Sometimes it takes an overwhelming quest to cope with overwhelming loss.

It is Day 31 of Jason Teter’s 50-day odyssey across America.

A firefighter, Teter is crossing America with a singular mission — to find something good and pure out of the awful losses of a decade ago.

Beneath Teter is a simple road bicycle, above him is sky. And on his arm are his guardian angels, the reason he pedals through triple-digit temperatures, past speeding cars and up steep mountains.

It is just a number – “343,” but it represents the firefighters who perished on 9/11.

As Teter pedals away from a fire station in Wisconsin, he realizes that he’s surrounded by exactly what he’s looking for.

•••

Teter and his wife, Nicole, live in Huntington Beach, and they dedicate themselves to service.

On the day I talk to the former Nicole Solomon, a nurse at Hoag Hospital, she is late getting back from a run. She spent the morning rescuing a seagull flopping on the beach and tangled in fishing line.

Teter tells me he doesn’t want to sound corny but for him being a fireman isn’t just a job. It’s a calling.

As a boy, his favorite toy was a shiny red fire engine. He visited fire stations wearing a red plastic helmet.

During his twenties, Teter, now 39, served as a Los Angeles police officer. But as soon as he landed a job as a firefighter, he jumped.

•••

On Sept. 11, 2001. Teter woke to the sound of the P.A. blasting at the North Hollywood fire house where he works. He glanced at the television. The World Trade Center was on fire. The Pentagon was burning.

Teter felt like he was standing outside himself, watching as the horror unfolded. Still, watching was all he could do – that and stay on high alert. “We felt extremely helpless,” Teter recalls, speaking for himself and his fellow firemen. “We wanted to be at Ground Zero.”

At that same moment, Nicole Solomon was patrolling Costa Mesa as an EMT in an ambulance, ready for trouble.

The couple wasn’t yet married. But it wouldn’t be long before Nicole would understand what it’s like to be a firefighter’s wife.

She learned that, in fact, three days before Christmas, 2006. Nicole and Teter were married by then, and she was working as a nurse in an emergency room in an Orange County hospital. Her cellphone was off, but someone told her a train had hit a firetruck in Los Angeles.

Could her husband be…?

Nah, Nicole assured herself.

Someone ran up to her. It was husband’s unit; details to come. A call. Jason’s injured. Another call. Broken rib.

She exhaled, the injury was minor. But that day was a turning point for Nicole, the moment when she realized she loves a man who one day might not come home from work.

•••

On July 24, 2011 Teter set off from Huntington Beach to cross the nation and touch what he hoped would be the essence of 9/11.

On day two, it was 110 degrees. On day three, it took him four hours to pull a trailer up a 25-mile hill.

Originally, he’d planned to join a group of firefighters cycling cross-country. They ride assisted by a caravan of cars.

But the more Teter thought about what he hoped to achieve — something fundamentally Spartan — the more he realized his quest was something he needed to do alone.

He stays at fire stations when he can. On occasion, he picks up riding partners. But mostly Teter rides solo.

“This isn’t supposed to be easy,” Teter explains. “If I make a mistake I’m going to pay for it. If I break a spoke or run out of water, no one’s there to help me.

“After a hard day, I think about what (the fallen firefighters) went through.”

Six months after 9/11, Teter made a pilgrimage to Ground Zero.

It was dark when he arrived, but generators still chugged. Spotlights glared as dark figures worked in what had become a mass grave. A man stood on the sidewalk playing bagpipes.

Teter wrote this in his blog: “I watched my own mortality being dug up in the rubble.”

He visited a New York fire house where every member was lost. Their locker room looked undisturbed, as if the men were on break.

“It was gut-wrenching,” Teter tells me a decade later, from the road during another trip to Ground Zero.

“I felt so much respect and admiration for what those guys did.”

•••

Today, the hardship of the early part of Teter’s bike trip is gone. And he’s come to understand what his quest is about; rediscovering the spirit that brought America together in the weeks after the attacks

He recounts a story he heard from a retired firefighter, who said that on his second day as a firefighter, he saved a little girl from drowning.

Teter says he responded as you’d expect, and he remembers telling the man: ‘What a great story.”

But the older firefighter wasn’t finished. That little girl, he said, grew up and was on hand to thank him at his retirement dinner.

Day 31, Aug. 26. Teter pulls into Mount Horeb, Wi., pop. 7,009; a town that proudly calls itself the troll capital of the world.

Teter and a buddy arrive to a public welcome. Aerial ladders pierce the blue sky; a huge American flag links the ladders. Twenty-nine fire trucks line up from nearby villages. A helicopter buzzes.

But it’s the crowd that blows away Teter.

More than 300 people line the road, cheering as he rides down Main Street. There are bagpipes and drums.

There also is enough food on hand to feed an army, two armies. Tables sag with pies, salads, cakes, hot dogs, burgers, chips, dips, mac and cheese.

By the time Teter leaves town, he is full.

And it has nothing to do with what he ate.

David Whiting’s column appears four days a week;

Contact the writer: dwhiting@ocregister.com.