TDA Rider Profile: Bob Kieckhefer

Paige White is the Content Creator on the 2025 Tour d’Afrique Cycling Expedition. In this report, she profiles American cyclist and TDA alumni, Bob Kieckhefer.

Robert (Bob) Kieckhefer knows a thing or two about the Tour d’Afrique. Bob joined the 2025 TDA expedition in Kigali, Rwanda as a veteran sectional rider, ready to go. On his first day of riding he was already equipped with his Tour d’Afrique cycling jersey that he earned from a previous tour.

Bob grew up riding a bike in America as a kid, but didn’t do much serious cycling until he moved abroad in the 1990’s. He was a geophysicist living in Sumatra, Indonesia, when he realized that running in the tropics was far too sweaty for his liking. As it turned out, Bob discovered that cycling is the perfect alternative where you can keep you cool with the breeze, even in the tropics.

At 71 years young, Bob now has 35+ years of cycling adventures under his belt, many of which have been taken place with TDA Global Cycling. The Tour d’Afrique is an adventure that began for him in 2018 and it has taken Bob five stubborn attempts to complete the whole route. In 2018, he rode from Cairo to Addis Ababa in a month long trial to see if he’d enjoy the tour and the TDA lifestyle. In 2019, he signed up to cycle from Addis Ababa to Cape Town but in Nairobi he dislocated his elbow. He took a month off to heal, eventually rejoining the group and pedalling from Victoria Falls to Cape Town with the rest of the group.

In 2020, Bob joined in Nairobi to try to fill in the time he had missed in 2019 but suddenly Covid-19 shut down the tour completely after he had ridden only three days. In 2023, Bob finally finished the Tour d’Afrique route in its entirety. When Bob wasn’t busy cycling with TDA through Africa, he completed 6 other tours with TDA – cycling in Japan, South East Asia, Morocco Asia and Australia. One day, a friend raved to Bob about how he needed to go cycling in Rwanda. Somewhere between the Tour d’Afrique adding Rwanda and Uganda to the route and the conversation with Bob’s friend — he decided to return in 2025 for a sixth time on the tour.

From Kigali to Nairobi, Bob’s 2025 TDA journey brings together riding in both new places on the tour as well as some places where he already has memories. Bob recalled one of his most memorable experiences on a past TDA trip in Namibia. At the end of a long 130 km+ day, Bob was getting beat up riding on corrugated gravel. In the twilight, this retired geophysicist saw what appeared to be a large rock 200 metres away in the middle of the road. “I get 50 metres away, and the rock stands up. It turns out that it’s an oryx.!”

Bob described the animal as being the size of a horse with long sharp horns roughly a metre long. “She’s looking at me, and I’m looking at her and I slow to a halt. I’m talking calmly saying things like, ‘Oh I’m so sorry we ate your cousins last night, but he was the cousin you didn’t really like anyway’. I was just blabbering.” All of a sudden, she charged at Bob. Just before he was about to throw his bike towards her as a Hail Mary, she stopped three metres in front of him. After a brief staring contest, Bob and the oryx went their separate ways.

When asked about why he keeps coming back, Bob says that TDA is the place to be if you want to focus on riding while knowing that the logistics of food, travel and all the other necessities are taken care of on your behalf. With the logistical support and the friendship, connection, and community that he has found through TDA, Bob has plenty of reasons to keep coming back on the Tour d’Afrique…time and time again.

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