Clarenza,
Just my .25 cents worth.
I have read with interest the many questions that appear on this forum about touring. And I am amazed at the wide range of undertakings that fall into this Touring business. Many of the questions contain little information about what the questioner intends to do other than the use of a single term such as the ones that you have listed. Those terms give me little comfort that I have any idea of the actual intentions of the poster.
I would be the first to define myself as a beginner to this business, but after a couple of cross country tours I have met a lot of tourers of many different stripes. They use all kinds of bikes and equipment. And they use that wide variety of equipment in more ways than we can ever categorize.
When I see a question posted here about a touring bike, the first things I need to know are:
will it be used
a. on road or off road, and
b. supported/unsupported
With this information I can begin to visualize those bikes that would work.
When a question is posed concerning panniers/trailers I need to know things like how long the tour will be: The time thing is much more than multi day. I think in three terms:
c. Short term -- a week or less
d. long term -- two to six months (think cross country in the U.S.)
e. Really long term -- multi year, multi country stuff
And then we need to know what kind of stuff will be carried. The weather may be a factor here since a tour only in 80 degree weather will require much less clothing than a tour encountering cold weather. Camping gear (tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad) are the next big items that might be on the list. Cooking gear is another list of stuff that may make up the gear to be carried. And then there is food. How much to carry. I find that the terms in b. above begin to define these variables.
And then these terms would be helpful:
g. camping gear/no camping gear
h. cooking gear/no cooking gear
i. food/no food
I have met a lot of fellow tourers who were carrying camping and cooking gear but they seldom used that stuff. For a log time I did not understand its purpose. After crossing the U.S. with camping gear and without camping gear, I have decided that even if I don’t use it much, the camping gear provides me a peace of mind each day knowing that I can stop at any point and get comfortable. I have also found that if you don’t carry any food with you at all when touring long distances, you will end up getting hungry. I don’t personally like to get bogged down with cooking stuff, but there is plenty of food available to carry along that does not require cooking.
I think that your terms “multi day” and “credit card” are almost useless in providing useful information about a specific tour. As I have noted already multi day doesn’t begin to describe time frames in useful terms. I also believe that almost everyone who tours today carries a credit card with him/her. While this term appears all over the web it is mostly used to describe what the poster doesn’t do, or doesn’t think real tourers do. Whatever that means. It is not important to know the method of payment for food for instance, it IS useful to know if one plans on carrying cooking gear and/or food. It is not useful to know the method of payment for a campground, it is useful to know whether someone intends to carry camping equipment or not. As I have noted, I meet a lot of tourers that are carrying full camping/cooking equipment but staying in motels, hostels, B&B, etc on many nights.
Finally, if we think that we can provide a list of five terms and with those terms have any real idea what a tour means I think we are kidding ourselves. To provide useful answers to questions posted here we need to use a combination of terms. Think about any tour that you have read about on Crazy Guy and then try to describe it using only one of the five terms that are listed by the original poster. Can’t do it because tours don’t fit into five neat categories. We need at least eight as I see it and we need to use them in combination with each other.