bjjoondo 

I guess, I'm confused, I thought if you took off on a bicycle and headed out into the great unknown, weither for a day or year, it would still be considered "Touring", but from what I've read, it seems more a "certain amount of MILES" in a cetain "Time frame", that defines "TOURING"

My wife and I are hoping to do overnight or weekend tours in 2010, we went to a regional meeting for Adventure Cycling Assn. and at first, thought, OH BOY, were in the wrong crowd, everyone seemed, well RICH and was talking about "Multi-Day, Month, Year" tourers, stuff as on now we can only DREAM of! Then the National Director of ACA, starting talking more about the way to "start" getting out on the road was by more, "overnight or weekend tours" and we felt, well maybe there is "room" for US in the "touring relm" yet.

Your thought, suggestions, comments, etc. would be very appreciated by us "wannabe" touring riders, thanks!

nancy sv

I think a bike tour is any kind of overnight journey on a bike. It may be that you ride out to Grandma's house 20 miles away, spend the night there, then head back home the next day. Or it may be that you take off and cycle around your state for a couple weeks. Or across the country in a couple months. Or around the world in a couple years.

In my mind, if you just go out for the day, it's a day ride. If you stay overnight, it's a tour. So - welcome to the touring club!

10 Wheels

I tour the counties that I live near and return home every night.

markf

ACA started as Bikecentennial, the organization that mapped out the first coast to coast bicycle route back in the '70s. They've since mapped out numerous long distance bicycle routes, and they offer lots of organized tours that ride these routes. I'm pretty sure all of the organized tours have a tour leader who is either getting paid or at least getting his expenses covered, so the people in these groups can afford to pay their expenses and their share of the wages/expenses of the group leader. Lots of these groups pass through my town every summer and, yes, they are a well-to-do crowd.

If you've got a bike and the price of a motel room you can do an overnight tour pretty easily. If you've got a bike, lightweight camping gear and panniers to put the gear in, you can tour for as many nights as you have time and campsite fees, or you can "stealth camp", in which case time is your only constraint.

Like any game, the cost of equipment can range from fairly reasonable to shockingly expensive. One person's "fairly reasonable", of course, can be someone else's "shockingly expensive".

If you go out for a ride to see the countryside, I'd say you're out on a tour. If you go out one day and come back the next, just about everyone will say that you've been out on a tour. Please don't think you have to join a club or go on epic, multi-thousand mile journeys to be a cycle tourist. Just go for a ride and enjoy yourself, whether it's for an afternoon, a weekend or a few years. Living in Colorado, you've got a whole state full of excellent cycling territory that should keep you occupied for a long, long time. Get out and enjoy it!

wahoonc

To me a tour is going out on a bike, if you spend the night away from home it definitely counts. I do what I call "rambles" all the time. I load up a few necessary items and head out for a day or even a couple of days, no real itinerary. Then there are the S24O trips. Touring to me is less about miles and more about seeing things from a bike.

Aaron

Doug64

All of the above. Some tours are just longer than others. That is the neat thing about wandering around on a bike; you can make it anything you want.

WARNING: Bike touring is addictive, and even small doses can lead to an uncontrollable desire for more

kayakdiver

Anytime I ride my bike and I sleep in something other than my own bed............... it's a tour.

Machka 

Completing a prescribed distance within a certain set amount of time sounds more like Randonneuring. If you're interested in that ... go to the Long Distance forum.

avatarworf

If you think it's touring, then it is! Just do what makes you happy and don't worry about "everyone else" doing multi-year, multi-continent tours. Just have fun on your bike

The Human Car

Like you can be a bike racer or you can have a racing bike without being a racer or you can ride at racing speeds the same goes with touring, the meaning comes from context.

tarwheel 

To me, touring is traveling on a bike. That is, going out with a sense of adventure to go somewhere, rather than training, racing, riding to work. All of my touring has been supported, that is with someone else carrying most of my gear. However, I have taken many weeklong supported trips that were relatively inexpensive (less than $500). Others don't consider it touring unless go unsupported -- you carry all of your gear. I think this definition is too limiting because not everyone wants to invest the money in loaded touring. You can take some great trips on supported tours for very reasonable prices, and do it on just about any road-worthy bicycle in good mechanical condition.

I am just starting to acquire the gear needed to do some unsupported touring, but it is expensive. You need sturdier wheels, larger tires, different gearing, racks, panniers, possibly camping gear. It adds up to a lot of money and takes a while to compile unless you've got the money to begin with. Hopefully I will try my first unsupported tour this spring. If I don't like it, I will continue to do supported tours and have no regrets.

nancy sv

Disagree!

My very first tour was a complete disaster in terms of gear, but I had a blast! From there I decided I needed some panniers so picked some up cheap - they weren't great panniers, but they did the job for short tours. (Actually they got me through my year-long tour in Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, but I had to do a LOT of repairs)

If you are planning long, extended tours like 6 months or longer, you will need to invest in really good gear - which is expensive. However, it also lasts a long time.

One of the sets of panneirs we are using right now are some my husband bought way back before we met in 1990. They were already very well used at that point and still survived our year in India, trips around Yemen, Mali, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Taiwan after that. Then - they went on our big year-long family tour in 2006-07. And - they've been with us since Alaska on this trip - 19 months so far!! In other words, those panniers may have cost a fair amount 25 years ago or so, but they are still going strong so are well worth the investment.

However, I still say not to invest in real quality gear at first - once you know you love bike touring you can stock up on the good stuff. For those first few forays into touring - just strap stuff on whatever bike you have and go!

cyclezealot

Is it all that much different than jumping into your car and taking off. What do you consider a trip to be.. You head out overnight, is that a major trip.. Tour, trip.. all the same.. The likely difference is how much preparation does it take to go on your bike tour.. Overnight in the car is a lite overnight bag.. A week's trip requires a large suitcase..

BigBlueToe

To me, worrying about the definition of touring is a waste of time. Just enjoy whatever bike-related experiences you have.

I've loaded up my bike and ridden the west coast, self-supported. That was definitely touring. I've also loaded up my bike and ridden 2 miles to a local state park with a really nice hiker/biker site, because I wanted to get away from the phone/computer/everything for a night. Was that touring? I don't care; it was fun, and peaceful - just what I wanted/needed.

There are lots of modes of bike travel that might qualify as touring. I've always gone self-supported, but while in Montana on the Northern Tier I passed a group that was supported. They carried nothing on their bikes. They had an SUV with a trailer. Not only did it carry everything, it also went ahead and set up rest stops along the day's route. I came upon them with a table set up with big jugs of ice water and lemonade, cookies, pretzels, fruit, etc. They also had comfortable chairs set up in the shade. (And they were nice enough to flag me down and offer me everything they had. It was great!) Their support people got to the campgrounds before them, so that their tents were all set up when they got there, the coolers were full of ice cold beverages, the chairs were set up, etc. Their existence was not Spartan like mine, but they were touring.

I recommend self-supported, multi-day (multi-week) touring as the epitome of the experience, but there are so many other enjoyable modes. Just enjoy!

antokelly

well if you want a quick definition of what touring is read Nancy cv site .myself i've become a fair weather tourer nothing wrong with that ,i don't belive credit card touring or self supported tours are what you would really call cycle tourists.proberly get lashed for saying that but it's my oponion.it's all about the adventure imho,sleeping under the stars,burning eh cooking your own meals ,meeting other people ,an overnight cycle to your grandmother house woulden't really count ,would it...

staehpj1

The free online dictionary defines touring as:
"Travel, as on a bicycle or on skis, for pleasure rather than competition."

So if it is for "pleasure rather than competition" then by at least one definition it is touring. By that measure, you can feel free to call pretty much any pleasure ride a tour.

That said I think most of the bike tourists mean overnight or longer trips when they say touring. Personally that is the bar above which I consider my trips tours.

The description of this forum reads:
"Have a dream to ride a bike across your state, across the country, or around the world? Self-contained or fully supported? Trade ideas, adventures, and more in our bicycle touring forum."

That implies a bit higher bar, so I would think that discussion of day riding fits better in the general forum.

I have never heard of anyone having a particular mileage qualifier, but I wouldn't really consider my trips bike tours unless the riding was at least a somewhat prominent part of the trip.

Bottom line... Call anything you like a tour, but expect to get a little flak here if posting about day rides.

aenlaasu

My husband called my 13 hour country ramble a tour, though I was more reluctant to do so. For me, it's a matter of 'I'm going to do this loop', or 'I'll cycle this section of the Sverigeleden'. I don't set a specific time line. If it takes me 3, great. If it takes me 5, it's all good.

Speedo

I think your definition is reasonable. Pretty loosely, a bicycle tour is any travel that involves a bicycle as a significant component.

Adventure Cyclist magazine has had two recent articles about the joys of tours that lasted less than 24 hours. The most recent issue had an article about a week long tour to Portland that was light on adventure, and just focused on the joys of cycling around a cycling friendly city. So, the Adventure Cycling crowd includes a considerable short and sweet contingent.

Speedo

cyclist2000

Touring is traveling for pleasure. Whether I take an afternoon or week long ride if it is for pleasure I am touring. If I am riding to work, racing or getting the groceries, this is not touring.

I am not familar with ACA but it after looking at the web site, I would expect it to attract a lot of tourists that are interested in extended tours since they mention cross country tours but they don't only specialize in extended tours. I don't think that you were in the wrong place. It is probably a very helpful place with alot of experienced people running the meeting and in the audience.

bhchdh 

Your tour, your rules.

NeilGunton

To my mind, if you call it a tour, then it's a tour. On crazyguyonabike I try to draw a line at people posting their bike commutes, but I think nobody deep down really thinks of those as "tours" anyway, even if they are 20 or 30 miles in length. Somehow doing the same trip to work every day doesn't seem like a tour, not to me, or to many other people. On the other hand, a simple day ride of a few miles could certainly be seen as a tour, especially if the person doing it sees it that way. So I guess the defining attribute of a tour is that it is "special" trip in some way, done in its own right and for its own sake, and a lot has to do with how the rider sees it in their own mind. It has little to do with the actual number of miles covered, or whether it was overnight, or camping, or motel, or sagged, or panniers, or trailer etc etc - those are all variable and optional when you come right down to it.

I often see homeless guys tooling around Eureka on their bikes, with a whole bunch of stuff in milk crates lashed onto the back. I sometimes wonder if they see themselves as being on tour. I don't think so; I believe they are just using the bike to get themselves from one location to another as part of their regular lives. So they probably wouldn't call it touring, even though they look the same and are probably carrying a lot of the same gear as a tourist might.

Another way of looking at a tour is that it's something that is optional, recreational, not being done as part of your everyday work (e.g. commuting) or necessary chores (e.g. shopping). Of course then even this is vulnerable - is a bicycle tour leader then not touring, since it's being done as a job? And is a training ride a tour, since it's recreational? Anytime you try to pin this stuff down to a rigid definition, you start to see exceptions and grey areas. So I just say, if the person doing it calls it a tour (in good faith) then it's a tour.

Just my opinion,

Neil

Machka 

Self-supported tours are the ones where you sleep under the stars, cook your own meals, etc.

And an overnight cycle to your grandmother's house would definitely be a tour. It's a great example of a short practice tour. In fact, you could turn it into a hub-and-spoke tour by doing some out and back rides from your grandmother's house over the next few days. That would be a wonderful way to see the area next to your local area ... and visit with your grandmother at the same time.

antokelly

when we done the camino route we had a guy drive a van with all our gear, he also carried all food and basically everything we needed ,we stayed at 4 and 5 star hotels along the whole route.now if you were to ask me was this a tour, i would definitely say no.we met guy's along the way on there touring bikes fully loaded, no 5 star hotels for these guys most definitely tourers in my book.a day ride is a day ride, put any name on it you like it's still a day ride not a tour,unless of course it's part of your tour maybe rideing to the ferry or airport.

zoltani

Most of my recreational rides are tours. I usually pack a pannier with a sandwich, other goodies, maybe a thermos of tea. Along the ride I take my time, I smell the flower, enjoy the view, and have a cup of tea after my sandwich. For me, I guess it is a state of mind. I am cycling to enjoy and appreciate the area that I cycle through. To me that is touring. You can spend the night somewhere if you like, but it is the same state of mind.

Often I like to head out for an overnighter or weekend trip, as it is hard to find time for really long tours. In the end it's all the same, you pack the same gear and have the same state of mind whether it is for a night or for months at a time.

antokelly

i do exactly the same thing,i would say i suppose an overnighter could well be reguarded as a short tour but not a day ride.