Samuel David Goldman, 6, left, and Adam Piratzky get ready to depart outside the Doggett Center for Catholic Campus Ministry at N.C. State University at the start of the annual Bike For Life Pilgrimage.

'We are responding to what Pope John Paul II asked of the youth in 1993,' says Sabrena Goldman, the event's director and Samuel's mother. 'For the youth to go out [on] highways and byways, [in] the streets and town centers, and proclaim the gospel of Life. And that is what we are doing. We are promoting the dignity and sanctity of each human life from conception to natural death.'

The nine-day pilgrimage took riders across the eastern part of the state, from Raleigh to Wilmington, then to Washington, D.C., where they attended Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The ride moved Piratzky.

'It was going to be a journey in my faith rather than just a physical journey,' says Piratzky.

The 13 riders and their helpers covered 30 to 70 miles a day, spending each night at a different parish.

'To me this is what life is all about,' Sabrena Goldman says. 'To do what God is calling you to do.'