WHEN I CATCH UP with the guys at dusk on day four, they're dragging boards and skis down County Road 42. As usual, there are wind problems—it's either too light or coming from the wrong direction. Today, the team has already schlepped 18 miles on foot.

Singing a bawdy sea chantey, they remain positive—even Jason, who has walked that 18 miles in ski boots.

"I like these experiences with highs where I think I'm Superman and lows where I'm depressed," he muses.

"Yeah," says Sam, "we can condense our bipolar tendencies into one month and then be normal the rest of the year."

Not long before midnight, after walking nine more miles, they finally stumble into the town bar in Epping (pop. 79) looking gaunt, crater-eyed, and pale, like refugees.

"I'll take a Coke," Sam tells the waitress. "No ice."

Upon hearing they're part of 2XtM, the barflies ask tentative questions and gently tease the guys from their stool-top perches.

"Well, shoot, we can go get a towrope and I'll hooky-bob you boys down to Sakakawea," offers one.

"No, not now that we got all these damn signs on every road," says an old-timer.

Indomitable Jason restores his strength and finds his center by performing vertical yoga poses near the pinball machine. Sam nurses his Coke, unable to eat for fear of throwing up. Paul gapes at his pepperoni pizza, the least meaty of the five pies on the menu, as if staring long enough will cause the greasy little disks of processed sausage to acquiesce to his vegetarian wishes and slither off the cheese on their own.

The rest of the expedition will continue apace. They'll reach Lake Sakakawea two days later, only to discover that favorable winds have blown the snow right off the surface, leaving a foggy mirror. Sam, unable to hold an edge the way he could in the hard red spring wheat, will crash repeatedly, dislocate his shoulder, and take a fully supported detour to the emergency room. Paul will somehow find his stride and kite-ski better than Jason. "I'd think I was gonna die," he explains obtusely, "and then I wouldn't." Jason will remain steady as he goes, until they near the Missouri River and see that there's no snow. At all. Again. "We thought the expedition was over," he says.

But no. Sam will borrow a mountainboard, a sort of knobby-tired skateboard, and two kite buggies, like adult Big Wheels, and they will keep on kiting and rolling toward South Dakota. Except when the wind dies. Or they descend hills. At which point they have to crash skillfully in the ditch to slow the brakeless contraptions.

On February 28, after six days of walking and 12 days of kiting, they'll arrive in Keldron (pop. 127). They'll consider it a success, because they made it and mostly because of the work of the educational crew, which capped its campaign with a blowout bash in downtown Fargo, featuring a mock campsite, looping footage of the event, and a lavish spread of food—all still on that $3,500 budget, because a city commissioner took care of the costs. Apparently he happened to catch an earlier presentation, called the group afterwards, and asked how he could help. By now, I wasn't the least bit surprised.