Kansas City, Mo. ? After the shock of his son’s death finally wore off, a heartbroken Bill Hancock discovered something about grief.

It came bolting out of nowhere, much like the wintry wind that whipped across the Oklahoma plains of his childhood to ruin a fine spring day with a shiver. His grandmother, in her North Carolina accent, used to call it “blue ‘norther,” but to him, it sounded like “blue moth.”

Hancock, the former director of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament who lost his son in the plane crash that killed 10 members of the Oklahoma State basketball family, took to calling his grief the blue moth. It became so much a part of his world that it seemed to occupy space — not a disembodied emotion, but a real physical presence.

But he found peace with the moth during a 36-day, 2,700-mile bike ride across the country, a journey he details in a book to be published in September, “Riding With The Blue Moth.”

“The moth is now a teacher, a mentor; not a friend, but a companion,” he said.

This week — Final Four week — was the culmination of each year’s work for Hancock. As the NCAA Tournament director, he had a fun, high-salaried job that most sports fans would happily work for half the pay.

Four years ago, he and his wife Nicki — their friends plentiful, their health excellent — were in the midst of planning a cross-country bike ride from Huntington Beach, Calif., to Tybee Island, Ga., when the devastating news arrived.

Will Hancock, the dutiful son who had followed in the footsteps of his adoring dad as a basketball sports information director, was dead. He and nine others from Oklahoma State died on Jan. 27, 2001 in a plane crash while returning to Stillwater from a game at Colorado.

One of the worst sports tragedies in decades, the crash captured the attention of the entire country. Schools began reviewing their flight policies.

The following summer, after first being canceled, the bike trip was back on because the despondent Hancocks “just wanted desperately to do something normal, and somehow that seemed normal.”

Nicki drove ahead every day to set up camp for the night. Bill, getting started each morning in the pre-dawn darkness, would stop several times a day to rest, replenish his water and chat with men and women who had very little in common with the media stars and celebrity coaches he knew at the NCAA.

About halfway through, without exactly realizing it, he started to accept his grief — the hated blue moth — and even learn from it.

Emotionally as well as geographically, progress was slow and demanding. The deserts of the Southwest turned into the flat, dusty Oklahoma highways, which gave way to the green, gently rolling hills of Arkansas.

“All I was to those people was a sweaty guy on a bike — not a grieving father, not the NCAA guy,” Hancock said.

Four years later, Hancock knows the blue moth will never leave for good. It seems especially active when Hancock is doing something he and Will enjoyed together, such as sitting at a basketball game or viewing a favorite movie.

“The moth and I watched Field of Dreams the other day,” Hancock said.