Originally Posted by DeadGrandpa

I agreed to meet two strangers in Anchorage via the Adventure Cycling website, a lady from Switzerland and a man from Australia. I thought I could get along with anyone, but I found out I was wrong.....QUOTE]
Nice to hear a real world story confirming what I always believed after my first tour, which was an unsupported ACA tour across the country. Twelve participants and the leader thrown together. There were two participants I seriously could have done without, including a bigoted alcoholic. We eventually had the leader "fired" and replaced in Red Wing, MN. There were times when I considered dropping out and finishing on my own, but I stuck with it, in part because I became good chums with another participant and our new leader was great. (He couldn't finish the tour so a third took over and also did a great job. He's actually a BF member who has posted in this forum.) Also, unsupported touring was all new to me, and we shared cooking gear and a repair kit. I would have had to somehow acquire all that stuff on my own mid-tour. Finally, I would have lost some of the money I paid. After the trip ended in Bar Harbor, ME, I started riding home to Philly solo. While I missed the great times with my chum and some of the other participants, I was also so happy to be on my own.