mev

I once witnessed an incident that resulted in a cyclist being kicked off a trip (not me, and I was a fellow client not staff).

It happened on the first TDA Istanbul to Beijing "Silk Route" ride in 2007. I had ridden my own cross-Asia trip earlier in 2007 (Amsterdam to Vladivostok) and then flew to western China to join the TDA trip in Turpan for the last 4000km of the ride.

It was interesting joining this ride 2/3 of the way along when social interactions/cliques and patterns had sorted themselves out. It had been a challenging trip and western China is a sparsely populated desert. In October it was starting to get cold camping at night. Take a set of challenged/frustrated by conditions and add a new discovery of fireworks available in these western towns - along with a 4 am setting off of such fireworks and some were a bit pissed off.

So we had a day not long after the fireworks wake-up when we had a long days ride. A construction traffic blockade prevented our support vehicles from reaching the hotel until later and it was a long and dirty ride with coal dust on the road and everywhere. So much of the group was waiting by the hotel for staff/gear to show up when suddenly another round of fireworks was set off. This was followed shortly thereafter by one of the Americans, "Big Dave" walking away from the scene of the crime with a big smirk on his face. That set off one of the more volatile Canadians, "JJ" who decided to give Big Dave a piece of his mind. It escalated from there. Neither Big Dave nor JJ were best at the "plays well with others" categories as they were at hurling verbal insults - and at some point JJ came over yelling to Big Dave who then pushed him back and onto the ground. JJ would have come up swinging, except for others quickly constraining him.

That evening we learned that Big Dave was officially kicked off the trip. Escalating to physical violence violated his rider agreement and TDA kicked him out. A chastened JJ lay low after that.

What made things more awkward was that while Big Dave was kicked off the trip, we were still several weeks from the end of the trip in Beijing. Rather than go home, Big Dave put a rucksack on and decided to "shadow" the group. Each evening when we came into a town, Big Dave would show up again in the same town. There was some speculation that some group members from his clique were helping to carry some of his gear - though I don't know if that was true. This made things a bit awkward because it was a reminder of him being kicked off the trip, but also sort of being around at the various stops we made. He kept this up through the last day - showing up at our finish point in Tienanmen Square roughly same time as the rest of the group, but not being part of official photos or celebration dinner.

In my observation, TDA handled things as well as they could have. I went on subsequent TDA rides with Africa 2013 and part of South America in 2017 and both the people and the dynamics were rather different - so also think it is sometimes the particular personality mixes. Perhaps also contributing was the 2007 Silk Route hadn't been done by TDA previously and hence there were perhaps a few who didn't have as good expectations.