Gear

It is currently T minus five hours and counting.  At this point you may be wondering how are Joshua and Jasper going to carry all that stuff, what kind of bikes are they going to ride, why are they such cool kids, and other important questions.  This should answer all of your questions and more.
To start with, Joshua will be riding a Surly CrossCheck in robin's egg blue.  It has an interesting build based mostly off of his late Felt F55.  DuraAce shifters with a 36-50 up front and an 11-34 in the rear. He will be rolling on Mavic Aksium wheels with Schwalbe Marathon Mondials in 700X40c and will have no front suspension to be able to enjoy every rock and washboard for the entire 2700 miles.  Jasper on the flip-side went the opposite route.  Instead of a steel cross frame, Jasper will be riding a Santa Cruz Highball, a carbon 29er race bike; the natural choice for a slow plod across the country.  He's riding a full XT build with a Fox Float 29 with a Kashima coating.  He'll be rolling on Mavic TN 719 rims laced to DT swiss 350 hubs on Maxxis CrossCheck 2.1" tires (every time someone flats they owe 1 beer, so far Jasper is losing 1-0).
Next question:  How will you carry all that crap?  Jasper has a rear rack made by Old Man Mountain.  He'll be strapping some Jannd panniers on it.  He also has a drybag to bungy onto the top of the rack, a large saddle bag, a Camelbak and a custom framebag. Joshua has two racks, on the rear he has large Axiom panniers.  On the front he's got a lowrider Jannd rack with two Jannd MiniMountain panniers.
As for what goes in the bags, how much it all weighs, who's carrying the shotgun in case of zombie attack and all the other questions you are dying to ask, we'll get to them later maybe, or make a comment and we'll get to them sooner.