triumphant dash into the Atlantic.

“I was expecting to camp a lot, but we ended up finding incredible people everywhere we went. So the majority of the trip we slept in strangers’ houses,” says Graham. “We’d go to a café and people would ask what we were doing. Within 15 minutes they’d offer to cook us dinner and give us somewhere to sleep for the night.”

Team TransAm also included Reed Perry, a Wake Forest University junior, and Peter Krause, a Goucher College junior. They biked from San Francisco to Sacramento and down the Sierra Nevada into Death Valley before continuing into Las Vegas. From there they zigzagged across Utah and Colorado, not wanting to miss the opportunity to camp in the states’ national parks. From eastern Colorado, it was a straight shot home through Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and finally Maryland.

The team celebrates the end of their ride with a dip in the Atlantic Ocean.

The students averaged 80 to 100 miles per day, beginning around 5 a.m., riding until late morning, stopping for food to avoid midday heat and then riding at night before camping in tents or in people’s homes.

While shopping for gear at an R.E.I. sporting goods store in Folsom, Calif., they met Jim Kirstein, who’s been cycling in the area for 30 years. He saw four cyclists with fully loaded bikes and couldn’t help but ask where they were headed.

He started following the team on its blog , offered advice on how to navigate the mountains near his hometown and later drove out to bring them energy bars and take their picture.

“I became amazed by the ability of these kids to handle the problems they ran into on this trip, and they handled them in a very mature and sensible way. They restored my faith in the younger generation,” he says.

Their problems included twice running out of water in the desert, an emergency room visit for food poisoning, a slashed rear tire that proved difficult to replace and dealing with some police imposters.

“We were riding in Missouri on the Katy Trail at night and we saw headlights. A car started driving down the bike trail toward us, pulls up and the driver said, ‘We’re the police. Give us your IDs,’” says Graham. “We played dumb. Turns out it was just two drunk guys messing around. When we told them what we were doing. They sounded impressed, then sped off down the trail.”

Once the riders reached Maryland, they wanted some company for their triumphant ride from Annapolis to Ocean City. When Kirstein read this on their blog, he flew to Annapolis for the occasion and wrote a check for the $1,200 the team needed to reach its fundraising goal.

As much as he enjoyed it, Rockwood says he wouldn’t do the cross-country ride again.

“I couldn’t replicate learning all of that stuff for the first time out on the road,” he says. “It was the greatest thing I’ve ever done.”

Now the team is training to run in the Walt Disney World Marathon on Jan. 8. Kirstein plans fly out to meet them in Orlando and run the Disney half-marathon the day before.

The team has so far raised $4,875 for LiveStrong, although Rockwood says he and his friends haven’t decided whether they’ll continue to fundraise while they train for their marathon.

Tales from the road, pictures, bios and a map of the TransAm route can be found at www.transamadventure.com.