You Can’t Quantify Laughter

Benjamin Levin is the Content Creator on the 2024 South American Epic Cycling Expedition. 

Many parts of a TDA expedition are easy to quantify. You can track how many kilometres you have traveled, how much elevation you gained. You can read your heart rate and monitor the oxygen in your blood. Other parts, however, are not as easy to measure. How do you quantify camaraderie, happiness, the exhilaration of completing the day or the encouragement of your peers as you crest that final hill? You just cannot. These are intangible, metaphysical parts of this trip that, while maybe not as easily encouraging as seeing that 3,000 meters of climbing completed, in my opinion, are more important and impactful than any statistic Ride With GPS can tell you.

Staff enjoying some time in the hammock during the long work days

Our tours are rider centric, but the staff help set the tone. Having a group that exudes positive feelings sets a wonderful baseline for the entire tour’s enjoyment. Our chef on tour, Colleen, jovially said to the group a few mornings ago that she woke up to the sound of our medic, Jessica, laughing at 5 in the morning. Most of the time when you wake up at 5 in the morning, ahead of a 16 hour work day, you do not wake up laughing. But 5 of us, Ine, Lorenzo, Jon, Jes, and me, were all laughing that morning. We had woken up in a tree house above a river bend in the Ecuadorian Amazon. We braved the bugs, bats, and ants’ nests in order to sleep up there. It was amazing; as soon as we woke up Jon was impersonating someone, Jes was cackling as she so freely does, and Ine and I were giggling over the ridiculousness of the situation and the privilege we had to be where we were, surrounded by people we care about.

Tour leader Carolina and rider Tom enjoy a moment out of the heat

That is how we begin most mornings on the South American Epic and that feeling continues to perpetuate itself throughout the day, throughout the riders, and throughout the entire trip. It seems a bit funny to say, but we have such a good time working these 16 hour days, that it does not feel like work at all. Because of this, the riders do not feel the barrier between staff and client. We are all part of this rolling family circus that is laughing its way down South America.

“The staff have been incredible, I have loved getting to know everyone… I think together we all make a very good team,” Mike Mossing said to me as we chatted about the group dynamics on the trip. We all make a good team on this trip. Not just the staff that work for the group, but also the rider group and the staff together. Happiness is infectious and works both ways. I said to Mike, “We [staff] feel as if this is a really solid group of riders. I was talking to Ine this morning about how you will come in after the toughest of days saying ‘that sucked!’ but smiling and looking forward to the next one.” That attitude from the riders does for the staff what all of us getting along so well does for the riders. It makes us happy and motivated to continue doing all we can to make this the most gratifying experience across the board.

Staff and riders enjoy a tour of the middle of the earth (the equator!)

These feelings do not get measured by statistics. You cannot quantify what waking up laughing does to you during the day. But I know, as well as most people on this tour, that the air around you is lighter when your are happy, that you are more encouraged to work longer hours, clean more plates and bowls, and engage in more genuine conversations when you enjoy the people around you. We are lucky; we say that all the time to each other. TDA tours are always awesome. In just one and a half months in South America we have seen volcanoes erupt over the Amazon rainforest (seriously) and cycled to peaks higher than most people in the world have ever been. We have laughed with friends in small alley coffee shops and slept in treehouses above rivers that have no beginning and no end. We have done it together; encouraging each other day in day out. Waking up laughing, excited to work, and passing that excitement onto the cyclists, making them excited to put those two pedals down over and over again.

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South American Epic

This challenging expedition offers you the best opportunity to explore the vastness and diversity of South America by bike. In keeping with the TDA...