OH, RIGHT: Rwanda.

Not exactly a biking destination, you're thinking. A country less than a decade and a half removed from the genocide of 1994, in which mobs slaughtered some 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in roughly 100 days. A place so stigmatized by terror and tragedy that when I told my mother I was going there, she responded with only one anxious word: "Why?"

Well, for starters, I'd heard there was a story to be told, about a tiny country pulling itself out of the clutches of civil war and becoming a surprising model for self-improvement in Africa. There were reports of national reconciliation, international private investment, and a promising trickle of global tourism. But I'll confess: I mostly came for the wooden bikes.

The plan was simple. As Ritchey explained to me over the phone from his home in the Bay Area a couple of months before our trip, I would meet him and some of his friends in the capital, Kigali. We would ride mountain bikes around the country for a few days, ending up in the southern city of Butare for a string of weekend races that would culminate in the Wooden Bike Classic.

And that was the extent of the agenda. Though Ritchey owns his own company, Ritchey Logic, which sells high-end bike components around the world and has some 50 employees, the man doesn't really do superfirm plans. He also doesn't pack much for his frequent biking adventures. Marion Clignet, a French Olympian who won cycling silver medals in 1996 and 2000, joined us in Rwanda and told me about a bike trip she'd taken with Ritchey a few years ago in the Pyrenees, for which he brought a wool jersey, shorts, flip-flops Velcro'd to the front fork, and a toothbrush sawed in half to shave weight. He used newspapers picked up along the route to keep his chest warm. (Not surprisingly, one of Ritchey's coolest inventions is the Break-Away, a top-tier road bike that can be disassembled to fit into a piece of luggage about the size of an accordion.)

Rwanda is a potential paradise for hardcore cyclists. At least that's what Ritchey's friend, investment manager Dan Cooper, decided when he went there on a business trip in 2004. The country is roughly the size of Vermont and even more vertical—it's known as the Land of a Thousand Hills, and the endlessly repeated punch line is that the title leaves out a few zeros. Elevations range from 3,100 to almost 15,000 feet, and during his stay Cooper saw hundreds of miles of winding dirt roads, spectacular vistas, and few cars. You can even ride road bikes on a couple hundred miles of paved routes. A former colony of Germany and Belgium, Rwanda also possesses a rich cycling culture. In addition to the wooden bikes, it's home to thousands of taxi-bike riders, a handful of competitive cyclists, and an annual Tour of Rwanda stage race.

In December 2005, Ritchey flew to Rwanda to see for himself. It was a delicate period in his life; his marriage had recently fallen apart. "I didn't know how to deal with my 17-year-old daughter or my 17-year-old company," he says. "I went out on a metaphorical gangplank and decided it was time to jump."

So he got on his bike and cranked out hundreds of Rwandan miles, visiting tiny villages and the bustling capital. He talked with mechanics crafting homemade bikes and pedaled alongside taxi riders pushing 30-pound tubs of steel. "I had no plan," he recalls. "It was a completely spontaneous, walk-in-through-the-door experience for me."

The Westerner Affected by Africa is one of the great travel clichés, but it exists for a reason. Ritchey likes to say that Rwanda is "a place of second chances," and here he was, desperately needing a reboot. Within weeks of returning to the U.S., he'd started a nonprofit called Project Rwanda. He began welding away in his garage on a low-cost, low-maintenance "coffee bike" that could speed up the transportation of freshly picked beans, enabling farmers to sell them to U.S. and European buyers at a premium (see "Mean Bean Machine,"). He concocted the Wooden Bike Classic, envisioning it as an annual tourist draw—a sub-Saharan running of the bulls. And he turned to his old friend Jock Boyer—the first American to complete the Tour de France, in 1981—to develop a Rwandan national cycling team that could spread the feel-good word about the country's recovery. Boyer would come to Rwanda searching for his own kind of new start. In 2002, after pleading guilty to a felony charge of molesting an 11-year-old girl—a crime that stunned the cycling world—he'd served nine months in prison. Ritchey's decision to offer him a job was inspired, in part, by a Christian belief in the power of forgiveness.

"I hired Jock because he was a faithful, reliable, and uniquely gifted friend," says Ritchey. "And after the troubles he'd been through, and my experience with Rwanda healing itself, it seemed to make sense and fit together."

A longtime supporter of Christian charities, Ritchey says he was inspired by Rwanda's ability to forge on as a country. "I realized I was in the center of a place that was almost a vortex of reconciliation and renewal," he says. "It's the most obvious observation, but when you see the scars on a person over 13 years old, what must have happened to their parents..." His voice breaks. "They're just getting on with life."