To Tour or not to Tour that is the question!

" To tour or not to tour that is the Question!"

Above is a picture of my trusty steed! Pivotcycles Mach 4! Been going all over with this bike here in the Northern California. Even taken her to Northstar at Tahoe for some DH action during the summers! Handles the bumps well and thanks to the DW link suspension it goes pretty good too. She has been my steed for the past 3 yrs almost.

As great as this bike is she isn't designed for touring. Its like taking a Porsche out for camping. Sure you could probably fit your camping supplies into one and you could drive there but it wouldn't be as good as say a RV camper or an SUV. Its not built for that purpose.

So the question is what other alternatives are out there & what is "Touring" mean anyway?

Touring bike according to wikipedia is:

A touring bicycle is a bicycle designed or modified to handle bicycle touring. To make the bikes sufficiently robust, comfortable and capable of carrying heavy loads, special features may include a long wheelbase (for ride comfort and to avoid pedal-to-luggage conflicts), frame materials that favor flexibility over rigidity (for ride comfort), heavy duty wheels (for load capacity), and multiple mounting points (for luggage racks, fenders, and bottle cages).

Also I hear a lot of complaints online from the hardcore touring people that there are few good Touring bikes on the US market. A quick look also reinforces that view point.As far as I can tell there are only a handful of options for new touring bikes. Surley Long haul trucker , Fuji Touring  to name a few.

Looking through Japanese Bike Magazines like "自転車日和 Vol.16 (タツミムック)" show some cool touring bikes in the Japanese market..Here is a cool bike thats in there from Bridgestone! Its a HELMZ H1 see below:

 Very tempting but I guess I'm getting ahead of myself.. should really organize what I'd take with me reduce it down to the bare minimums and reassess my needs and see what I can do about it.