Originally Posted by MichaelW
If you want a confortable bike for day touring, consider a day touring bike. Typically these use long drop caliper brakes to take any tyre up to 32mm and have drop bars set at a higher position than race bikes and come with the relevant braze-ons.
The style is also known as sport road bike, audax, randonee.
It is a bit of a niche product so look at smaller brands.
The IF Club Racer is a nice example. See also Gunnar, Soma, Surly, Marinoni
This is good advice for sure. I picked this style of bike, then went to LBS. Originally I wanted a SomaSmoothieES, but after I was fitted, it turned out that Soma was the worst fit of all ! We then checked out the GunnarSport, SurlyPacer, Salsa LaRaza, but the Marinoni Ciclo had the very best geometry for my body. We put in the order for the Marinoni, should be here in a few weeks w/CampyVeloce.
So to the original poster I say - pick the style of bike (ie Sport road), but don't get your heart set on one specific model. Get a highly experienced shop to do a proper fit, then scour the publshed geometry charts for the one which fits best. These sport bikes have longer steerer tubes to accomodate higher bar heights (w/o needing 10 headset spacers), slightly longer chainstays (but not as long as fullon tourers) for comfort and stability, the better tire clearance mentioned above, are made of double or triple butted cromoly steel, and usually have rack braze-ons at dropout and seat stays.