Eric Sheets of Rockford meets some new friends on his arduous, bare-foot journey to Seattle. The 33-year-old started his trip Memorial Day weekend in hopes of getting a meeting with Bill Gates to pitch a proposal on an educational computer program.

Thirty-year-old Eric Sheets left Rockford on Memorial Day weekend, intent on walking two thousand miles barefoot to Seattle, Washington. The ultimate aim of the unusual journey of Sheets' and his entourage, which includes a 14- . . .