well, shawn, I'm no experienced tourer like many of the people in this forum (I've only gone on one tour...but it was awesome!) but what I can tell you from a slightly less newbie point of view is that a lot of the stuff you mentioned is personal preference. Like flat bars vs. drop bars, mountain bike vs. road bike, trailer vs. panniers.....it depends on what you prefer. What have you got now? Do you have a bike that might be suitable for touring?
Also, another thing that I found was that some of the questions that I was most concerned about I couldnt' find the answers to online. The subjects simply weren't discussed. I was very worried about not having answers to these questions before the tour. But once I got on my way, I realized that the reason most of those things were not discussed is because they're not an issue. I can't even remeber one of the questions now, but you will find that the answers are so obvious that you wonder why you were worried about them in the first place.
Having said that, ask every single question to this forum....there's so much knowledge here it's scary.
One mistake I did make though was that I got a late start on the morning of the tour. Then decided to push on past my original stopping point to get to the next one. I did this so I could relax the other 3 days of the trip. But I got to camp after dark, slept in very late the next morning and thoroughally wiped out my touring partners (who didn't have the base miles from cycle commuting that I did). Also, the original stopping point was a city that had many things to go see and do. We skipped them in order to have a relaxing rest of the trip. We continued on in good spirits, but a knee injury ended the tour early for one of them, and mechanical probs ended the tour early (only by about 10miles) for the other.
Even with those setbacks, all three of us had a great time on the tour. We all have a love for cycling, camping, travel and an appreciation of a break from the rat race.